Helping Students Navigate Misinformation and Identify Legitimate Sources

Three years ago, New Jersey made headlines for becoming the first state to require media literacy for grades K-12. The bill, which was signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2023, directs the New Jersey Department of Education to develop the subject’s standards.

The requirement addresses the rise of misinformation, especially online, and focuses on helping students understand how misinformation is produced and spread, as well as building the critical-thinking skills needed to navigate legitimate sources.

“It is our responsibility to ensure our nation’s future leaders are equipped with the tools necessary to identify fact from fiction,” Gov. Murphy said at the time of the announcement.

Harvard’s Kennedy School recently analyzed 38 years of media coverage to determine how many misinformation-related terms have entered the public discourse and pinpoint when this rise began. The study reviewed five major U.S. daily newspapers and researchers identified 2016 as “a key inflection point in the emergence and academic coverage of what was then referred to as fake news.”

The research also discovered which social media site hosts the most misinformation, identifying Facebook as the biggest culprit. Many students already navigate these sites, creating opportunities for misinformation to slip into fact.

How do teachers help cut down on these opportunities?

We’ve rounded up a number of high-quality resources, classroom lessons and games to engage students with proper media literacy.

Help students navigate misinformation with these resources
 

Media literacy sticks when students practice it, and the right resources make it easy to build that practice into class organically. 

One way to help these skills stick is to turn them into play. Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pase, a professor of psychology at Temple University, says we learn better when we are active, which is why educational play is such a powerful tool. 

"We learn things better when it’s joyful and not when it’s boring,” Dr. HIrsh-Pase said. “The thought here is that that is what we mean by active playful learning.”

Teachers can make media literacy stick by incorporating subject-specific games and focused play into lesson plans. The resources below include these games, plus lesson collections and background reading, to create a well-rounded experience that helps teachers understand the roots of misinformation and guide their students through proper critical-thinking practices. 

Games and interactive tools
 

• Ad Fontes Media's Interactive Media Bias Chart visually compares the reliability and slant of news sources.
• Bad News is a game in which students plant fake news on social media to gain followers. It stays politically neutral, and it teaches manipulation tactics by letting students use them. Hey Listen Games has a helpful write-up on teaching with it.
• iCivics Education has a 30-minute, interactive game called ‘Newsfeed Defenders,’ where students learn to spot deceptive social media posts.
• MediaSmarts has a collection of educational games that introduce students to media and digital literacy concepts.
• Two Truths & AI helps students recognize whether or not a piece of media was developed using artificial intelligence technology. 
   

Lesson collections
 

• American Press Institute put together this simple list for students and teachers to reference: Six questions that will tell you what media to trust.
• Civic Online Reasoning is Stanford's SHEG collection of lessons for evaluating internet sources more skillfully.
• Checkology is a virtual classroom for news literacy.
• Common Sense Education and Common Sense Media offer guides on identifying fake news and raising media-savvy kids.
• RetroReport has a robust list of lesson plans and videos that connect to fact-checking, identifying legitimate sources and journalism’s role in society. 
   

Background reading
 

• Children and Screens presents information on why kids are more susceptible to online misinformation.
• Media and Learning Association has this video of its online conference that uses the power of play to support strong media literacy practices. 
• The NEA offers a guide to helping students spot misinformation.
   

Classic hoaxes for class
 

• The Spaghetti Harvest April Fools joke aired on the BBC in 1957 showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti off trees. Known as the biggest hoax a reputable news establishment has pulled, it drew hundreds of confused viewers calling in. 
• The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus emerged decades later, online in 1998. The site called for people to save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, a make-believe species.

How teachers tackle misinformation in their classrooms
 

The best lesson ideas often come from teachers who have already tried them. That’s why many teachers regularly visit online forums like Reddit to connect and share ideas.

The educators below share practical strategies for teaching students to fact-check and also point to a helpful ally you may already have down the hall: Your school librarian.


“You teach them how to fact-check by doing lateral reading. Crash Course has a great series of videos on Navigating Digital Information. This episode is especially good.”
-Chelseablue70


“When I have current events assignments, I recommend students go to Allsides to start looking. This way they can see side-by-side articles from sources with different slants. I also show some sources for our field that tend to stick to the facts. I warn students to be cautious of opinion pieces pretending to be news articles; usually, if something is more than a few paragraphs, it is wandering into opinion territory. … A particular example is how the news decides when to use teen, juvenile, youth, etc. There is a tendency to refer to a suspect as a "teen" if the news wants the public to feel sympathy, even if the person is 19 and an adult in all 50 states. Or they will report that a 'child' was detained, referring to a 16-year-old who might get certified as an adult based on the nature of the crime.  

During class discussions, I'll probe students on their opinions to get them to think their way through it and be able to explain/justify. This prepares them for the field because they will have to be ready to document and justify everything they do, every use of discretion they make.”
-CateranBCL


“If you have a librarian in your school, I would recommend talking with them. They might be interested in collaborating with you on a lesson or can recommend things your school might have available.”
-erkala21


“Whatever lesson you come up with, I highly recommend you design a hook around "pig rescues baby goat." Show them the video of the same name on YouTube, let them react, then show the two-part Nathan for You clip on YouTube about how he made the video go viral. Really good hook for it, in my experience.”
-limabeenleftist


“I think a good start to studying partisanship and bias would be to scaffold out a strong foundation first.

I'd start by exploring how everyone has biases, both ones that they are conscious of and those we are unconscious of. How biases keep us safe from harm by forming danger-avoidant behaviors for survival, but how they can also form pathological connections or straight-up incorrect ones if left unchecked or undiscovered.

Then, I'd expand the conversation from talking about the biases of individuals to discussing how communities develop biases over time, how they shape laws and social attitudes during a given place and time, and how socialized values transmit biases to children. How a business or government can create a law based on their biases and how those decisions, in the legal or economic sectors, can have disastrous ripple effects on life in other areas (dismembering social welfare systems, rolling back civil rights, etc.).

Eventually, this leads to a frank investigation about media and business literacy. If you want to consume media or transact money with a business, you must "follow the money". Who wrote this article, directed this segment, or wrote this advert? Who paid for it to be made in the first place? Who owns this publication or business? Are they publicly aligned with a particular political party? Does this platform engage in authenticating their facts or produce significant factual errors?”
-doogietrouser_md

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