Resources for Teaching News/Media Literacy and Current Events

Last blog post from summer cabin work station...

“Mrs. Essenburg, is the letter z really going to be dropped from English on Monday?” a concerned student queried last spring. That’s when I knew it was time for a mini-unit on online source checking. I also knew I wanted to go beyond that, into media literacy, current events, and civil discourse. I’ve done that in a small way with 10th and 11th grade English language arts (ELA) classes in the past, but now I’m teaching new courses—middle school ELA and high school English as a foreign language (EFL)—so I’m going to need new ideas. That research went on the summer to-do list for me. And this was the week I did it. Wow! There are so many wonderful resources available!

Why do I want to use news media? To motivate learning, build reading skills and background knowledge, empower critical thinkers to engage in civil discourse, love their neighbors, and impact the world. 
News reading builds background knowledge, which is an important component both of reading skill and of being an informed citizen. News reading connects what’s studied in class to the world we life in, which motivates learning. News reading is an inescapable part of online life, so giving students the tools to identify bias, satire, fakes, manipulation, opinion, and fact empowers them to be wise consumers of the flood of online information. 

What is news/media literacy and how can I even begin to communicate it to students? Six years ago when I first felt the necessity of launching into teaching some of this, I had to first overcome my own lack of knowledge. Then there’s the factor of how to package and communicate it to students. For truly helpful teaching tools and sources for current topics, see Facing History and Ourselves. Here are some of the pages it offers:   

1. Plan-ahead teacher checklist for teaching current events  Includes helping you think through why you want to do it and how frequently you want to do it, and offers a list of article sources and of teaching strategies best suited to different types of topics.
2. Where do we get our news and why does it matter? 
3. Fostering Civil Discourse 
4. Current events in your classroom: Teaching ideas, activities, and strategies for middle and high school students. Current topics include Covid-19; global immigration; and hate, violence and injustice

How frequently, and what do students do with it? One frequent answer is the Article of the Week (AoW), first popularized by Kelly Gallagher for high school in his book Deeper Reading and since taken up and adapted by many others for many purposes and audiences, including middle school. Here are several resources and examples. Search the Web or Teachers Pay Teachers for many more. 

1. Kelly Gallagher: Includes his archive of articles from the last 7 with annotation instructions and reflection questions on 2-page pdfs.  
2. Dave Stuart Jr.: Includes his archive for articles from the last 8 years with annotation instructions and reflection questions on 2-page pdfs or Google Docs; most recent years divided into timeless and time-sensitive articles. 
3. One-page graphic organizer template, sample completed graphic organizer, CCSS alignment, plus 19 sample short answer questions for grades 5-12 ($3 on Teachers Pay Teachers) 
4. One-page graphic organizer template with rubric, instructions for how to make and how to use AoWs, sample questions, and a link to the last year’s worth of articles. Vocabulary emphasis; grades 7-12. (Free on Teachers Pay Teachers) 
5. Jeremy Huyler in the Middle Web article "3 Media Literacy Ideas to Promote More Reading" expands the idea to include graph of the week and video of the week.

Where do I find articles to use? Facing History answers the question “What are some trusted news sources that represent a range of viewpoints that I can bring into my classroom?” with a variety of sources, from condensed to in-depth, to radio journalism and podcasts. The 3 below are the ones I’ve been particularly exploring this week because of the adjustable reading levels of the first 2.

1. TweenTribune (sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute): adjustable over 4 lexiles.
2. NewsELA: adjustable over a variety of lexiles. 
3. CommonLit: background information, sortable by grade level but not adjustable. 

What about bias and fact-checking? Check this blog about how I’ve used the first 2 links below with 10th and 11th graders. (I also found them helpful for my own education.) The second 2 links are to see fact-checking sites.

1. Chart graphing news sources on a liberal/conservative x-axis vs. factuality y-axis
2. Media/Bias Fact Check Web site explains their methodology for rating bias and reliability. You can also enter any source to get their rating and reasons. 
3. 5 Fact-Checking Sites
4. Plus one more: AFP Fact Check AFP

One more great resource for educating myself and my students is Common Sense Media. The first 2 items below I used for my mini-unit in the spring in response to the question about the eradication of the letter z. The 3rd is a list of 30 more resources I haven’t finished working my way through yet, but I want to. And the final one is a link to an entire digital citizenship curriculum, elementary through high school. You have to set up an account, but it’s free. Maybe I’ll explore that next summer.

1. Turn students into fact-finding web detectives (pdf) 
2. 5 questions to ask about media (pdf) 
3. Top picks: 30 tools (list of resources) 
4. Digital Citizenship Curriculum

And don’t worry. The letter z isn’t being dropped from the English language. That’s a joke that’s been circulating every April 1 for the past 10 years.