SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About TLT
  • Reviews
    • Book Reviews
    • A to Z Book Lists
    • Book Review Policy
  • Teen Issues
  • Middle Grade Mondays
  • Programs
    • TPiB
    • Tech Talk
  • Professional
    • Teen Services 101
    • Things We Didn’t Learn in Library School
  • MakerSpace
  • Projects
    • #SVYALit
    • #FSYALit
    • #MHYALit
    • #Poverty in YA Lit

March 10, 2021 by Amanda MacGregor

Information Literacy Skills in the Digital Citizenship Classroom: Teaching Lateral Reading, a guest post by Jennifer Hanson

March 10, 2021 by Amanda MacGregor   Leave a Comment

How do you teach information literacy skills in a remote class setting? When the pandemic hit last spring, all of my digital citizenship classes suddenly became asynchronous classes. This gave me the opportunity to redesign how I was going to teach information literacy skills in my 8th grade classes. Without the face-to-face interaction, I knew I needed some solid videos to explain evaluating information. I could either make those videos myself or use something that already existed. Through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, I was familiar with the Stanford History Education Group Civic Online Reasoning lessons. I really liked their video from Crash Course with John Green explaining lateral reading.

If you are unfamiliar with lateral reading, the basic concept is to open a new tab or tabs on your device and search for information about a website. Rather than scrolling down a webpage or reading the About Us page, lateral reading provides other sources of information about the website you might be viewing.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

For my asynchronous lesson, I put together a Google Form lesson with a series of videos for my students to watch, asking them evaluate a source for its authenticity using lateral reading, then applying their new lateral reading skills to another video. Because the activity included no interaction with a teacher, students struggled at the end to provide evidence for whether or not this video of a snowboarder being chased by a bear was real or fake. I asked them to watch the video, then read laterally to determine if the video was real or fake and provide evidence of their decision. Of the 39 students who completed the assignment, 15 noted their strategy to read laterally and cited Snopes or National Geographic as their evidence the video was fake. The other students tried to analyze the video itself, determining if the bear looked real and if the girl was bothered by the presence of the bear.

I felt like this lesson had some merit, so when we returned to school in the fall, I modified it a bit. The fact that we now had a Zoom-based synchronous class helped me provide a level of guidance and context that the asynchronous format did not accommodate. In order to practice their lateral reading skills more, I added an activity from the Stanford History Education Group lesson “Intro to Lateral Reading.” After analyzing the snowboarder video as a class and practicing lateral reading to provide evidence of whether the video is real or fake, I ask students to complete an activity about the Odyssey Online website. This activity is more challenging than the snowboarder activity as it asks students to evaluate the reliability of a website that has published an article about the minimum wage.

One challenge students faced immediately with the Odyssey activity was the first question of “who is the sponsoring organization?” Sponsor sounds like advertiser, and lots of ads pop up at the top and on the right side of the page. Students were responding that the sponsoring organization was a variety of advertisers like The New York Times and Starbucks instead of the organization Odyssey. If big names like The New York Times and Starbucks advertise on the site, it must be good, right? This gave me the opportunity to help students understand the difference between sponsor (the owner of a website) and advertisers (other entities who buy space/time in a variety of venues without vetting everything their advertisements are attached to). The second time I taught the lesson, I prefaced the activity with that discussion so that students didn’t get off track from that central question.

In December, I attended Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins’ ISTE presentation “Evaluating Bias and Truth in the Fake News Era.” One question LaGarde asked during the session was “how do we teach students to read laterally on mobile devices?” Since then, I have added a discussion on reading laterally when we are on Instagram or Snapchat, emphasizing that lateral reading isn’t just done on a laptop or for websites, but for all media we consume.

Teaching remotely, both in an asynchronous and synchronous environment, pushed me to reevaluate how I was teaching information literacy skills with my students. I think the changes to my instruction have been positive overall and have given students stronger evaluation skills. How have you adapted your instruction this past year? What strategies will you keep?

Meet the author

Jennifer Hanson is the Director of Library Services at Worcester Academy and has over a decade of experience teaching information and technology literacy skills. She is also an Educational Consultant for the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region Partner at Waynesburg University and has written for School Library Journal.

Filed under: Uncategorized

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
#FactsMatterGuest postsInformation LiteracylibrariesTeaching

About Amanda MacGregor

Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

December 2022

Book Mail: Romances, thrillers, mysteries, dystopias, and more!

by Amanda MacGregor

December 2022

The Difference Between YA and NA, a former teen now new adult reader perspective

by Amanda MacGregor

December 2022

Post-It Note Reviews: Quick looks at 9 new titles

by Amanda MacGregor

October 2022

Reclaiming Queer History, a guest post by James Brandon

by Amanda MacGregor

October 2022

I Wrote a Book About the Pandemic. I'm Scared No One Will Want to Read It, a guest post by Sara Saedi

by Amanda MacGregor

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

BLUE FLOATS AWAY Turns Two!

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Faced with a Parenting Dilemma? Write a Book About It! Jacob Grant Comes By to Talk About NO FAIR

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review: Swim Team

by Esther Keller

Heavy Medal

March suggestions: early Mock Newbery possibilities

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Post-It Note Reviews: Wish granters, brotherly mischief, a high-stakes scavenger hunt, and more!

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey Try Something New

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

Is Your Library Experiencing Censorship?

Hand These to Kids Needing a Boost for the First Day Blues| Back-to-School Roundup Reviews

With Rampant Book Bans and Free Speech Under Fire, Three Educators Seek Advice | Scales on Censorship

Pronouncing Kids’ Names Correctly Matters. Here’s How to Get it Right.

PEN America Releases Comprehensive Report, "Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools"

Commenting for all posts is disabled after 30 days.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2023


COPYRIGHT © 2023