Best for
Any current-events text, social-media post, advertisement, campaign video, or community issue the class needs to analyse quickly and carefully.
English / Media studies • Years 8-13 • Reusable analysis toolkit
Media Literacy Toolkit: Bias, Voice, and Evidence
This is the flexible companion page for any article, post, clip, or advertisement you want students to analyse. It gives kaiako a reusable frame without sliding back into generic “spot the bias” worksheet language.
Free reusable scaffold, premium adaptation path
This toolkit is built to keep teacher prep low. Te Wānanga becomes useful when you want the same frame rebuilt for a local text set, a different year level, or a bilingual sequence with more support prompts.
- Turn this into a junior worksheet or a senior seminar note-catcher.
- Adapt it around a topic your class already cares about.
- Keep the best versions organised in My Kete for reuse across terms.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 20-40 minutes depending on whether students analyse one text or compare several.
- Grouping: Whole-class modelling, then pairs or triads, then individual response.
- Prep: Bring one text that is worth questioning, not one that is obviously absurd.
- Teaching move: Keep asking for evidence: “Which exact part of the text makes you say that?”
- Support / stretch: Use the sentence starters for support; ask students to critique a second text or another platform for stretch.
Resources already provided
- A four-part credibility and bias frame
- Representation prompts with an Aotearoa lens
- Response starters for analytical writing
- Write-on space for notes and conclusions
- A teacher-only curriculum companion
This page works as the flexible middle piece of a media-literacy sequence: not a fixed comprehension text, and not just a loose set of discussion questions.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning how to identify bias, omission, and framing in a chosen media text.
- We are learning how to examine whose voices are centred and whose are marginalised.
- We are learning how to support our judgement with specific evidence.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can identify key bias or framing choices in the text.
- I can explain how representation affects meaning and audience response.
- I can justify my conclusions with examples from the text.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
The companion page supports teacher planning for English critical analysis, discussion, and media literacy, with explicit Aotearoa and identity/power framing.
Why media literacy matters in Aotearoa
Media stories can reinforce deficit ideas about communities or create more informed, respectful understanding. In Aotearoa, that matters whenever Māori stories, local issues, or community voices are simplified, sensationalised, or spoken over.
A mātauranga Māori lens helps students ask whether a text strengthens mana, context, and relationship or strips those things away for speed and attention.
Toolkit questions for any media text
Source and credibility
Who made this? What expertise, evidence, and accountability are visible?
Bias and framing
What choices in wording, image, tone, or sequencing push the audience toward a certain reading?
Voice and representation
Whose perspective is centred, and who is reduced, absent, or represented through someone else’s words?
Missing context
What history, local knowledge, or alternative evidence would make the text more complete?
Evidence notes
Text title or link: _________________________________________________
Bias or framing signal I noticed: _________________________________
Evidence from the text: __________________________________________
Whose voice is centred: ___________________________________________
What is missing: _________________________________________________
Response paragraph
Write a short critical response explaining how the media text shapes understanding of the issue or group it focuses on.
Sentence starters: “The text positions the audience by...”, “A key omission is...”, “This matters because...”
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
The Arts — Ngā Toi
Level 3–4: Apply design thinking and artistic skills to communicate ideas and meaning; make informed choices about techniques, media, and presentation for specific purposes and audiences.
Social Sciences — Tikanga ā-Iwi
Level 3–4: Understand how arts and design reflect and shape cultural identity; recognise how Māori and Pacific artistic traditions carry knowledge, history, and cultural values.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
Māori artistic traditions — tā moko, kōwhaiwhai, tukutuku, whakairo, and kapa haka — are not simply aesthetic expressions: they are knowledge systems that encode whakapapa, tribal history, and cultural values in visual and performative form. The design choices made in Māori art are deliberate and meaningful, and the knowledge required to "read" them correctly is part of the mātauranga held by each iwi. When students engage with artistic design, they are participating in a form of communication that Māori practitioners have developed over centuries. Designing with cultural awareness means understanding that images, patterns, and forms carry obligations — especially when they draw on traditions that belong to others.
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
This handout is designed to be used alongside the broader unit resources available at Te Kete Ako handouts library. Related resources from the same unit are linked in the unit planner. All resources are provided — no additional preparation is required to use this handout in your classroom.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will engage with this resource to build core literacy skills — reading comprehension, writing craft, and oral language — grounded in the rich storytelling traditions of Aotearoa New Zealand and the literacy practices that empower rangatahi voice.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can apply the literacy skill or strategy featured in this resource with growing independence.
- ✅ Students can connect this resource's literacy focus to authentic texts, contexts, or purposes from their own world.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide sentence starters, word banks, or graphic organisers for entry-level access. Model think-alouds before independent tasks. Offer extension challenges that deepen analysis — for example, comparing the author's craft choices across two texts or writing an additional stanza or paragraph.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach key vocabulary before reading. Allow students to annotate in their home language first, then translate key ideas. Use shared reading and think-pair-share structures to lower the stakes for language production. Bilingual glossaries and visual text supports help bridge comprehension.
Inclusion: Chunk reading and writing tasks into manageable steps. Offer multimodal options — oral, visual, or digital — for students to demonstrate understanding. Neurodiverse learners benefit from clear task structures and explicit success criteria. Affirm diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds as assets, not deficits.
Mātauranga Māori lens: Literacy in Te Ao Māori encompasses tātai kōrero (the arrangement of speech), waiata, whakataukī, and the deep art of kōrero — storytelling as knowledge transmission. Encourage students to see their own family stories and community knowledge as valid literacy texts. Karakia opens and closes learning with intention. Tātai kōrero honours the voice.
Prior knowledge: Adaptable across year levels. No specialist prior knowledge required for entry-level engagement. Teachers may wish to pre-read the resource and anticipate vocabulary that needs pre-teaching.
Curriculum alignment
- Reading — Making Meaning: Students will select and use sources of information, processes, and strategies to identify, form, and express ideas across a range of texts.
- Writing — Creating Meaning: Students will select and use sources of information, processes, and strategies to write in a range of text types for a variety of purposes and audiences.