MISS HENNINGS TEACHES

In November 2017, I had the privilege of teaching the digital citizenship lesson I created to a handful of local Bloomington sixth-graders. These students had the opportunity to both visit Indiana University’s campus (accompanied by their teachers, of course!) and learn more about how to use technology appropriately and be a good citizen online. In my lesson, I chose to focus specifically on information literacy--a component of digital citizenship that refers to the ability to effectively and efficiently find, analyze, and evaluate information from a variety of sources.

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While my lesson was founded broadly on the concept of information literacy, I chose to focus more specifically on how to distinguish between “fake” news and “real” news, as well as how to identify trustworthy sources of information. To introduce the lesson, engage the students, and gauge their prior knowledge, I started with a short Kahoot! quiz, which the students used the iPads to complete. After that I verbally reviewed the reference sheet handout that I gave to each of the students, which provided an overview of ten main strategies for determining if a news article is “fake” news or “real” news. Then the students applied their new knowledge by participating in a board game that I created, which asked the students to determine whether or not a particular news article was real and explain their rationale. Finally, I concluded the lesson with a short,  3-4 minute reflection on the material and the board game, which provided the students with the opportunity to pose any remaining questions and give feedback on the activity as a whole.  

Technology proved to be an integral part of the lesson; most components of the lesson would not have worked without it! The students worked mostly with the iPads, which they used to participate in both the Kahoot! quiz and the board game. We created our game to include QR codes on each of the game cards which linked to each article that the students were asked to review. To access them, the students would simply scan the QR codes on their iPads. This easily allowed all players--not just those taking their turn--to read the articles and follow along. Because of this, I think integrating technology into the lesson was certainly beneficial and made the lesson more efficient and engaging overall. The students seemed to thoroughly enjoy working with the iPads and really liked being able to follow along with their peers on their own devices. Because everyone was able to read the articles used in the game, no one felt bored or left out, even when it wasn’t their turn. However, I think I could further improve the lesson with technology by creating a Nearpod presentation for the ten strategies on how to distinguish between “fake” news and “real” news. This would allow students to follow along on their individual iPads for that aspect of the lesson as well, which seemed to excite them and promote participation.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed working with the sixth-graders and had fun teaching them the lesson we created. It was neat to see the lesson that I worked so hard to develop actually be implemented with real students! However, I realized from this experience that I definitely do not want to teach sixth-graders. They have too much energy for me and are still too immature. Also, I was a little surprised at how much the students were interested in the iPads and how engaged they were when using them. They seemed attentive and eager to participate the entire time they were allowed to use these devices. Even though I want to teach high school students, I will definitely keep this fact in mind!