My lesson plan will be for a grade 6 health class. I looked through the curriculum of many grades to find an outcome that could work for a lesson on digital literacy. I think the topic of digital literacy should have its own outcomes. Still, throughout my looking, I did not find anything that even came close to bringing up digital safety, literacy or citizenship. I found it a bit disheartening, as the digital world has become such a big part of our everyday life. We teach street safety, sexual safety, and so much more that helps children be safe within the physical world. Why not the digital world? 

The outcome I found that comes the closest to relating to digital literacy is “USC6.5 Analyze the influences (e.g., cultural, social) on perceptions of and personal standards related to body image, and the resulting impact on the identities and the well-being of self, family, and community.” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education 2009). My thoughts behind using this outcome was teaching the students to spot fake news and fake reports and then use their knowledge to point out fake news relating to body image. 

To start my lesson planning I took a look at “ Lesson plan: Fighting Fake News” by Rachel Roberson. The lesson lays out how to warm up the class with some quick writing prompts. The writing prompts questions about what might be consequences of fake news, if the students think they can spot fake news, and if students think they could be fooled. These are good questions to see how much students understand about the topic. After students write down their answers I would ask students to discuss in small groups and then come together as a bigger group and discuss as a whole class. After our discussions I would show two videos How to choose your news – Damon Brown and Can you spot the problem with these headlines? (Level 1) – Jeff Leek & Lucy McGowa. These videos give great strategies to decode the world of fake news and even strategies to help with social media. After the students watch these videos I would ask them to discuss within their small groups about what they think these videos are teaching us. I would ask the groups to take a look back at the questions from the writing prompts to see if their answers had changed. After they had a chance to discuss I would ask them to share some of their ideas with the whole class. Once the discussion has wrapped up I would ask students to complete Break the fake quiz to test out their new strategies.