In August our Ed Tech Digital Learning Experience kicked off for the 2023-2024 school year with more emphasis on teacher choice. One choice available to all of our high schools and several middle schools is the Explore topic which emphasizes facilitating meaningful discussion and inviting intellectual curiosity in digital spaces.
At Liberty High School, Lora Gillingham led the August PD session that the secondary librarians planned with a deep dive into lateral reading, media bias, and misinformation. Teachers were able to learn more about these skills and then brainstorm how they might use them in their classes.
Cameron Talley, who teaches World History at Liberty, saw an immediate connection to his upcoming unit where students need to use critical thinking skills and the Gale databases for research a current event on a topic of their choosing. He reached out to Lora to co-teach with his class so that she could showcase to students how to use lateral reading to increase their critical thinking skills and research skills. In addition, she was able to emphasize the importance of recognizing misinformation and bias in the media.
Lora showcased what lateral reading is through the use of videos and activities to apply it. For example, one video showed how easily something can be misrepresented when two girls throw a can of soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at the National Gallery in London and proceed to glue themselves to the wall. At first, this came across as a blatant disregard for priceless art, but with a little more investigation, viewers would find that they knew it had glass on it and were doing it for attention for their cause, not to ruin the art.
The art of lateral reading, which includes skills such as taking time to stop and think about the information being presented, learning about the source, comparing sources, and checking the links and citations. These are all skills that support critical thinking and encourage students to create judgments and opinions based on evidence and context rather than over-relying on sensational media.
In addition to the introduction to lateral reading, Lora shared steps students can take to verify the credibility of the sources such as using fact-checking sites like Snopes and Verify, checking for author bias, and understanding bias in the media. She also introduced the students to the library databases as a secure place to conduct research with verified and credible sources.
Overall, the lesson not only prepares students to be better researchers and engages them in critical thinking, it also gives them the tools and habits of mind that help them create context for the flood of information they are exposed to daily, meeting them where they are at. If this lesson sounds like something you would like your class to participate in, please check with your school librarian.