ITVS Community Classroom lesson plans pair educational film modules drawn from ITVS’s acclaimed documentary films with standards-based lesson plans, activities, and other interactive content.
Lesson Plans
 | "Keep Coming": How to Strengthen ResiliencyThis lesson highlights the qualities of resiliency needed by teens to overcome adversity and risk. Students consider their own level of resiliency and explore ways to strengthen it. From the Women and Girls Lead, Vol. 3: Women, Girls, & the Criminal Justice System Classroom collection |
 | Can You Own a Sound?The basic foundations of copyright law and how the music industry began to respond legally to sampling as hip-hop grew in popularity in the 1990s. From the Copyright Criminals Classroom collection |
 | From Roots to Branches: The Interconnectedness of Environment, Culture and Social JusticeIn this lesson, students will examine how Kenya’s history as a colonized nation has contributed to their challenges with deforestation. Students will first identify how this environmental degradation is related to other social, political and economic problems that affect the country’s marginalized citizens and then research and interview local environmental champions. (includes 2 film modules) From the Women's Empowerment Classroom collection |
 | Gender ViolenceThis lesson analyzes rap music lyrics and their impact on the listener, paying particular attention to misogynistic and homophobic content. (includes 1 film module) From the Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Classroom collection |
 | Hip Hop Sampling: Theft or Tribute?This module introduces students to the musical legacies of Clyde Stubblefield and George Clinton, two of the most heavily sampled musicians in hip-hop music. From the Copyright Criminals Classroom collection |
 | Hip-Hop and the Birth of SamplingWhat sampling is, and how it came to be widely used in the early days of hip-hop music. It also explores the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to hip-hop as a form of cultural expression, and introduces the seminal work of the rap group Public Enemy. From the Copyright Criminals Classroom collection |
 | Homophobia and Gay Rappers in Hip-HopThis lesson asks the taboo questions and challenges the listener to consider the role homophobia in hip-hop plays in maintaining the one-dimensional definition of masculinity that boxes in both men and hip-hop. (includes 1 film module) From the Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Classroom collection |
 | Manhood and Gender IdentityThis lesson delves deeper into understanding how gender roles, especially around manhood, are produced and projected in society as a whole and within hip-hop. (includes 1 film module) From the Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Classroom collection |
 | Media LiteracyThis lesson provides students with an opportunity to do their own media research on and analysis of how media images are manufactured and marketed. (includes 1 film module) From the Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Classroom collection |
 | Media TacticsStudents will consider the media’s role during the desegregation of Central High School and the consequences of media coverage on the private lives of those involved. They will identify Daisy Bates’s media strategies and analyze the ways in which race and gender shaped the media’s portrayal of her. Lastly, students will describe how they would use the media accessible to them to voice opposition to a specific event, policy, or practice in their community. From the Women and Girls Lead, Vol. 2: African American Women Lead Classroom collection |
