Information & Media Literacy Lesson

I started out working in education as a librarian (My MA is in information and literacy skills from UCL). I am currently spending some time going through old lessons and other resources, and downloading them to share with my school librarian,  Pascale Viala , before I leave my current school. I just stumbled upon one of my favorite lessons, (I had completely forgotten about this!).

The lesson helps students develop their approaches to learning (ATLs), especially:

• Communication: Read critically and for comprehension
• Research (Information Literacy): Collect, record and verify data
• Research (Information Literacy): Use critical literacy skills to analyse and interpret media communications
• Thinking (Critical Thinking): Practise observing carefully in order to recognize problems
• Thinking (Critical Thinking):  Evaluate evidence and arguments

(as a teacher, decide on which skill you want to focus on, and adapt the lesson to support the students in developing that skill - mostly you can do this through reflection at the end of class).

I start off the lesson by showing students the following video:

After a discussion, where students will normally argue over if this is real or not, (I guarantee you some will say "I've seen people do that" or "I've heard about that before"), you can reveal to them that this is in fact a commercial for shoes!

I sometimes also show:

"Film maker and writer Terry Jones discovers a colony of penguins, which are unlike any other penguins in the world."
If you dig a little deeper, you can see the BBC uploaded this on March 31st 2008...just in time for April Fools Day! You can also see the "Making of" video here.

I then give them some tools for understanding how to evaluate the reliability and credibility of a website. Here are some basic ideas for a Grade 6 class. You can also use the CRAPP Test. (More activities can be found in my ATL Toolkit).

Before the lesson I print out  , and cut out each strip. The students come and collect one of the websites, and they are tasked with evaluating it... (All the websites are fake/hoax websites). If I am doing this with grade 8 or above, I mix in some strange, but real websites, (for example, websites for strange and wonderful  places like the Cabbage Patch Hospital, Baby Land General or Gopher Hole Museum).

Help Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Ova Prima Foundation
http://www.ovaprima.org/

Pets or Food           
http://petsorfood.com/

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie
http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

Petrol Direct
http://www.petroldirect.com/

Dehydrated Water
https://buydehydratedwatercom.weebly.com/about.html

Dog Island
http://www.thedogisland.com/

Save the Rennets
http://savetherennets.com/

The Burmese Mountain Dog of America
http://descy.50megs.com/akcj3/bmd.html

Belgium Doesn't Exist
http://zapatopi.net/belgium/

Yoga Kitty
http://www.yogakitty.com/

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division
http://www.dhmo.org/

Internet First Page
http://www.internetfirstpage.com/

Male Pregnancy
http://www.malepregnancy.com/

Driver’s License Search
http://license.shorturl.com/

Shakespear's Early Plays
https://21cif.com/lit-serv.com/

Newseum also has some great activities and articles. Check out this fake news story from 1835 - part of the Great Moon Hoax! They also have many articles about understanding fake news, evaluating authors and more. Check out their Media Literacy Booster Pack here.
Enjoy!
Let me know if you use it and let me know if you have any resources to add to the ATL Toolkit.