Turnoff Week is a semi-annual event that traditionally takes place in April and September. Each year people from around the world make a conscious decision to turn off their television sets for a week.

"If I watch television I don't have time to: tickle a tiger's tummy; climb mountains with kangaroos; travel around the world; watch birds in the sky..."

These comments came from Grade 1 students at MontereyElementary School in British Columbia who were asked to think about television and the role it plays in their lives. They had the extra time for reflection because they were part of a project which saw 64 per cent of the school population turn off their televisions for a week.

Turnoff Week provides an excellent opportunity for students to think about, assess, and discuss their feelings and attitudes towards this influential medium.

• Talk to school administrators and your Parents' Advisory Council to see if this can be a school-wide project. Set a goal for total "unplugged" hours for the whole school and challenge students and classes to reach this goal.

• Use this opportunity to explore the television viewing habits of Canadian kids and teens. Ryerson University's CHIMP program (on the right sidebar) - which maintains a data-base of children's television-viewing habits - is a good starting point.

• Have students debate the question: Turn off TV or advocate for quality television? Which is more important?

• Use this opportunity to help students compare real life to television's version of reality. Divide your classroom into five groups and each day, have one group produce a short video that reflects "a day in the life" of your school. After viewing the videos, compare the group productions to portrayals of students and schools in popular TV shows.

• Have students create posters for Turnoff Week. (For ideas, check out the posters that have been submitted to the Adbusters Web site, on the right sidebar.)

• In order to better understand the role of television in society, research its history.

• Use Turnoff Week as a launch pad for exploring overall media consumption by children and teens. In addition to television, survey students to discover how much time is spent at computers, playing video games, listening to music and watching movies. Which activity is most popular? What conclusions do students come to about the role of media in their lives?