To effectively teach news literacy, schools need a clear plan that shows how students’ knowledge and skills grow over time. That’s why we created our Grade Band Expectations for News Literacy guide to go with our Framework for Teaching News Literacy. It gives teachers a big-picture overview of the skills, content and ways of thinking students should adopt as they move through each grade level.
This guide also encourages teachers to make connections across different subjects and fits in with other learning standards they may already use.
We’ve organized news literacy expectations into four grade bands:
- Grades K–2
- Grades 3–5
- Grades 6–8
- Grades 9–12
How to read the guide
- To see what each grade band focuses on, read down the columns.
- To track how skills grow over time for each standard, read across the rows.
- To spot ideas that connect all grade levels, check out the through lines listed for each standard.
Why this matters
When we teach students to think like journalists, they learn to ask better questions and stay curious. This helps them become more skeptical in a healthy way — ready to handle the nonstop flow of information in today’s world.
We do this by introducing five key news literacy standards at every grade level:
- Recognize the difference between news and other types of information.
- Understand the First Amendment and why a free press is important.
- Learn how journalists work, including the ethics they follow to create reliable news reports.
- Build critical-thinking skills, like verifying sources and spotting false or misleading information.
- Practice civic responsibility by finding, sharing and creating credible content.
These guidelines will grow and improve over time, and we’d love your input. Have suggestions? Email us at info@newslit.org.
This guide supports news literacy education in all grade levels — and it’s flexible!
Teachers can adapt it to fit their classroom goals and student needs.
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