Media Portrayals of the Middle East

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Sarah Hopper

EATS Lesson Plan - Littlestown Area School District

Lesson Title: Media Portrayals of the Middle East - 2 days Date:
State Standards Materials NeededEight-page Teacher Guide--Two-page Student Worksheet--PowerPoint slide show (access online or via Unit 1 Lesson 1 digital media--Google Drive Folder of Resources
Essential Question(s)How is the Middle East portrayed in the media? To what extent do stereotypes influence media portrayal/how does the media reinforce existing stereotypes?
Learning Objectives -Students will identify the assumptions, misperceptions, generalizations and stereotypes they carry about the Middle East.-Students will reflect on the sources of accurate, inaccurate and stereotypical thinking about the Middle East.-Students will recognize the cultural bias in the terms “Middle East” and “Near East.”-Students will identify the varied geographic boundaries of the Middle East.-Students will understand the concept of media literacy and be introduced to the Media-Construction of the Middle East curriculum.
Activating Strategy How will you activate your lesson or link to prior knowledge?“Has anyone in our class visited the Middle East? How do you know about a place you have never visited in person? You might have seen a picture or video image from that place. Maybe you read a story or heard a song from that place. It is possible that you cannot even remember where you learned about the place, but you have ideas about it anyway – images, words, sounds, and opinions. In this lesson, we will explore what you already have in your mind about the place some call the Middle East.”
  • Ask students to silently write down a list of words and images that come to mind when they think of the Middle East.
Teaching Strategy(Examples: graphic organizer, distributed guided practice, distributed summarizing, collaborative pairs)Interactive Lecture and Discussion Student Reflection and Response
Procedures (Steps to complete instruction/ activities)
  1. Distribute one Student Handout to each student. Explain that they will see a dozen photographs in a PowerPoint that may or may not have come from the Middle East. For each photo in the PowerPoint, they should indicate on the worksheet if they think it is or is not from the Middle East and provide a very brief explanation of their reasoning. Students will only have ten seconds to view each slide, so they should note their impressions quickly.                        
  2. Present Documents 1-12, and pause for ten seconds on each slide. As you present, students should note answers on their worksheets without talking.
  3. Project the twelve images again using Slides 14-25 (each slide contains information about each photograph). For each photograph, ask for a show of hands as to whether students thought it was from the Middle East and why. Use the Teacher Answer Sheet on the following page to share more information about each slide.
  4. Use Slide 26 to introduce the terms assumption, misperception, generalization, and stereotype. You may have the class try to define each word as it is projected. Each word is projected individually on your mouse click. Following each word is its definition, again animated to appear on your mouse click or keystroke.
  5. Ask the following question about Slide 28. Possible Answers are listed below.
  1. Compare these three maps. What countries do these three different maps consider to be inside and outside of the “Middle East” or “Near East”?
Map 1 shows the Middle East entirely in Asia, bordered by China and India to the East. It includes Pakistan and Central Asia and excludes all of Africa, including Egypt.Map 2 includes the African countries of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. It includes Afghanistan in the East, but not Pakistan or the other Central Asian countries.Map 3, “The Near East” includes all of the Arab countries of North Africa, but not the African nations south of Egypt. Turkey and Afghanistan are also omitted.
  1. Project Slide 29 and explain that this is the first lesson in a curriculum called Media Construction of Middle East. The curriculum intends to teach about the Middle East through media literacy.
  2. Use Slide 30 to discuss different forms of media. Explain that Project Look Sharp defines (mass) media messages as communicated through visuals, language, and/or sound that are produced for a remote (mass) audience using some form of technology. Therefore, books, although ancient, are media, while traditional telephones are not.
  3. Leave up the last slide and have students find a recent article about the Middle East --  students will evaluate newspaper sources or articles from yahoo news to evaluate how the Middle East is presented in the media using the  questions from the powerpoint
  4. INDEPENDENT PRACTICE -- Students will summarize today’s lesson in their journals and submit for teacher review
Summarizing StrategyHow will students summarize what they are learning during the lesson and at the end?(Examples: Ticket out the Door, 3-2-1, etc.  Answer the EQShare journals with partners
Accommodations*IEPs/504s*MTSS kids *Acceleration (GIEP) Modify notesheets to reduce copying as appropriate

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