Media and Literacy Day

This Media & Literacy Day partnership model was developed last school year, and will be replicated this coming year in more schools in the Prairie Public region, North Dakota and NW Minnesota. Our Education team partners with a high school teacher who leads a peer leadership group of teens. The teen group organizes a Literacy Day, where they take books donated by Prairie Public to elementary classrooms and distribute to the children. Then, the teen group partners one-on-one with the young children, reads the book to them and interacts for a few minutes. The young children keep the books, then the teens move to another classroom. This continues for several classrooms. A few members of the teen group have had a crash course in capturing media on cameras and voice recorders supplied by our Education team. The media gathering teens document the day of Literacy from their perspectives, capturing footage of the interactions and interviewing educators and other adults around the value of Literacy and sharing stories. Other activities during the day included a session on media literacy with middle schools students (tweens), and an after-school faculty meeting demonstration session on media literacy and public media resources for educators. Media gathered from day is compiled and edited, then shared with the partner teacher.