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ACT Awareness and Critical Thinking Activities for Teaching about Misinformation in Grades K-5

WELCOME to ACT, a flexible set of interconnected K-5 lessons and activities that help students learn how to detect, avoid, and resist online misinformation.

1. Habits of Inquiry

This skill area is the key that unlocks everything else. There are specific activities listed that provide teaching strategies for information literacy, but in truth, every ACT activity involves learning or practicing inquiry skills. For ACT, inquiry means asking relevant, probative questions and knowing how to find credible, evidence-based answers. In practice that requires skills to be fused with a certain amount of knowledge and, importantly, the desire to apply what one knows how to do. This last part is why your teaching approach matters.

Because healthy brains always seek to make sense of the world, a person who has learned to read print can never again look at a page of printed text and not see words. Similarly, a student who develops “habits of inquiry” finds it impossible to encounter media and not have questions come to mind. That’s ACT’s main goal.

Guiding students to develop a habit is different than preparing them to give a correct answer. Sometimes the value comes in the doing, the repetition, even if students aren’t yet prepared to give sophisticated responses. It can be a shift for some educators to value engaging in that process, seeing inquiry as a way of thinking that results in many possible conclusions rather than a set list of things to be memorized.

To help K-5 students learn which types of questions are most relevant to identifying and analyzing misinformation, ACT relies on the categories developed by Faith Rogow, Cyndy Scheibe, and Chris Sperry. We recommend you use this handout as a guide: Project Look Sharp Handouts.

The most common way to rehearse inquiry skills is through group analysis of media examples using Project Look Sharp’s constructivist media decoding method. This is what ACT refers to when activities call for discussion or examination of a media example.

You can find out more about the method from Teaching Students to Decode the World: Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum (ASCD 2022) by Chris Sperry and Cyndy Scheibe.

Students will learn to

  • Ask relevant, probative questions of all types of media, especially:
    • Authorship and Purposes questions: Who made this and why? Who is telling this story? What do they want me to do or think and why would they want me to do or think that?
    • Content questions: What is this? What sort of media is this?
    • Credibility questions: How do I know if this is true (or real)? Is this a good source for facts? Is the source an expert on this topic?
    • Responses questions: What do I want to do?
  • Use basic strategies to find credible, evidence-based answers to those questions
  • Link their own opinions, conclusions, or beliefs to specific evidence and/or sources
  • Understand commercial media structures and spot clues (techniques) that often indicate deception

Routines that Support Habits of Inquiry

We can normalize inquiry and instill the habit of critical thinking by tweaking a few common teaching practices. Regularly integrating the suggestions below can make inquiry so routine that it becomes unthinkable for students not to do it.

a. Open with questions.

Model the habit of asking questions about media messages by replacing declarative statements with questions, especially when introducing units or topics and always when engaging students in media analysis. Think of questions primarily as opening prompts for conversations rather than as part of a quiz with limited correct answers. For examples of questions, see the Key Categories handout.

Also be on the lookout for other routine opportunities to pose questions that help students strengthen their inquiry muscles. For example, instead of immediately answering a student who asks a “Why...” question, or even asks a practical question (e.g., whether the library has books on a particular topic), ask “How could you/we find out?” If they don’t know how to do the research themselves, use their question as an opportunity to show them. If they already know how to do the research, then responding with the question is a good reminder that they have the skills they need to find accurate information for themselves. Using those skills builds confidence.

b. Follow up answers with probes for evidence.

Create an expectation that everyone is required to link responses to credible evidence by adopting one simple habit: When you ask a question, pause to follow up and ask how the student reached their conclusion. How do they know? What did they notice that led them to that conclusion? What evidence did they use?

Help students learn to identify types of credible evidence by naming the type of evidence they cite. For example, noticing a clue in a book illustration or in something a character said or did is document-based evidence. A student who says they know what will happen because they have previously read the book is giving evidence based on personal experience or first-hand knowledge (like a witness).

Expect that as linking answers to evidence becomes a habit, students will often volunteer their proof; they’ll begin responses with “Well, I noticed that... so...”

Guide older students to link opinions or assertions by media makers to evidence in the media texts they read, watch, or listen to by following up comprehension questions with, “How did the reporter know that?” or “What were their sources?” or “What evidence did the author give to support their opinion?” Learning to connect interpretations to evidence is an essential foundational skill for evaluating complex information sources, including discerning credibility.

This practice also establishes the habit of focusing on the strength of evidence rather than whether one agrees with a particular conclusion. In media interpretation, divergence of opinion is common because everyone sees things through the lens of their own experiences, skills, and beliefs. So rather than focusing on who is “right” or “wrong,” digital and information literacy focuses on who has the strongest evidence. That focus is a bedrock of democracy and a core practice in schools that establish a culture of inquiry.

c. Explain your criteria for choosing media and information sources.

Consistently naming (out loud) your reasons for choosing media sources helps students to understand that we use specific criteria to judge the sources we trust (or mistrust) and it provides a model to follow as students begin to learn how to apply criteria themselves. Such naming also makes it clear that some sources are more reliable than others and we can learn to tell the difference. It functions as an essential counter to the cynicism of “everything is fake” or “all media lie.”

You need not use more than an introductory sentence or two, for example:

“I chose this book because Olivia and Jayson asked about how people construct tall buildings that don’t fall down in a storm. This non-fiction book includes explanations from a licensed architect who has been designing skyscrapers for many years. I selected an architect who has lots of experience because it means they have lots of practice. I also looked for a source who is licensed because I know that to get a license one must study for several years and take exams to prove they know how to make safe buildings.”

“We’ve been doing a lot of hard work and deserve a break. So, today I chose a book for our reading circle that has some fun – and funny – surprises.”

“I know you are working on a special art project that involves drawing, so I chose a book that features illustrations from an artist who has won prestigious awards for their book illustrations. See this medallion on the cover. It signifies that the illustrator earned one of those awards for this book.”

Note the use of the word “chose” rather than something like “Our book today is...” as if it came out of nowhere. Routinely pointing out choices in relation to media helps students get better at discerning between trustworthy and dubious sources. Intentionally integrating the words “choose/chose/choice” helps students recognize that people make choices about media content and also about which media are available. That recognition is a precursor to being able to inquire about who is making those choices (including criteria and motives), and also what might be missing from the media sources they typically choose to use.

Activities

Clue Spotting 1 – Cereal Box Messages
Exploring Perspective
Integrating Inquiry into Reading
Shorts: The Question Game
Shorts: Practicing Inquiry with Dinosaurs
Understanding Point of View
What Makes Someone an Expert?

For Reinforcement

Clue Spotting 2 – Using Words + Images to Mislead
Clue Spotting 3 – Percentages
Clue Spotting 4 - Overgeneralizations
Framing for Beginners
Frames, FOMO, and Viral Trends
From Real Life or a Movie?
Is 7 a Lot?
Shorts: House Hippo
Shorts: Book Club
Shorts: Unearthing Stereotypes
Shorts: Making PSAs
What Story Does the Picture Tell
What to Do with Clickbait

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© Awareness & Critical Thinking (ACT) Program, Texas Woman’s University, 2024 was developed by Dr. Faith Rogow, InsightersEducation.com as part of the ACT Program led by Dr. Tara Zimmerman, Texas Woman’s University. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS grant #2023-057. Educational use is encouraged. All media examples are either public domain or protected by fair use. Requests to re-publish, duplicate, or distribute any ACT document outside of educational settings or for profit should be directed to Dr. Zimmerman.