News Literacy & Identifying Information Pollution

We all know driving while texting is dangerous. But what about when students get on the digital highway without critical thinking skills?  Use Fighting Fake News to steer them toward a life of wisdom, not reactivity.

The News Literacy Project is an educational nonprofit aimed at "building a national movement to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society, creating better informed, more engaged and more empowered individuals — and ultimately a stronger democracy." The site has a weekly newsletter with resources - specifically a newletter that addresses current debunked information (often in the form of photos, memes, or screenshots that have garnered lots of traction online), with samples slides which offer regular and consistent practice at fact checking. There are also lots of free resources for educators on their website. Under their umbrella is a collection of self-paced lessons that students can access on a myriad of topics such as: confirmation bias, first amendment vs fake news, news vs. opinion, branded content identification and more. The lessons have videos, short blurbs to read, and interactive components. Checkology is one of the resources pages that provides free lessons and activities to help students navigate news and information as healthy skeptics.

NLP also has a resource page that is full of posters, lesson plans and news literacy quizes, all which are organized by grade level, and all free.