Digital Literacy in an English Classroom
“Technology” by Sephko is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Being in the secondary education program to be an English teacher, I have been thinking all semester about how I will bring not only the technology but digital literacy teachings into my classroom. Teaching teenagers it will be very important to teach them about digital literacy, as they are at an age where they consume news media, mostly from online sources. Learning to question what you read will tie in nicely to an English class, and I hope to use more interactive types of resources to teach this. I also think it is very important that students learn to read critically, and question if what they are reading is true. Bias also plays a huge factor in news articles, and I would like to use this lesson plan on bias in the news in future classrooms.
I would start out by giving some background information. Infographics such as this give a great background understanding and could be something to consult with during later activities. I would also teach students to go beyond websites that they are looking at to check if what they are reading is true. Like we talked about in class and this article mentions, I would show students about fact-checking websites and teach them to read laterally. I would also remind students that this goes beyond articles. When you see things all over social media such as Facebook or Instagram it is important to check elsewhere before sharing. For example, earlier this year I had seen on Instagram first that Kobe had passed away. I then did a quick search for reputable news sources to confirm before sharing with my friends. It is very important to go outside of the social media platform and to check as well.
I like the ideas in this lesson plan to first ask students to write about if they feel they would be tricked by fake news. It would be interesting to have students write about this (and building writing skills!) and follow it up with a quiz as we did in class to spot the fake headline! I think my favourite of these sorts of quizzes is this one by Factitious because it is very interactive. I am also a lover of TED Talks and TED-Ed and found this video on troubling headlines very interesting, and would like to show it in my future classrooms. Some of the questions even stumped me!
If you have any resources you think would be a great addition leave them below in the comments!
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Hi Brooke,
You have compiled a great list of resources! I really like the lesson ideas you have found and want to implement in your classroom. You have found a variety of ways to educate students on digital literacy which is important. Interactive quizzes are definitely fun, I thoroughly enjoyed the one we did in class on spotting the fake headlines. I believe this activity will really make your students think about what they are reading and to be critical of headlines. It will also be a good indicator of whether or not they are actually reading the news and in the “know”.
You are correct, that most teenagers get their news from social media platforms. It is imperative to teach them digital literacy so they can be critical readers, as you mentioned. Like you, when I had heard Kobe had died, I checked multiple online newspapers before believing it. I wanted to make sure the information was coming from a credible and reliable source. Far too often fake stories are shared on social media platforms such as Facebook and on that day I had seen so many people sharing stories and some of the shares were not from credible sources so I had to do my own fact checking.
Thank you Halleh! I was pretty overwhelmed by this post this week because of linking it to curriculum content! Being a first-year that is things we haven’t learnt yet! Your kind words meant so much to me. Take care!