Digital Survival Skills & MisinfoNight (Updated)

In this unit students will reflect on their own media environment, understand how cognitive bias and social media algorithms influence that environment, and learn how to investigate new sources and claims online. These activities culminate in a student-led "social science fair" MisinfoNight event where they present their new skills and knowledge to family members to help them become more savvy information consumers. 

Material Type: Lesson, Unit of Study

Authors: Liz Crouse, Shawn Lee

Digital Survival Skills Module 4: Teaching Digital Skills

Authors: Shawn Lee, Liz Crouse

Digital Survival Skills Module 3: Fact-Checking

Authors: Liz Crouse, Shawn Lee

Digital Survival Skills Module 2: Types of Mis/Disinformation

Authors: Liz Crouse, Shawn Lee

Deepfakes: Exploring Media Manipulation

Students examine what deepfakes are and consider the deeper civic and ethical implications of deepfake technology. In an age of easy image manipulation, this lesson fosters critical thinking skills that empower students to question how we can mitigate the impact of doctored media content. This lesson plan includes a slide deck and brainstorm sheet for classroom use.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson, Lesson Plan

Author: Shana Ferguson

Avoiding Confirmation Bias

We may be leaving out information or disregarding it because it doesn't conform with our own beliefs.  Students will learn about confirmation bias, different perspectives and how to avoid confirmation bias.  This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?". 

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson, Lesson Plan

Authors: Dana John, Angela Anderson, Beth Clothier, John Sadzewicz

How a Medium Changes Discourse

OverviewThe medium we choose to communicate a message can affect how that message is conveyed and how well the message will be understood by the receiver of the message.  This lesson gives the students a concrete way of seeing the effect a medium has on a message.  This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?"

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson

Authors: John Sadzewicz, Beth Clothier, Angela Anderson, Dana John

A CRAAPy Lesson

This lesson gives students a strategy for evaluating sources.  This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?".

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson

Authors: John Sadzewicz, Beth Clothier, Dana John, Angela Anderson

What Is Your Role Online?

In this lesson, students will define their dominant roles online, explain the benefits of each type of online role and discuss the responsibilities and risks inherent in each type of online interaction. This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website entitled "Who Am I Online?"

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Beth Clothier, John Sadzewicz, Dana John, Angela Anderson

Trigger Happy

Students will consider what source of imagery may cause escalating threads of conversation, and consider pause strategies to avoid escalating online interactions.  This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?". 

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson, Lesson Plan

Authors: Dana John, Angela Anderson, John Sadzewicz, Beth Clothier

Lateral Reading II

The students will be able to look to multiple sources to verify information they find online. This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website "Who Am I Online?"

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Beth Clothier, Angela Anderson, Dana John, John Sadzewicz

Don't Be Fooled By Food Messaging!

 Description: Don’t be fooled by food messaging is a media literacy embedded health unit that takes the health goals of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and adds some critical thinking skills and communication skills. In food marketing young people are surrounded by persuasive claims meant to influence and manipulate their eating behavior. Students will explore some of the techniques and strategies food marketers use to influence their eating behavior to better understand how it impacts their own food choices. Within the PE program students will discuss how food choices, levels of consumption and physical activity levels influence health and wellness. Body image/healthy weight will be incorporated into this content. The culminating projects require students to work collaboratively to synthesize their new learning while using a variety of strategies to create their own healthy choices messaging production projects.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Lesson, Module, Unit of Study

Authors: Shawn Sheller, Barbara Soots, Kimberlee Swan, Julie Cantrell, Jill Minkiewitz, Mark Friden, Kirsten Lewandowski

The Terra Cotta Army and Qin Culture

This inquiry asked students to answer the compelling question: What does the terra cotta army teach us about Qin culture? In order to answer the compelling questions students will analyze China's terra cotta warriors. Students will first formulate their own definitions of the terms: culture, artifact, afterlife, primary source, and secondary source. Once a working definition is found students will conduct an analysis of the terra cotta warriors. While analyzing the warriors and other sources, students will to question what was important to the Chinese during the Qin dynasty, what skills they valued, and what beliefs they had. While students work, they will also question the sources. Who wrote/made the source, why was it create, who is was/is the audience of the source, and if the source is biased. This mixture of looking over artifacts, reading texts, and questioning source material are all things good historians do.  

Material Type: Module, Unit of Study

Author: Samantha Fletcher

Ancient Egypt Inquiry Unit

An inquiry-based unit that teaches the use of primary source analysis through artifacts from Ancient Egypt.  Students are asked to analyze artifacts from their own family, analyze artifacts from King Tut’s tomb, and then create hypotheses about what we can learn from ancient artifacts.  Finally, students will construct an argument and create a press release. 

Material Type: Unit of Study

Author: Beky Erickson

Familial Artifacts

Inquiry StructureThis synopsis is laid out in more detail in the outline and lesson suggestions in the following pages. Students are first introduced to the idea of personal primary sources through the linked article and whatever artifacts can be used in staging the question. After students have been introduced to this concept they will then, as homework, they interview relatives to learn what they can about their family history and whatever artifacts in the family connect to those stories. During class, students will be instructed in and practice the media literacy skills that will allow them to research in detail the historical context for their family history. This research into the historical context of their family history will be the summative performance task for the inquiry and is the second week of the unit.

Material Type: Unit of Study

Author: Ethan Whitney

Digital Citizenship K-5th Grade Scope & Sequence

This sequenced collection, curated by Seattle Public School educators, contains openly-licensed Digital Citizenship resources for K-5 educators.  

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Authors: Anne Aliverti, Washington OSPI OER Project, LeAnn Miller, Amy Young, Kristi Leland, Nuzhat Mustafa, Alicia Nygard, Barbara Soots

Reading Media: Analyzing Logos, Ads, & Film in the ELA classroom

This media literacy unit was designed and piloted with junior English classes at the start of the school year. Activities can easily be adapted to suit secondary students at various levels. Within the unit, students analyze corporate logos, corporate advertising, movie trailers and stereotypes found in media related to Native American culture. Within the unit, students also learn how to consider the ways in which media appeals to ethos, pathose and logos and how to identify the tone of a piece of media. 

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Lesson, Lesson Plan, Reading, Unit of Study

Author: Shana Ferguson

Propaganda & Animal Farm

This unit is designed to accompany the study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Resources encourage students to recognize a variety of propaganda techniques and to connect those techniques to media that they can find in their everyday lives. Resources also help students to understand the historical uses of propaganda by governments and political parties to influence public opinion. Resources can be used independently of the novel.

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Lecture Notes, Lesson

Author: Shana Ferguson

Verifying Social Media Posts

 Verifying social media posts is quickly becoming a necessary endeavor in everyday life, let alone in the world of education. Social media has moved beyond a digital world which connects with friends and family and has become a quick and easy way to access news, information, and human interest stories from around the world. As this state of media has become the "new normal," especially for our younger generations, we, educators, find ourselves charged with a new task of teaching our students how to interact with and safely consume digital information.The following three modules are designed to be used as stand-alone activities or combined as one unit, in which the lessons can be taught in any order. "Who Said What?!" is a module focusing on author verification. "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'' is a module devoted to image verification. "Getting the Facts Straight" is a module designed to dive into information verification. Lastly, there are assessment suggestions to be utilized after completing all three modules.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Diagram/Illustration, Homework/Assignment, Lesson, Lesson Plan, Module, Unit of Study

Authors: Sandra Stroup, Amanda Schneider, Megan Shinn

Info-luencer: Media Literacy and Civics

This resource includes multiple lesson plans developed by Washington State teacher John Zingale and can be taught as part of in-person, hybrid, or remote instructional settings. The core content areas include social studies, civics, and media literacy and are designed for use with students in grades 6-12. Additional integrations include ELA, world languages, mathematics, physical education and science. These lessons integrate both state and national civics instruction using project-based and collaborative learning strategies. Features of these lessons include:student researchcollaborative learningdigital learning strategieslateral readingdesign and creation of infographicsTo support these lessons, additional resources are provided to help educators and families with understanding and teaching information and media literacy to young people. Resources include:introductions to media literacyeducator guidesparent guidesstudent learning standards

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment

Author: Mark Ray