NewsLiteracyPlaybook - Flipbook - Page 35
Lessons Learned
35
Best Practices
News literacy lessons
Make educators your partners from Day
One. Stay connected and engaged with
them. Create support materials (lesson
documentation, extension strategies and
ideas) for teachers that explain the concept
of news literacy and the background of the
lessons you develop.
Approach students as creators as well as
consumers of news and information.
Engage news organizations as early
programmatic partners and seek access to
their journalists.
Invite journalists to play a central role. Train
them, coordinate with them and recognize
their contributions. Use them to teach basic
concepts, whether in person or virtually, and
then engage students to learn by doing.
Establish clear foundational pillars
upon which to build your curriculum and
programs.
Start small with pilot programs in one or two
schools with one or two journalists to test,
evaluate, improve and be able to show the
effectiveness of your concept.
Create engaging, hands-on curriculum
materials that incorporate real-world
examples of news and information.
Create flexible, drop-in news literacy units or
modules that are easy for teachers to adopt
— and adapt — within their existing curricular
requirements.
Teach students the value of knowing the
standards of quality journalism, and how they
can be used as a “credibility yardstick.”
Build in a range of assessment questions and
challenges throughout your lessons
and units.
Keep e-learning experiences concise and
interactive; create as many opportunities
as possible for engagement and hands-on
learning. Include examples that students will
recognize and understand.
Create and administer quantitative and
qualitative assessment tools for everything
you do. Use these data to evaluate and
improve your programs internally and to
demonstrate their effectiveness externally.
Seek and respond to educators’ feedback.