A best-of-the-best collection of resources for teaching and learning about news literacy.
News literacy is a subset of media literacy focused on helping people process and understand news media messages, to locate more factual and credible information, and to think critically about what counts as news. News literacy is also about recognizing that quality, credible, independent news and journalism are critical components of any free and democratic society. News and politics have been reshaped by social media and 24-hours news entertainment. As a result, there's a lot of crossover between what we think of as news literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship.
In this collection, you'll find hand-picked, regularly updated resources to help you better understand and practice news literacy. At the top, there are featured resources as well as more comprehensive curricula. Then you'll find lessons, videos, downloadables, and games organized by a few key topic areas, like fact-checking, breaking news, and the ethics of journalism.
Jump down to a section
News Literacy Courses and Curricula
Fact-Checking and Critical-Thinking Skills
Journalism and Journalistic Ethics
Breaking News, Media Manipulation, and Mis- and Disinformation
Finding and Using Credible, Authoritative, and Diverse Sources
Research on News and the Media
News Literacy Organizations to Explore for More
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News Literacy Courses and Curricula
The providers below offer more comprehensive resources for news literacy, from courses (from just a few hours to weeks) to a curriculum linked to a scope and sequence and standards.
- Checkology (by the News Literacy Project): Free lessons focusing on fact-checking and journalistic skills, all hosted by experts. For more, check out our review.
- Civic Online Reasoning (by the Stanford History Education Group): This research-based curriculum features foundational lessons and smart assessments for building students' critical thinking skills.
- CTRL-F (by CIVIX): This seven-hour course features four lessons that give students an expert-backed approach to fact-checking news and media on the web.
- Digital Citizenship Curriculum (by Common Sense Education): Free K-12 lessons on news and media literacy.
- Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens (by the University of Hong Kong and Stony Brook University): A six-week, distance learning course hosted on Coursera. It's best suited to educators or advanced students looking for a challenge and to dig deeper into news literacy and journalism.
- Navigating Digital Information (Crash Course): Excellent video series hosted by John Green and produced in partnership with MediaWise, the Poynter Institute, and the Stanford History Education Group.
- NewsU (by the Poynter Institute): While a lot of these courses will cost you and are more directed at adults pursuing careers in journalism, there are a few free, shorter courses that could work well for K-12 educators and students. For instance, Hands-On Fact-Checking: A Short Course is a 90-minute, free intro to fact-checking.
- Project Look Sharp (by Ithaca College): Over 500 lessons across all grade levels that support an open-ended, inquiry-driven approach to "media decoding." Take note that you'll need an account to access the materials.
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Fact-Checking and Critical-Thinking Skills
Journalists -- and the news literate -- should have an obsession with establishing, verifying, and reporting facts. This is an important focus, as the term "fake news" is tossed around with exhausting frequency, and misinformation and disinformation seem to fill our social media feeds. The resources below will help build this drive and respect for accuracy as well as the skills to separate fact from fiction and opinion.
Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters
- MediaWise YouTube channel (by MediaWise): MediaWise's YouTube channel features tons of fact-checking videos submitted by young people.
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The Sift (by the News Literacy Project): A weekly newsletter digest of trending stories and fact checks, focusing on viral memes and social media posts. Each newsletter also ends with tips on incorporating the content into classrooms.Image
- Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (by Mike Caulfield): This ebook is a master class in a web-literate form of fact-checking that takes into account how the web and social media work and have changed information and authority for good.
Lesson plans and activities
- Analyzing How Words Communicate Bias (Teaching Tolerance): Get students to analyze the tone, word choice, and messaging of newscasts, paying particular attention to biased language.
- Challenging Confirmation Bias (by Common Sense Education): Bias can cloud our critical thinking, so this lesson gets students recognizing their own biases and working with and against them.
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Civic Online Reasoning (by the Stanford History Education Group): These resources make it easy to teach and assess students' fact-checking abilities when it comes to things like social media posts or videos and websites.Image
- E.S.C.A.P.E. Junk News (by the Newseum): This lesson teaches students six ways to debunk bad info.
- InfoZones (by the News Literacy Project): Learn and categorize six types or "zones" of information, from news to propaganda.
Videos
- 5 formas de identificar noticias falsas and 5 Ways to Spot Fake News (by Common Sense Media): This video -- available in English and Spanish -- offers your students some simple ways to pinpoint tricky -- and likely untrustworthy -- info on the web.
- 4 Tips to Spot Bad Science Reporting (by KQED's Above the Noise): Get some key tips for interpreting news reports on scientific studies.
- Help Your Students Fact-Check the Web Like Professionals (by Common Sense Education): A few key tips for teachers who want to teach more web-focused news literacy skills.
- How YOU Can Fact-Check the Internet (by MediaWise): This video, which supports MediaWise's teen fact-checking efforts, offers a thorough overview of fact-checking.
- Sort Fact from Fiction Online with Lateral Reading (by Stanford History Education Group): Learn about "lateral reading" -- a way of thinking critically that's attuned to how information works online.
- Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News? (by KQED's Above the Noise): Dig into the deeper reasons why we fall for fake news.
- Why Your Newsfeed Sucks (by SmarterEveryDay): This video features a useful think-aloud fact check of a social media post by MediaWise's Katy Byron.
Handouts, infographics, and posters
- Civic Online Reasoning poster (by the Stanford History Education Group): This poster features three key questions: "Who's behind this information? What's the evidence? What do other sources say?"
- Deceptive Detective poster (by Common Sense Education): A poster for elementary school classrooms with key questions kids should ask when browsing the web.
- Fake or Real and Legit-O-Meter (by Common Sense Education): These two classroom posters/handouts help students determine the legitimacy of news sites.
- Fearless Fact-Finding student handout (by Common Sense Education): A list of useful resources for fact-checking information.
- Turn Students into Fact-Finding Web Detectives tip sheet for teachers (by Common Sense Education): A list of basic resources for helping students build fact-checking skills.
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Verifying Online Information (by First Draft): This extensive guide to fact-checking and fact-checking tools is aimed at journalists but could be useful for high school classrooms, too.Image
Games, apps, and tools
- Games for Building Critical-Thinking Skills (by Common Sense Education): A list of games (not explicitly news literacy focused) that help students practice critical thinking.
- Informable (by the News Literacy Project): This app cleverly simulates media and helps students practice the thinking skills they need to assess the credibility of online info.
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Journalism and Journalistic Ethics
Free societies and people depend on the flow of trustworthy knowledge and information. Journalists and their ethical commitments are central to this process, and the news and media they create are how citizens learn about their world. The following resources help explain the role journalists play in politics, culture, and the media, perhaps inspiring future journalists or just citizens who value ethically committed reporting.
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Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters
- Best News Websites for Students (by Common Sense Education): Use our list of news sources to help build a habit of news in your classroom.
- The Ethics of Engaged Journalism (by Michael R. Fancher): This manifesto, written by a veteran journalist, aims to evolve and re-frame journalistic ethics to rebuild public trust.
- Find the Facts (by TIME for Kids): Help younger kids understand how journalists verify news with this article featuring interviews with two TIME fact-checkers.
- Here's What Non-Fake News Looks Like (by the Columbia Journalism Review): This article breaks down what distinguishes news reports written by journalists from fake news articles and sites.
- Student Press Law Center: A key resource for any journalism class, this site answers a lot of questions and offers a lot of resources for student journalists. Standout resources include a public records request template (as well as FERPA templates and more) and a library of key court cases/precedents for student journalists.
- Teaching and Learning About Journalism (by the New York Times' Learning Network): This is a roundup of high-quality lesson plans and other resources for journalism classrooms.
Lesson plans and activities
- Democracy's Watchdog (by the News Literacy Project): Focusing on investigative reporting, this lesson shows students the way the press has been crucial to defending democracy.
- Real Fake News: Exploring Actual Examples of Newspaper Bias (by Common Sense Education): This video, discussion, and activity examine the history of newspapers covering up injustice and racism against Black people, and how this coverage fails the journalistic code of ethics.
- Student Reporting Labs Curriculum (by PBS NewsHour): 10 project-based lessons focusing on journalism and media production.
Videos
- The 5 Core Values of Journalism (Ethical Journalism Network): Surprisingly, there are few other credible videos on this subject, so this one fills a major void.
- How Journalists Minimize Bias (Facing History): This video helps explain the steps journalists take to take their bias out of reporting.
- Verifying the Story (Facing History): Learn how journalists work to confirm facts in the midst of breaking news stories.
Handouts, infographics, and posters
- A Guide to Page 1 (by the New York Times): While a little dated, this poster points out the key sections of the first page of the New York Times.
- Journalism Ethics (by PBS NewsHour): This worksheet, part of a lesson on ethics, features Jim Lehrer's 10 Rules of Journalism for Students.
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Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: A succinct overview of the core ethics of journalism.Image
Games, apps, and tools
- NewsFeed Defenders (by iCivics and FactCheck.org): This game challenges you to manage a fictional news site's social media feed. For more, check out our review.
- Practicing Quality Journalism (by the News Literacy Project): Sort of a hybrid game and lesson, this experience (available in both English and Spanish) has students play the role of a reporter and learn journalistic standards.
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Breaking News, Media Manipulation, and Mis- and Disinformation
The 24-hour news cycle, always-on and -around smartphones, and social media have changed what we think of when we think of news. It seems that every second some story is "BREAKING," and the result is a deluge of misinformation, disinformation, or something in between. These resources are aimed at understanding and navigating the cacophony of media manipulation surrounding news events.
Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters
- Break the Fake (by MediaSmarts): This site features tons of resources, all focused on helping kids and adults fight through misinformation online.
- ¿Cómo enseñar a tus hijos a entender e interpretar las noticias de última hora? and Teaching Kids Media Smarts During Breaking News (by Common Sense Media): This article -- available in English and Spanish -- covers the key steps to take to not get swept up in the flurry of false and misleading info during a breaking news event.
- Fakeout (by TIME for Kids): This article on deepfakes is great for younger students, and includes tips you can ask your students to identify and then apply.
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Inside the Macedonian Fake News Complex (Wired): Sometimes "fake news" can seem like a dark, mystical force, but this on-the-ground reporting puts a human face to the struggling people who peddle misinformation just to get by.Image
- The Real "Fake News": How to Spot Misinformation and Disinformation Online (by CBC): This article offers a highly readable overview of different kinds of manipulated media, each with examples.
Lesson plans and activities
- Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age (Facing History): These lessons use the Ferguson protests as a case study for exploring the difficulties of reporting on and consuming information in the wake of breaking news events.
- Hoaxes and Fakes (by Common Sense Education): Incorporating "lateral reading" from Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew's research, this lesson gets students debunking questionable information through verification and corroboration.
- Is Breaking News Broken on Social Media? (by Common Sense): Help your high schoolers think about and discuss the impact of social media on the news cycle with this video and lesson combo.
- Is This Story Share-Worthy? lesson (by the Newseum): Build good news sharing habits with this flowchart-based lesson.
- Misinformation (by the News Literacy Project): This is a good lesson for those looking to get up to speed on the different types of misinformation and the threat that misinformation poses.
- This Just In! (by Common Sense Education): Equip students with the patience and critical-thinking skills to not get swept toward misleading info during news events.
- Weed Out Propaganda lesson (by the Newseum)
Videos
- Deepfakes: Can You Spot a Phony Video? (by KQED's Above the Noise): A good overview of this shocking new evolution of manipulated media.
- How Does "Fake" News Become News? (by Teaching Tolerance): This video identifies the way misleading or false info (intentional or not) spreads, and how to recognize it when it's happening.
Handouts, infographics, and posters
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Breaking News Consumer's Handbook (by WNYC's On the Media): This podcast series covers how news consumers can respond critically to breaking (and often tragic) news events. Each podcast comes with a downloadable handout.Image
- Explainer: Political Polarization in the United States (by Facing History): A thorough primer on the causes of, and possible solutions to, increasing polarization.
- Fake News: Historical Timeline (by Common Sense Education): Fake news is nothing new, and this handout offers valuable historical context.
- Is Seeing Believing? (by Common Sense Education): Get young kids thinking about how and why photos and videos are altered.
- Topic Backgrounder: Misinformation (by Common Sense Education): This one-pager offers a primer on misinformation and disinformation.
- Weed Out Propaganda poster (by the Newseum): This poster is a companion to a lesson that teaches students how to use the S.E.E.D. method (simplification, exploitation, exaggeration, and division) for identifying propaganda.
Games, apps, and tools
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The Republia Times (by Lucas Pope): A simple, clever, and influential art game that digs into news bias and political influence. For more, check out our review.
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Finding and using credible, authoritative, and diverse sources
Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and media silos: We all find ourselves in them to some extent. But being news literate means breaking out of these narrow viewpoints and exploring a variety of authoritative and credible sources and perspectives. Use these resources to properly equip your information toolbox, so you can stay up to date, fact-check and verify information, and form informed opinions on the things that matter to you.
Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters
- The Cramm: This daily newsletter written by Hannah Seltzer, a teenager from Santa Barbara, California, is targeted at young people who want a "cheatsheet to the world." While the writing is very casual (and sometimes a bit flippant), each highlighted story links out to credible sources. It's a good resource to share with young people who want to stay clued in but find that traditional news sources don't speak in their voices.
- Most Reliable and Credible Sources for Students (by Common Sense Education): Check out our list of websites and resources students can depend on for well-vetted information.
- Newsela: A best-in-class source for current news as well as various non-fiction texts. The content is gathered from trustworthy sources and then broken down into five reading levels and translated into Spanish for easy differentiation. For more, check out our review.
- TIME for Kids: A high-quality, kid-friendly news source with stories both serious and fun. For more, check out our review.
Lesson plans and activities
- Choosing Reliable Sources, Evaluating Reliable Sources, and Evaluating Online Sources (by Teaching Tolerance): These three lessons for grades K-2, 3-5, and 9-12 respectively provide students with age-specific activities and key questions students should ask to discern the trustworthiness and veracity of news and media sources.
- Filter Bubble Trouble (by Common Sense Education): This lesson gives students strategies for exploring diverse perspectives and challenging their own ideas.
- Finding Credible News (by Common Sense Education): An all-around lesson for middle school, focusing on the basic skills for separating real from fake when it comes to news stories.
- Reading News Online (by Common Sense Education): A good starting point for younger kids, since this lesson teaches them about key elements to look for on a news page to verify that it's legit.
Videos
- Google Search Tricks for Research (by Common Sense Education): This hands-on tutorial shows a few key "search operators" you can use to get better, more refined results on Google.
- How to Pop Our Filter Bubbles (by TED): A collection of TED-produced videos focuses on diversifying sources and stepping outside algorithmically and culturally enforced echo chambers.
- How to Use Wikipedia Wisely (Stanford History Education Group): Wikipedia can be a useful research tool, if used effectively. Learn how in this video.
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Navigating Digital Information (by Crash Course): This 11-video playlist -- developed with experts and researchers -- is an awesome primer on how to find and evaluate sources on the web and social media.Image
- Reading News Online (by Common Sense Education): A short video aimed at younger kids, letting them know some critical-thinking pointers for consuming news.
Handouts, infographics, and posters
- Fearless Fact-Finding (by Common Sense Education): A student handout listing useful fact-checking resources.
- Five Steps to a Balanced Media Diet (by Teaching Tolerance): A handout and graphic organizer for tracking media consumption and breaking out of biased bubbles.
Games, apps, and tools
- Hypothes.is (by the Hypothesis Project): This annotation tool makes all websites discussable, adding a layer of thoughtful critique to the web. For more, check out our review.
- Research and Citation Tools for Students (by Common Sense Education): This is a handy list of tools students can use to find sources -- especially primary sources -- and to cite them effectively.
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Zotero (by the Corporation for Digital Scholarship): Zotero along with ZoteroBib are excellent tools to gather sources, take notes on them, and cite them. For more, check out our review.Image
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Research on News and the Media
Below you'll find some researchers and research organizations that focus on news literacy. We've also highlighted a few key pieces of their work.
- Common Sense: Focuses on news habits of teens and kids.
- News and America's Kids
- Teen News Engagement (in partnership with SurveyMonkey)
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Data & Society: Best source for info on media manipulation and its political implications.Image
- Knight Foundation: Tons of reports on all aspects of the news, media, and journalism.
- MediaWell: Regularly updated collection of research on media manipulation.
- Citation Library (not a report, but a great roundup of research articles and reports)
- Defining Disinformation
- Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Run by the University of Oxford, they offer some of the most in-depth and insightful reports on news trends and needs.
- Stanford History Education Group: Foundational research on students' ability to separate real information from fake and the pedagogical implications of these literacy deficiencies.
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News Literacy Organizations to Explore for More
- Center for News Literacy
- Knight Foundation
- MediaWise
- News Literacy Project
- Newseum
- Poynter Institute
- Project Look Sharp
Resource
News and Media Literacy Resource Center
Help students think critically about current events and media with this collection of lessons, videos, and more.
