News Literacy: Lateral Reading
SHEG Study
- Lateral Reading on the Open Internet
A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes
December 28, 2021
Study by Sam Wineburg, Joel Breakstone, Sarah McGrew, Mark Smith, and Teresa Ortega
Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) at Stanford University
Accepted for publication in the Journal of Educational Psychology
For Younger Students
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar Lied to You as a ChildArticle by Cara Giaimo from Atlas Obscura, Dec. 26, 2016
- Classroom Activity: Is it "checkable"?Activity from News Literacy Project
Designed for Grades 4-6 - Truth, Lie, Opinion GameActivity created in Google Slides that you can use, copy, and remix with your own questions.
- I taught my 5th-graders how to spot fake news. Now they won’t stop fact-checking me.By Scott Bedley, from Vox posted Mar 29, 2017
How this educator gamified media literacy and fact checking for his 5th graders.
Finding Lessons
Project Look Sharp has written lesson plans for embedding lateral reading and fact checking into multiple curricular areas and using their constructivist media decoding methodology.- Developing Digital Detectives LessonsJennifer LaGarde's Lessons
Sort Fact from Fiction Online with Lateral Reading (SHEG)
Lateral Reading by the University of Louisville Library
Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3
Mike Caulfield - Washington State University
Teaching Lateral Reading (SHEG)
- Teaching Lateral Reading (SHEG)
This will take you to the SHEG, Civic Online Reasoning curriculum and more specifically, the six lateral reading lesson plans.
Create a free account with SHEG to access their teaching materials.
Links to Individual Lessons:
News Lit Tips
Click here to learn how to expand your view with lateral reading. (from the News Literacy Project)
Fact or Opinion?
- Quiz: How well can you tell factual from opinion statements?Quiz from Pew Research- 10 questions
- Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the NewsHow well did adults do with identifying facts and opinions from the news? Results broken down and analyzed by demographics.
Twitter Verification
- About Twitter Verified AccountsHow does Twitter verify accounts, and who do they do this for? Read this linked article to find out!