Instructor Resources

ATTENTION INSTRUCTORS!

The News Literacy Project is an innovative national program that helps middle school and high school students learn and apply the elements of quality journalism to enhance their academic work and to make them better-informed, more empowered citizens.

With support from the McCormick Foundation, NLP is able to offer its services to After School Matters instructors who are interested in helping their students engage social issues, evaluate sources of information, become more information-savvy in the digital age, and produce high-quality information themselves.

Here are some ways that news literacy might be used to enrich programming across each content area of After School Matters:

gallery37: Develop a lesson on the difference between straight news and opinion using examples from arts and entertainment coverage, and then lead a discussion about the role and value of arts, both locally and nationally.

words37: Give creative writers a prompt that asks them to imagine life without First Amendment rights under a government with no transparency or accountability; or have poetry apprentices research a social issue and use credible facts to express themselves about that issue; or have journalism and media students produce a high-quality report on an issue that matters to them.

tech37: Teach students about information in the digital age by having them analyze the many ways that news is now distributed in the digital age. Apprentices could learn about share links, blogging, API, and news aggregators, all of which are reshaping the information landscape in revolutionary ways.

sports37: Apprentices could take a day to learn about how sports are covered by news organizations, and the way digital information like texts, Tweets, and other public updates can affect athletes’ careers.

science37: Develop a lesson on evaluating sources of information and finding credible facts to explore issues such as global warming, green technologies, local pollution and health, and food production.

To learn more about these and other ways that news literacy might be used in your program, please visit www.thenewsliteracyproject.org, or contact Peter Adams, the Chicago program manager for NLP at peteradams <at> thenewsliteracyproject.org.