Green Transportation Lesson: Student Project
Lesson Plan
55 minutesGrades3, 4, 5English Language Arts
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Written by Lindsey Pockl, Amber Medina
About this lesson
In this lesson, students use six questions to explore critical media literacy and begin creating their own advertisements using a rubric as a guide.
Inquire: Students explore the definition and guiding questions of critical media literacy.
Investigate: Students analyze advertisements about car-free cities.
Inspire: Students begin creating their own advertisements for their metro designs.
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Everything you need to teach it
How to edit these materials (video)Teaching tips
Suggestions
- This lesson features critical media literacy, an important skill for all students.
- The Inspire section and advertisement creation can be extended over several class periods or days and adjusted based on students’ needs.
- English Language Learners can create advertisements in their native language or be assigned a specific role in the advertisement creation that engages them based on their language development.
- Depending on classroom contexts, teachers can guide discussions on diversity and representation in advertisements.
- Students explore real-world problems through project-based learning and peer collaboration.
Prerequisites
- This is lesson 5 of 6 in our 3rd-5th grade Green Transportation unit.
- The videos on slides 13-15 will automatically start and stop at the appropriate times.
- Students should understand how to read a rubric and use it as a guide for increasing their scores.
- Teachers can prepare for conversations about diversity and representation in advertisements.
- Teachers can find transportation advertisements in the native languages of English Language Learners or advertisements with fewer words.
- The final lesson in this unit plan does not allow any more class time for students to create their advertisements. After this class is over, you could allow more class time for advertisement creation or ask students to finish their advertisements outside of class.
Differentiation
- Teachers can break down the definition of critical media literacy and offer examples from a variety of contexts for student understanding. For example, teachers can show two different advertisements side by side of the same transportation (ex, two car advertisements) and have students compare them by answering 3 of the 6 critical media questions
- Students can explore other terms in critical media literacy, such as “reliable” and “credible.” Students can define each term and find examples in advertisements that demonstrate each one.
- Students can generate their own questions to add to their understanding of critical media literacy and create a classroom anchor chart.
- Some students may be using different technologies to create their advertisements (e.g., TikTok, Adobe Spark, Canva, etc.). It may take those students longer to finish their advertisements if they are also learning a new technology.
From the scientist review
This lesson lets students understand the implications of advertisements in influencing green transportation. It is suitable to engage students to create advertisements so as to influence the adoption of green public transportation. All accompanying materials used in the lesson have been verified and validated. On that account, this lesson is recommended for teaching.
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About the teacher writers
Lindsey Pockl
Lindsey worked with SubjectToClimate to develop accompanying materials for lesson plans for grades 3-12.
Amber Medina
Elementary School Teacher
Amber is a third grade elementary school teacher who has taught ELA, Environmental Education, and SEL. With a degree in Environmental Policy and Planning, her passion for environmental justice and action integrated curriculum led her to her commitment to climate education.
