Teaching About AI
[Summer School Edition]
Artificial intelligence: It’s on your mind, and it’s on your students’ minds. Why not spend some time this summer diving into AI literacy?
Make sure students understand how AI and algorithms work — and how to think critically about news and information produced with these technologies. Whether you teach middle or high school, science, ELA or social studies — and whether you’ve got five minutes or a full class period — the resources on this page will help you guide students through a practical and engaging introduction to AI.
Welcome to the summer school-friendly version of our Teaching About AI resource page. We’ve added a “Quick-start AI teaching guide” PDF and curated our resource listings to a short and sweet selection (but if you want more, visit newslit.org/ai).
VIEW RESOURCES
- Try this first
INFOGRAPHIC
Start with our “6 Things to Know About AI” infographic, offering six news literacy takeaways to keep in mind as AI tools evolve.
Explore “AI or not?” This lesson plan includes activity slides and extension activity ideas.
Explore “AI or not?” This lesson plan includes activity slides and extension activity ideas.
More Resources
Short and sweet
Activities from The Sift
Use these 5–10-minute activities as quick summer school bell ringers. The Daily Do Now slides can be used individually (pick and choose your favorites!) or as part of a larger class session. The quiz contains four questions sure to spark discussion. Both were featured in The Sift®, our newsletter packed with classroom activities.
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A lesson that doesn’t feel like one
A Deep Dive with Checkology
Ready-made for a full class period (with lasting takeaways): Our “Introduction to Algorithms” lesson on the Checkology virtual classroom gives students a comprehensive and eye-opening look at how algorithms and AI shape social media feeds. The lesson features two humorous characters: Algo, who personifies algorithms, and Gen, who represents generative AI. Lesson duration: 60-plus minutes.
“Introduction to Algorithms” is easy to assign.
Just make sure you’ve created a free Checkology educator account. Create a class, add students and assign “Checkology 101” (choose the middle or high school version). Within “Checkology 101,” you can skip straight to “Introduction to Algorithms” or teach the entire sequence of lessons to explore even more news literacy topics.
Heads up: Checkology will be offline July 3-Aug. 4.
Checkology will be offline July 3-Aug. 4, as we prepare to launch our best version of Checkology yet. Make sure that your students have completed their work in Checkology by July 2, 2025. (Want to be the first to know when Checkology is back? Sign up for our back-to-school VIP list!)
On social media
Videos About AI
Professional Development
Learning on your schedule
On-demand events
Spend some time on professional development, and you’ll be one step ahead come back-to-school time.
Want more?
Visit our resource library to find lesson plans, classroom activities, posters, infographics, quizzes and more to help you teach news literacy in your classroom.