Educators, don’t let your summer school students fall into the deep end of misinformation! Turn to our easy-to-assign courses on Checkology^® and supplemental resources to help teach news literacy skills that will serve your students throughout the season and beyond.

Make the most of summer school! Through a blend of FREE Checkology lessons, exercises and challenges, as well as engaging classroom activities from our educator resource library, you can shine a light on how to analyze and navigate today’s challenging information landscape. Students will learn to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods.

Our summer school hub caters to the specific needs of your students with separate courses for middle school and high school, as well as an optional STEM-focused course, to explore in June. These interdisciplinary lessons benefit students across multiple subject areas and serve as fun and engaging additions to more formal summer school requirements. In July, reinforce your students’ new skills with a curated selection of classroom resources. Learn more, and kick off your plans, by attending our Summer School Ideas webinar.

MAY: Webinar

Dive into News Literacy: Summer School Ideas

Wednesday, May 17, 5 p.m. CT/6 p.m. ET

Students often encounter an overwhelming amount of information in their day-to-day lives — especially online and often during times of unstructured exploration (such as academic breaks!). Summer school is an opportunity to teach them about the importance of media and news literacy. It’s also a time to supply your students with the critical thinking skills and habits of mind to help them tell fact from fiction.

In this free educator webinar, you’ll learn how to take the plunge into teaching with the Checkology®️ virtual classroom by incorporating it as a part of your summer school curriculum. You’ll explore two interdisciplinary courses developed especially for summer school:

• “Summer School,” which focuses on building up students’ ability to differentiate between news, opinion and advertisements and on identifying misinformation.
• “STEM Summer,” which explores evaluating science- and data-based claims as well as analyzing science journalism.

The discussion will also cover additional resources and activities that can help develop skills such as fact-checking and evaluating sources. NLP’s educator experts Shaelynn Farnsworth, Brittney Smith and Erin Olson will lead the webinar.

(Can’t make the time? Register anyway and we’ll email you the recording afterward.)

JUNE: With Checkology, You’re Golden

Start your summer school news literacy unit in June with Checkology.

A free browser-based virtual classroom from the News Literacy Project, Checkology features 19 standards-aligned lessons in news literacy for grades 6-12, as well as dozens of supplementary exercises, missions and challenges for students to extend and practice their skills. The platform is designed to function across in-person, remote and hybrid learning environments. Two Checkology courses are specially designed for teaching during summer school:

“Summer School” Course:

• Students often encounter an overwhelming amount of information in their day-to-day lives — especially online. This course (available as a middle school or high school version) focuses on building up students’ ability to differentiate between news, opinion and advertisements and helping them identify misinformation when navigating online spaces. With an emphasis on Check Center Missions, students will have plenty of opportunities to dive in and practice research and fact-checking skills to build up their news literacy toolbox.

Highlights of “Summer School” include:

“STEM Summer” Course:

• Accurately evaluating science- and data-based claims is an important skill for students who encounter an overwhelming amount of information in their day-to-day lives — especially online. This course focuses on building up students’ ability to assess the credibility of these claims and to debunk pseudoscience and health misinformation. Students will have opportunities to practice research and fact-checking skills to build up their news literacy toolbox.

Highlights of “STEM Summer” include:

✨New to Checkology? Check out our “Getting started with Checkology” guide.

❓For detailed instructions on assigning and editing, visit Preset courses: Summer school.

Heads up! Checkology summer maintenance is scheduled for the month of July, and the platform will not be accessible to students and educators during that time. Therefore, we recommend that you wrap up with Checkology lessons by June 30 and plan to use the other resources listed below (which are always available!).

JULY: Take a break from creating your own content … assign ours!

Ensure that the new skills of summer school don’t fade away like a tan by assigning supplementary activities.

Give your students the chance to practice and reinforce what they learned through Checkology. They’ll gain even more techniques for evaluating sources, citing evidence and fact-checking. Below are suggested classroom-ready activities — including infographics, quizzes, lesson plans and videos — for a refreshing end to summer school.

Don’t sweat the small stuff this summer! Make sure media and news literacy skills get their day in the sun. Discover the News Literacy Project’s summer school ideas (don’t forget to sign up for our free educator webinar in May). Then, assign Checkology courses in June and classroom activities in July to make your planning a breeze — and the learning an adventure for your students.