Foiling Fake News

Made by Tech-Kim & Ms. Fitz

Students, teachers, anyone connected to the internet is already running on information overload and now fake news has us all questioning our most trusted sources. So how can we best prepare students to grow to become independent online consumers in this snap-judgement world of social media link-sharing?

We created this teaching kit as a companion to our article, Supermoons Cause Tidal Waves—True or False? Our news literacy program challenges fourth graders to find out (School Library Journal).

Web Literacy Skills

21st Century Skills

Tags

fake news hacking web literacy computer science

Learning Objectives

  • Preventative - students gain awareness of issues BEFORE they are heavy social media users
  • Build on students existing knowledge of evaluating resources & put it in a new context
  • Focus on new ideas - judging quickly, not being distracted/convinced by personal opinion, understanding that some people create realistic looking fake news for a living
  • Fact check in real time vs. for historical sources
  • Introduce building blocks of web pages like HTML tags
  • Tackle difficult subjects - Wikipedia, politics, ads with inappropriate content, etc.

Audience

  • 4th grade and up