"let them do research!"

(From yesterday's first half of the NPR article) --

"This year's class got to talk to a penguin scientist."


(I had no idea they were training penguins to be scientists....)

[article, continued] --------- 
Let them eat fake (news)
Remember Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake!" -- her famous line about the poor that got her in all that trouble?  Thing is, it never happened.  Fake news!

For Diane Morey and her ninth-graders at Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, that's a teachable moment.

"The media of the day didn't have Facebook, Twitter or partisan websites," Morey says.  "But they did have pamphlets."

She shows her class cartoons and pamphlets from the French Revolutionary period that criticized Antoinette, and then discusses the conclusions that were made from those sources.  She also includes a primary source:  a letter written by Antoinette.

Morey says history is rich with examples of fake news, and since source analysis is the core of her lesson plans, she doesn't need a textbook.

"We don't study [history] to memorize Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI," she explains.  "We're studying this because we can see this happening in the current-day political climate."

Morey encourages students to bring in examples of articles from today's news that don't ring true.

"Once you expose it to them," she says, "it's like a game for them -- 'Hey, I'm not sure I can trust this.'"

Extra layers

For 13 years, Larry Ferlazzo has been teaching kids who are learning English how to read and write.  Now, he's adding another layer:  helping them figure out if what they're reading is true.

Ferlazzo teaches at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California.  He's also a blogger and journalist.
     Last month, he wrote a lesson plan on addressing fake news to English language learners (ELLs), which was published in The New York Times.
     He says media literacy is especially important for ELLs for two reasons.  First, they're not fluent in the language they're reading, adding an extra level of difficulty in deciding what to believe.  On top of that, false or exaggerated news about immigration could have a major impact on their lives.

     His lesson starts off with a few examples of reliable and fake news.  Then, some basic journalism information:  Students identify the different parts of the news, from the "lede" to quotations.  They enter all that into a diagram on paper so they have a visual representation of what they're reading.


That diagram eventually becomes a guide for students to write their own fake news lede that they can share with other classmates or post on a class blog.

Media consumers and contributors

In 2015, Spencer Brayton and his colleague Natasha Casey revamped a media literacy course for students at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois.  Brayton says the key is the critical approach.

"Students come in expecting that we're going to lecture," Brayton explains.  "But we have them think about certain power structures in how information is produced and how it reaches them.  If they're going to understand how they're going to take it in, then they have to know how the news is going to be produced."

To take the class, students need a Twitter account.  From the very first week, they are asked to follow five to 10 accounts on Twitter that promote media and information literacy, like Media Literacy Now or Renee Hobbs.


As they follow these posts and add additional ones, the goal is that they'll start to recognize fake news and other biases or viewpoints in media.

By the end of the course, Brayton says students begin to see themselves not only as creators of information, but as credible sources of information too.

The Twitter assignments encourage his students to engage with social media -- retweeting, following and commenting -- which Brayton says helps his students see how they play a role in spreading information to other media consumers.  That means they have to take what they share more seriously.

"In looking at this issue, people seem to want a quick solution to fake news, but I'm not sure there is a solution (at least an easy one)," Brayton writes in an email.  "Students need to recognize that these skills and ideas need to stay with them through adulthood, but that's easier said than done  -- we all fall into this trap."

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Written by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, for National Public Radio

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