Any resources or helpful tips and tricks?
NewsLitNation Forum
Calling media specialists! How do you guide teachers through news literacy education?
If you have a teacher requiring students to find news articles (particularly Social Studies), ask if they'll let you do a mini-lesson with students on finding news media outlets. Give them a self-reflection activity to evaluate any potential bias they already have toward particular outlets. You could demonstrate search strategies on Google, even the site search strategy. Have them select a straight news piece, analysis/commentary, opinion, sponsored content, and ad just to see if they can differentiate those. Have students visit various media outlets' websites and contrast the homepages. I think, as a media specialist, offering mini-lessons is a great idea because classroom teachers are often worried about having enough time for everything, but it's also important to practice these essential skills before trying to complete more complex assignments that might assume students have skills they don't.
I am conducting a district-wide PD session via Zoom discussing the "SIFT" method of verifying information. This is also known as "4 Moves and a Habit" and am basing my PD on the writing of Mike Caulfield. I am attaching a link to the slides as I have them developed (so far). Any feedback is appreciated!
@kkruckenberg, these look great! How long is the PD session? Would you be willing to share these slides?
BTW, I think unreliable is misspelled on slide 38.
Thanks,
Val Skarbek
Durango High School Librarian
Durango, CO
@vskarbek Whew! thanks for the heads up! I would be happy to share the longer version of the slides with you if you would like to email me directly at [email protected]
I am planning on an hour long PD, but I haven't really got the timing down yet.
@kkruckenberg Great work... you might also want to look at slide 16 again, I think you might have your group descriptions backward.
@kkruckenberg I second the SIFT method!!! Unlike every other methodology I've tried, students take to it immediately and STUDENTS USE IT WILLINGLY!!! We start off teaching the "just add Wikipedia" strategy and they quickly feel empowered which primes the pump and they have open minds to any of the lessons the come after that. Once that framework is in place and kids' minds are open we use lessons of our own, Checkology lessons, etc. to deepen the learning and/or teach specific strategies and search techniques.
@dwee90034 I agree! I feel like the SIFT method is what I sort of do naturally, this just gives it some structure. It feels very instinctive.
@kkruckenberg I also spotted a typo--the word gauge. This looks like a great presentation and I want to learn more about the SIFT method. We are always looking for new evaluation methods.
@kkruckenberg Wow! You put a lot of work into this! How much time will you have to present? It seems like a lot of information for one session. Not sure if it's on purpose, but slides 21 and 41 are the same.
Thanks to all who requested copies and gave feedback! I am linking to the "updated and final" version for this year. This is a much more complete and better-organzied version of SIFT METHOD PRESENTATION 2021
This is an hour presentation. But that is going pretty fast, not allowing for questions or discussion.
@kkruckenberg Thank you so much for sharing your work. Your slides are comprehensive and cover this topic so well!
High School librarians in our district provide all 10th grade students a lesson on fake news, lateral reading, and confirmation bias through English classes. We've been using materials from CommonSense.org.
Agree that all of this is a great way to connect. The struggle we are having is our traditional ways of identifying truth aren't reliable or trusted. CRAAP and RADCAB are outdated and lateral searches bring up multiple sources that support biased or inaccurate information. It is hard to prove to a student that a source is not trust-worthy when their families say the source is accurate. Does anyone have tools addressing this?
@dierksl Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, has a great post on the SIFT method for verifying information online. There's a link at the bottom of the post for his three-hour online mini-course on the method too. https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/
@dierksl My co-author (Jennifer LaGarde) and I one hundred percent agree with you (CRAAP, RADCAB, lateral searches), which is why we just finished the next iteration of Fact Vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News. We are calling it Developing Digital Detectives, and we just submitted the first draft for editing. It's a book and a mobile evidence locker guide loaded with clues and stories for inquiry, lessons, and mini-lessons for all grades. We are excited to put it into the world. Attached is a rough draft of the cover. - Darren Hudgins
@dhudgins Yes, “Trust Me” is a documentary covering the problems caused by the lack of media literacy, offering some solutions and projections. It’s highly recommended by NAMLE and Media Literacy Now. Find out more at TrustMeDocumentary.com
@dierksl I make use of the Media Bias Chart and tell students to curate sources that are reliable sources of information that can be "go-to's". Like Snopes, Reuters, AP. All Sides is good for illustrating how media can present the same information in different ways too. I agree this is very challenging to go against information that is dinner-table conversation every night in the student's home.
I'm a middle school librarian and I've been using Checkology with 6th-8th reading classes this semester. We work on part of a lesson before they check out books. We're working on the Infozones lesson right now and it's going well!
HS librarian here: Along with our usual research/credible sources spiel, we specifically teach about media persuasive techniques and media bias to our ninth graders. This year a senior is doing her capstone project on media bias and cited our lessons over the last four years as her inspiration. We are thrilled!
Oh wow! what a win! High school librarian here as well. We have used Checkology, but it was in random classes and then there would be overlap. I need to get buy in from the freshman English teachers and go from there. If you have any lessons to share please do! I'm always looking for ways to engage freshman!
Here are two lessons I recently did with our debate classes and will be doing with our journalism classes soon. They seemed to land well with sophomores-seniors.
- Take 4 articles of the same event and have kids break into groups and answer questions about them, then come back together to compare coverage. I used these articles and this form. I also attached my marked-up copies of the articles.
- I went back another day to introduce these three sources that will help them create a "balanced diet" of news and avoid blind spots.
Feel free to use them as works best for you and your students.
Oops. I don't think my attachment went through. Here are my annotated articles.
High school librarian as well, I directly asked our team lead for Social Studies if I could come into the classrooms and give the lesson in checkology on the info zones. I have been teaching 2- 80 minute classes every Wednesday for the past month by going into the classes and teaching the lesson, the teacher and student feedback has been very positive. I felt social studies was a much better buy-in than working with the English Department. The teachers also really like the pre and post-assessment data.
@jesmsmit74 I use the lessons that are already created in the checkology platform, they have done a really good job with the assessments and the data is in a format that is easy to give a grade with.
Sure! I'm trying the conspiracy lesson tomorrow with the JROTC kids...hope it goes well!

