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Lesson Plan
The New York Times

Evaluating Sources in a ‘Post-Truth’ World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning about Fake News

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
The framers of the United States Constitution felt a free press was so essential to a democracy that they granted the press the protection it needed to hold the powerful to account in the First Amendment. Today, digital natives need to...
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Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Authentication Beyond the Classroom

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
In an age of fake news, alternative facts, and Internet trolls it is essential that 21st Century learners develop the skills they need to authenticate the facts in viral news. Here is a great way to begin with a resource that provides...
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Lesson Plan
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Facing History and Ourselves

Hands Up, Don't Shoot!

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Why is it so difficult to develop a clear understanding of the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer? To answer this question class members listen to a NPR discussion of the findings of...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Grade 9 ELA Module 1: Unit 3, Lesson 12

For Teachers 9th Standards
Marc Chagall's painting Romeo and Juliet and Baz Lurhmann's film of the same scene in Romeo + Juliet allow class members to analyze how artists consider the same subject in different media.
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Lesson Plan
K20 LEARN

Alienstock: Analyzing Information, Media, And Validity

For Teachers 7th - 8th Standards
One only has to watch MSMBC and FOX News to realize that media can present the same story in very different ways. Middle schoolers have an opportunity to test their ability to determine the validity and trustworthiness of information by...
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

Search Boosters: How Content Creators Can Game the System

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Scholars examine the techniques content creators use to boost their search rankings. After watching a short "Search Boosters" video, groups select a story from the "News or Noise? Media Map" and analyze the devices used in the story. The...
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Activity
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Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Pearl Harbor Activity #5: The Medium Matters

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Young journalists learn that how we get our news and information matters in a collaborative social studies activity. The class is divided into three groups with the first analyzing a transcript of FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech, the second...
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

Civil Rights News Coverage: Looking Back at Bias

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Not all southern newspapers covered the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Young journalists investigate how The Lexington (Ky. Herald-Leader and The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun re-examined their coverage of the movement. After...
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

What Would You Do? Media Ethics Scenarios

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Young journalists are presented with scenarios that involve media ethics. They must decide in each case whether to cover the story, what they would cover, and if covered, what the angle would be.
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

Political Persuasion: It’s All About Image

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Political candidates work hard at creating an image they believe will appeal to voters. High schoolers collect 10 photos and other images of a candidate and analyze them to determine what techniques create a positive or negative impression.
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

The Tools to Persuade

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
After reviewing persuasion techniques, young historians examine how a specific technique was used in the pro- or anti-suffrage messages. They then examine how that same technique is used in modern-day media messages.
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Lesson Plan
Newseum

The Fundamentals of News

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
A short video introduces middle schoolers to different media-related news terms. Viewers then complete a worksheet and discuss the differences between news and journalism, between facts and opinions.
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Activity
News Literacy Project

News Goggles: Newsroom Lingo Review

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
Learn how to talk like a journalist. Throw around jargon like "lede" and "nut graf." A 20-slide presentation introduces viewers to words and phrases heard in the fast-paced newsroom.
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Activity
News Literacy Project

News Goggles: Tracking Developing Stories

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
A 28-slide presentation introduces viewers to the process reports go through to track and verify developing news stories. Using the reports of the attacks at Atlanta, Georgia, massage parlors as an example, viewers are taught what to...
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Activity
News Literacy Project

News Goggles: Covering a Newsworthy Trial

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
The trial of Derek Chauvin, former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, is the focus of a lesson that asks pupils to compare how local, nationial, and international news organizations reported the testimony of...
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Activity
News Literacy Project

Fact-Check It!

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
Here's a lesson designed to help learners develop their digital verification skills. First, expert groups study specific digital verification skills, and in a jigsaw activity, share what they have learned with classmates. The jigsaw...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Decoding Media Bias

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Alternative facts? After watching the We The Voters film, "MediOcracy," viewers compare how cable news outlets CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC report the same story about politics or public policy. After a whole-class discussion of their...
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Activity
News Literacy Project

News Goggles: Lionel Ramos, Oklahoma Watch

For Teachers 4th - Higher Ed
Given all the recent criticism of the news media and coverage, it's crucial that young people are given the tools they need to evaluate what they see, hear, and read about current events. A video interview from "News Goggles" introduces...
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Activity
Digital Public Library of America

Beloved by Toni Morrison

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Any classroom study of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved requires careful planning and scaffolding. A primary source set that includes a video, illustrations, photos of artifacts, and a broadside of the Fugitive Slave...
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Unit Plan
Kent State University

Teaching Ethics in Scholastic Journalism

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Events in recent years have underscored the importance of a free and independent press in a democracy. Young journalists engage in lessons about the function of journalism in a democratic society, practice the steps of Bok's Ethical...
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Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Launching the Performance Task: The1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

For Teachers 6th Standards
Picture that! Pupils view photographs of the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, discussing what they know and wonder about each image. Then, scholars watch a short video about the historic event and complete a KWL...
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Lesson Plan
J. Paul Getty Trust

Exhibiting Common Threads

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
Artists working in different media often explore the same themes—to model how these same themes weave their way through different forms of artistic expression, scholars analyze images by Dorothea Lange, identifying key themes in her...
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Lesson Plan
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Nemours KidsHealth

Media Literacy and Health: Grades 9-12

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
An essential skill for 21st-century learners is to know how to find reliable sources of information. Two activities help high schoolers learn how to determine the reliability of health-related news from websites, TV, magazines, or...
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Lesson Plan
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Facing History and Ourselves

Free Press Makes Democracy Work

For Teachers 9th - 12th
A unit study of the importance of a free press in a democracy begins with class members listening to a podcast featuring two journalists, one from a United States public radio station and one from Capetown, South Africa. The lesson,...