News literacy

2020. 07. 03. hír óravázlat 9–10. évfolyam

Lesson 1 – News Literacy Part 1 Teacher’s manual

Topic: information and its impact on the individual and society as a whole
Level: B2
Main idea: People depend on information to guide them through a complex world, but being able to rightly interpret the acquired information is of utmost importance.  

Exercise 1 Speaking activity 

Time: 8-10 min

Lead-in questions 

Possible answers:

  1. Literacy may refer to a wide range of skills today, but the broadest sense of the word implies that you have the ability to interpret notions, ideas or concepts related to a particular discipline as well as understand the logic thereof.
  2. Media literacy, visual literacy, news literacy, historical literacy, scientific/science literacy etc.
  3. Being literate will help you filter out relevant information, check and compare different sources of information, check whether the information or piece of news at hand is true, authentic and reliable. 

Instructions for teachers: Have your students answer the questions and come up with a list of different literacies. In today’s class, as a first step to acquire news literacy, we will mainly focus on information and its impact on the individual and society as well.  

Exercise 2 Video: Real news vs. fake news 

Time: c. 15 min.

Instructions for teachers: Watch the video together with your class. If you use Zoom or Discord, you can watch the video together with a simple screen share. Since it is subtitled, it might be enough to watch it only once; however, there are quite a few questions to check comprehension, so they have a better chance of formulating all the possible answers if they watch it once more. Students can freely answer the questions even apart from the content of the video, but make sure that in their responses they also refer back to relevant parts of the video. Examples from recent history shown in the video footage are the Arab Spring and the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars―events, they might not recognize or remember, so they can mention specific examples from more recent history.  

Exercise 3 Match the words with the definitions. / Write a definition for the words below

Instructions for teachers: Students can try to come up with a definition on the spot, or you can assign the task for homework. If you find the task too difficult for your students, there is a modified version of it, i.e. a matching exercise in LearningApps.com. No time frame is given for this exercise since the time it takes students to do it depends on which version you choose.  

Exercise 4 Debate 

Time: 15-20 min

Instructions for teachers: In an online educational setting you cannot really divide the class into two groups, but you can assign each person into Group A or Group B and they can individually collect arguments whether they agree or disagree with the statement. Each party should then be given an equal amount of time to make their case. You can conclude the debate by summarizing the main points or you can ask a student to do it for the group.