News Literacy
The universe of information we live in is a complicated web of messages with a mind-blowing array of sources, biases, and agendas. Help your students develop the mad news literacy skills they need with the resources in our hot-off-the-press News Literacy unit. Designed for the high school classroom, this unit teaches students to recognize high-standards journalism so they can make informed judgments about the information coming at them. Students get practical skills to help them identify and deal with misinformation, bias, opinion, and more.
Each lesson includes a paper activity as well as a web activity (similar to our WebQuests) and an independent internet investigation so your students can get real-world, hands-on practice evaluating news, opinion, and misinformation. The mini-lessons in the unit zero in on narrower topics of special concern.
Got a 1:1 classroom? Find fillable PDF versions of the lesson materials available for download with each lesson in this unit.
These resources were created with support from the Raab Family Foundation and the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Make your students’ game play more meaningful with activities designed specifically for NewsFeed Defenders. This easy-to-use resource set means deeper learning for students and best practices around game-centered learning for you!
What separates journalism from all the other kinds of information out there? Teach students to recognize reliable reporting as they explore the tenents of high-standards reporting based on the Society of Professional Journalists' (SPJ) Code of Ethics.
Reality check: The news is a business! Help students learn how news providers monetize the news through advertisements and consider how the news/profit relationship affects journalism and news audiences.
Misinformation? Disinformation?? Fake news??? Don't be fooled! Train your students to examine news stories for evidence of transparency and verification that will help them distinguish legitimate news from unreliable information.
Satirical news stories, like political cartoons, are meant to poke fun—not trick people. Help your students learn to spot satire and understand both the joke and the purpose of this news-related genre.
Strip the fear out of bias by showing students how to notice the word choices and framing that show up when bias is present in a news story. Students learn about methods journalists use to produce high-quality objective reporting to see how journalists address bias and present stories from neutral view points.
Opinions can be cleverly disguised as news. Can you tell the difference? After completing this lesson, hopefully so! Learn to distinguish news from opinion, recognize standards of opinion journalism, determine if an opinion has merit, and more.
Make your students’ game play more meaningful with activities designed specifically for NewsFeed Defenders. This easy-to-use resource set means deeper learning for students and best practices around game-centered learning for you!
Do algorithms impact you? Do you even know what they are? Algorithms help bring us many of the functional products and tools we use today. This mini-lesson offers students an introductory look at how social media platforms use algorithms and how that use selectively curates the content users see.
Do you casually bypass website privacy policies? In this mini-lesson, students review key aspects of website privacy policies and learn about options they have in keeping their data safe.