The goal for this unit is to have students analyze a variety of sources on a current events subject of their interest, identify the different perspectives, and defend their own position.This is one lesson from a larger unit on Evaluating Media. This unit will also cover identifying credible sources, analyzing fake news and the role of propaganda, identifying the different ways news is communicated in different communities. This unit will take place in the beginning of the school year to help instill evaluative and critical thinking research skills as we discuss and explore our big ideas throughout the school year. The end goal is to have students create a digital resource for their topic that we can share out as an educational tool for others. We’ll be creating a padlet that links to all of their presentations (students will have their choice in medium, as long as it is digital) that we will share with our school community and ideally can connect and share with other schools and students. There is also a possibility of using PenPalSchools to share out final resources, but that would depend on getting approval from the district to utilize that website.

Students will be able to identify the Google is not a resource and determine that Wikipedia is not a credible source for research.  

This 6 1/2 minute video introduces students to the pros and cons of using Wikipedia as an information source. There's a Google Form that can be used to check for understanding. Created by Lesley James, Media Literacy & Digital Citizenship Program Supervisor, Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction

Identifying Media Bias in News Sources through activites using relevant news sources to answer the following essential question:Why is this important and relevant today?Students are engaging with a growing number of news sources and must develop skills to interpret what they see and hear.Media tells stories with viewpoints and biases that shape our worldviews.Students must become critical consumers of media which is essential for being an informed citizen.

Every media source has a story to tell--a driving purpose. The media that people consume largely shapes their world views. The US public is becoming more divided partially due to the consumption of increasingly biased news. As a critical consumer of media, It is important to be able to separate fact from opinion. In this unit, adapted from the high school version, students will become critical consumers of news, by identifying media bias in order to become better informed citizens.  NOTE: This unit has been adapted for use at the middle school level from the resource Identifying Media Bias in News Sources by Sandra Stroup, Sally Drendel, Greg Saum, and Heidi Morris.

The goal of this Framework is to organize the complex and interrelated content areas of Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship into manageable chunks. We hope that K-12 educators can use it as a starting point for a scope & sequence, or as a cataloged collection of recommended instructional resources. It is organized into themes, essential questions, and learning objectives, which are aligned with Washington State subject area standards. The Framework was initially created by the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Media Literacy & Digital Citizenship Program in 2022. For more information, contact the Program Supervisor, Lesley James, lesley.james@k12.wa.us.

From the technological advancements that have led to adults and students using technology and being a part of the media, the obvious societal impact that the media and its portrayal has is even more prominent than imagined. This curriculum targets secondary education students who are more prone to be swayed and believe the media and what it intends to portray. Specifically, this curriculum will dive into eating disorder illiteracy, and depict real-life connections in how the media directly and indirectly affects the ways in which we think and believe. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to carefully consume different types of media coverage due to higher awareness in the ways in which misinformation spreads– whether intentional or not.

This guide walks you through the Checkology virtual classroom for grades 6-12 from the News Literacy Project. Students can move at their own pace through a wide variety of lessons that mostly focus on journalism and news literacy, but also cover misinformation, conspiracy theories, and other relevant topics.The lessons include videos of journalists and other experts, plus visually engaging interactive activities.

This unit is designed to accompany the study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Resources encourage students to recognize a variety of propaganda techniques and to connect those techniques to media that they can find in their everyday lives. Resources also help students to understand the historical uses of propaganda by governments and political parties to influence public opinion. Resources can be used independently of the novel.

 Verifying social media posts is quickly becoming a necessary endeavor in everyday life, let alone in the world of education. Social media has moved beyond a digital world which connects with friends and family and has become a quick and easy way to access news, information, and human interest stories from around the world. As this state of media has become the "new normal," especially for our younger generations, we, educators, find ourselves charged with a new task of teaching our students how to interact with and safely consume digital information.The following three modules are designed to be used as stand-alone activities or combined as one unit, in which the lessons can be taught in any order. "Who Said What?!" is a module focusing on author verification. "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'' is a module devoted to image verification. "Getting the Facts Straight" is a module designed to dive into information verification. Lastly, there are assessment suggestions to be utilized after completing all three modules.

The following unit offers multiple entry points into developing an understanding of media literacy. The unit framework and primary sources can be integrated into classrooms of grades 4-12. Each lesson has student objectives that can be accomplished within 40 minute periods over the course of several weeks. A midpoint writing assessment, whole class capstone debate, and final independentwriting assessment are included. Support materials are integrated into the lessons, and the primary source document pages can be found at the end of the unit guide.