Call me old fashioned, but I still think newspapers are the best way to get news. There is something about sitting down at the breakfast table, in your housecoat, drinking your coffee and flipping through the paper. Maybe it is just me, but I feel like I can channel my inner old man and grumble under my breath at something that someone did that I deem to be outside of societal norms. You just can’t grumble in the same way when you read the news on your computer!
I wanted my students to channel their inner grumpy old man, and create their own front page of a newspaper… mind you…there are other important reasons I wanted to do this assignment as well, such as the following:
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Understanding the purpose and function of newspapers by writing entertainment, information and persuasive news articles
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Being able to use language associated with newspapers (headline, byline, lead paragraph, body paragraph etc)
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Most importantly though – introducing students to the newspaper and helping appreciate what a great resource the newspaper is
I will break each sub-unit down – because if I put it all in here – it will be information overload I fear. Let’s start at the beginning shall we?
Subunit 1: Fake News – Reading Intelligently
Fake news is EVERYWHERE… and although I am kind of sick of the term “fake news” because of President Drumpf it is SO incredibly important that students know how to analyze news stories to deem whether or not they or real, an exaggerated version of the truth or completely bogus (urban dictionary: wiggity-wiggity-whack; bullshit; unfortunate; silly; unbelievable; not genuine; the opposite of excellent).
Step 1: James Nottingham has a fantastic resource to get students talking about fake news on his website Challenging Learning – https://www.challenginglearning.com/resources/. You have to sign up for an account (it’s free – yay!) and then in resources, you search for Fake News.
In this lesson plan, it asks students about where they get the majority of their news from, among other really great questions. (He’s all about them in depth questioning). News flash. After talking with these kids, you find out that the majority of them don’t get their news from a newspaper. Shock and horror! My students they read their news on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or even Youtube. (This is actually perfect. Gives even more reasons why we should teach them how to read news intelligently.)
Step 2: After this, I get students to BRAINSTORM the ways they know whether something is fake or real. You can start them small by showing them a picture like this… (which is just… ugh). Is this real? Fake? How do they know? This is just a diagnosis, so it is okay if they say things like, “It looks fake.” (which happens)
Step 3: Take them through this PPT. I didn’t use all of it, because I ran out of time.. but I did teach them tips on how to spot if something is fake or not. There is a video, (for those who like to listen) as well as a list (for those who like reading). Get them to take notes while they listen and read.
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Open in new tab Step 4: Students then watch this Youtube video from Buzzfeed (kind of obssessed with Buzzfeed) and as a class you can take a vote on whether or not they think the stories are real or fake. They can use their techniques that they had learned that class.
Stick with me – almost done.
Finally – to hammer everything home – have the students do a little formative activity. They find either a fake news story or real news story and present it to the class. The class must try and find out if the news story was real or fake. How did you find out? This was probably the most fun out of the whole exercise – they really liked trying to trick their classmates.
They can use the following websites – or the techniques we discussed earlier
Happy fake news hunting!
Great lesson plan that I surely will use! I just wondered, what were the video clips in the presentation? They don’t show up when I open the slide nor can I find a link.
Best regards,
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
That is great that you will use this! Thanks! Have you downloaded the Powerpoint? It won’t work if you have it only in the blog. If you press the “download” button, then once it is downloaded, open it up and press the “activate editing (aktivera redigering),” then wait a minute and you can see the Youtube videos pop up.
Let me know if it works.
Brianne
I did download it but only a few of the videos showed, maybe its because I’m using Mac. What was the name of the last video about bias in media?
I also wanted to ask you how much time you dedicated to this whole subunit.
Did you manage to do all of this in one lesson?
How old are your students? I’m teaching junior high but I think my kids will enjoy the topic and also bring a lot to the discussions despite their age.
Did you use any specific articles in the Challening Learning unit where they are supposed to evaluate the articles reliability (Venn Diagram)?
Was there anything that worked better than any other parts of the unit?
How much time did you give the students to find a piece of news to present to the rest of the class?
Sorry for all the questions but I’m curious and inspired by your hard work!
/Pierre
Hey Pierre,
No problem about the questions! Here is the link to the bias video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAz-F1QnyCk&t=41s). This is just one sub-topic of the entire newspaper unit we are doing, so I think I spent about 2 -3 classes doing it. My classes are only 40-50 minutes long. My students are Grade 7, and they managed to do it. Some of them of course found it difficult, but it is good with a challenge. With the Challenging Learning, I used their Fake News lesson plan. I didn’t do all of the questions and exercsies there, but I did use a lot of their questions as a warm up, and to see where they get their news from. Questioning is such an art form, and they (James) does such a great job at teaching us how to teach through questioning.
I would say the students really liked the final activity – trying to find fake/real news articles. I believe they also liked the part about trying to guess whether the stories in the youtube video were real or fake. Something I should mention though – they needed a lot of help with this. I translated a lot to Swedish and played the news stories back again multiple times. Take your time and go slow.
Good luck! /Brianne
Hi Biranne,
I’d like to use your lesson plan but unfortunately, none of the videos in the PowerPoint shows (though I downloaded it and clicked on “Aktivera redigering”), ie “How to spot fake news”, “What do you think? Real or Fake?” (and the bias video but the link is in your reply to Pierre).
Could you send the links to these two, please?
Thanks for your interesting and inspiring work (I’m a substitute teacher and the colleague I’m working for has sent me the link to your page, which I’m very grateful for!).
/Karine
Hey Karine,
Thanks for letting me know. Instead of trying to figure it out – I put the links for the two videos in the Powerpoint. I am not techy enough to figure this out! haha. So glad to hear someone recommended it to you! 🙂
Let me know if it works now.
/Brianne
Thanks, Brianne (sorry, I mispelled your name last time)!
But I still can’t see the link to “What do you think? Face or real?”-slide.
/Karine
Can you try it now? I put the link there in the powerpoint. If it doesn’t work – I put the youtube video for that in the blog.
Hi again!
Now I can see everything!
Thank you.
/Karine