Hello, teachers!

After you and your class have had a chance to read all of our articles, you can teach about TV violence in your classroom. We believe that children need to learn about television violence and what better place then in school! Here are some tips.

Four Ideas on Using our Pages with Your Class:

Teacher Lesson plan for TV Ratings
Have the children read the article we wrote entitled, "The V-Chip".  Discuss what the rating system is and what it is designed to do.

Have a discussion with the class about what they have read and break them into groups of three or four. Ask them to talk about television ratings using the questions we have written:

• Do you think TV Ratings will work, why or why not? Be prepared to back up your opinion with facts from the article.
• Do you think that the rating should be required by law to included at the beginning of every show?
• What will happen if only a few stations decide to use the rating system on their shows?
• Do you think that kids know what shows they should and should not be watching without a rating system?
• Do kids "police" themselves by turning off shows that are inappropriate for their age?
• Should parents decide what their children should watch?

After the groups answer the questions you could have a class debate on whether or not the rating system is a good or a bad thing.

Teacher Lesson Plan for The V-Chip and The V-Chip Controversy
First have the children read the articles, "The V-Chip", "The V-Chip Controversy", and "Effect of Television Violence" as well as the interviews from David Moulton, Tim Collings, and Loren Siegel.

After the kids have read the articles you can have a discussion with the following questions:

• Why was the V-Chip started?
• Do you think the V-Chip is a good idea: why or why not? Use information from the articles to back up your opinions.
• Do you think that children are influenced by violent TV?
• Do you think that the V-Chip takes away the First Amendment rights of the TV broadcasters?

After the class discussion you could ask them to write a letter as if they were a congressperson that was going to be asked to vote on the V-Chip bill. The letter they write should be their opinion and use tons of facts from the articles to back up their ideas. They could present their letters to the class.

The TV Violence Questionnaire
Have your class participate in the TV violence questionnaire of our web site. You can send the information back to us so we can build a base of information. Maybe you can start your own base of information by having the entire school fill our the questionnaire.  You can also encourage the school to participate in the "National TV-Turnoff Week".

Write Your Representative or Television Broadcaster
After reading the articles we have written and the interviews we have taken you could ask your class to write a letter to either their congressperson or the television broadcaster. If we don’t tell them how we feel, things will never change.

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