ABSTRACT
With the introduction of the National Curriculum, media education should soon be an established feature of primary classroom practice. The document English for ages 5-162 contains a separate section devoted to media education and, more importantly, it is an integral theme in the Programmes of Study. It is now recognised that books are just one medium of communication and we must accept that the young people who sit in our classrooms will, in the future, be gleaning even more of their everyday information from television, newspapers, radio, films, computers and other technological media. The children need to learn how to make sense of this invasion of information in order to take charge of their own lives and to enhance the pleasure they receive from the media. Already there is a growing number of primary teachers who recognise the importance of encouraging pupils to study the media in order that they may analyse the inevitably selective and constructed nature of media messages and examine the possible influence these may have in shaping our perceptions of reality. To be effective in integrating this learning into the curriculum we need to broaden our understanding of the term literacy so as to embrace the specific skill of media literacy.
