Why Teach Fake News in the Middle School ELA Classroom?

Fake news is ever-present in today’s society. All we have to do is scroll through our social media feeds and it is being shared by organizations, as well as our friends and families. It is important that students learn about the existence of this menace and how to identify it.

The following are 8 reasons why you should teach about fake news in your middle school ELA classroom.

Students need to learn to think critically about the media they consume daily. They are bombarded with messages and need to sift through the fake and find the real.
Fake news lessons are extremely engaging and will keep students interested in your lessons.
Students need explicit practice looking at this type of news to work on their thinking skills.
Students will learn to recognize this type of news and not get scammed by all the online phishing that occurs.
It is important to teach students to look beyond the headline and dig deeper into their reading material. Not everything online is truthful. This message needs to be regularly reinforced.
Recognizing an advertisement versus real information is also a critical skill that can be taught alongside fake news.
Teaching this concept will help students develop independent thinking skills.
Students will learn to analyze videos and seek out the truth versus clickbait.

Fake News Unit

If you are interested in teaching about this topic to your middle school students – check out this ready-to-go Fake News Unit. This unit contains both PDF and digital versions so students can work through the lessons on paper or online.

This unit contains 5 high-interest lessons to help students understand this type of news and how to spot it. It contains individual PDFs of student pages to assist with online learning i.e. Google Classroom™ as well as Google Slides™ formatted lessons for 1:1 schools.

Lesson Topics