This week’s Teacher’s Corner will focus on starting a discussion in your classroom about the importance of thinking critically about the news. Students will reflect on where they get most of their news and consider the characteristics of high-quality and trustworthy news sources.

Activities To get students thinking critically

Time: 10-15 minutes to brainstorm news sources. 45 minutes to read the article “Schools, Universities Teach Students the Truth About Fake News” from Voice of America and discuss the concepts presented. 20 minutes for personal reflections and sharing.

Goals:

• to encourage students to think critically about news
• to listen, speak, read, and write in English in order to gather information from a news article
• to create lists of characteristics of quality news
• to write questions for analyzing news sources

Materials:

• Chalk or whiteboard markers
• Pencils, paper or student notebooks
• Timer or another device for keeping time
• Printed copies of the news story “Schools, Universities Teach Students the Truth About Fake News” from Voice of America. (Alternatively, you can project the article onto a screen, read it aloud, or play the audio version.)

Preparation:

1. Decide how you will share the news story from Voice of America with your students. Prepare photocopies or prepare how you will project the piece or play the audio for students.
2. Read or listen to the article yourself and decide on the key points you would like to discuss.

1. Suggestions include playing the embedded video “Spreading the News” and discussing how news travels quickly. Another idea is to talk about the key questions presented by Howard Schneider in the article. You may also want to talk about the importance of getting news from various sources.

Activity One: Brainstorming News Sources

Procedure:

1. Begin by having students gather in small groups of 3-5. On the board, create a thinking map by writing the question Where do we get news? inside a circle. Draw one line coming out from the circle and write the name of a news source, such as newspapers, at the end of the line.
2. Explain to students that they will have about five minutes to create a thinking map in their groups. They should copy what you have written on the board, and then they should draw more lines and add all of the sources of news that they can think of. Provide each group with one piece of paper and a pencil, or have students create maps in their notebooks. Time the groups for five minutes.
3. Once time is up, ask each group to share one of the sources they listed. Record students’ responses by adding them to the thinking map on the board. Continue until all the different sources that each group thought of have been listed on the map.
4. Next, ask students which sources they think are most commonly used in your community. Students can discuss this in groups, or the whole class can discuss it together. Once everyone more or less agrees on the common news sources, circle those sources on the map, or create a separate list on the board. Select between five and eight popular sources and keep this list to use for next week’s activity.

Activity two: Learning about fake news

Procedure:

1. Begin by asking students if they have ever heard of fake news and what it is. If this concept is not familiar to your students, you can play the video “Spreading the News,” which is embedded in the Voice of America article.
2. Have students brainstorm a list of possible ways one might know that news is fake or exaggerated. Record these on chart paper.
3. Share the article “Schools, Universities Teach Students the Truth About Fake News” from Voice of America with students. Allow students to read or listen to the whole article once without stopping.
4. Next, have students listen or read again, this time looking or listening for key information. You can write the following questions on the board for students to consider:
   
   1. What is fake news? What are some signs that a news story could be fake?
   2. What questions should readers and other consumers of news ask to determine if a news story may be fake? (What does Howard Schneider suggest?)
5. Once everyone has had sufficient time to answer the questions, ask students to share their responses to the questions in Part A (Step 4) with the whole class. To the list on chart paper, add any new possible ways a consumer might know that news is fake or exaggerated.
6. To contrast the list of characteristics of fake news, ask students how a high-quality news story would be different. Ask, “How would a news story that is trustworthy or high quality be different from the list we’ve created about fake news? What things would you see in a reliable news story?” Ideas might include names of sources, recognizable journalists or news outlets, verifiable facts, etc. Record this list on chart paper as well.

Activity three: Asking Questions About the News

Procedure:

1. Tell students, “Today we learned about some of the characteristics of questionable news as well as characteristics of quality news. Now we need to decide how to think critically and examine the news we see.”
2. Have students open their notebooks again and read the responses they wrote down in their small groups for Part B in Activity Two, Step 4.
3. Once students have reviewed what they wrote down, say, “Now you will write a list of at least five to help you to decide if news is trustworthy or could contain parts that are fake. You have ten minutes to write your list.”
4. Set the timer and move around the room. Monitor students and provide assistance as needed.
5. When the timer goes off, ask students to gather in groups of three to share their lists. Set the timer for five minutes.
6. Once students have shared in small groups, have volunteers tell the class their ideas about how they can determine the quality of news. Using chart paper, record student responses. Keep this list on display in the classroom. You can continue to add any additional ideas that students have or learn about during the rest of the series of media literacy activities.

This week’s Teacher’s Corner activities ask students to start thinking about commonly used news sources and characteristics of high-quality news. In future activities, students will have a chance to apply this reasoning to examine news from different sources and to reflect on what they observe.

Because of their limited vocabulary and language skills, beginner-level students may have trouble showing their understanding and responding to questions when compared to more advanced peers. Teachers should provide scaffolds for learning questions: starting with very basic language structures and then building up to more complex structures. Scaffolding helps beginners to show what they are learning from an early stage, even if the students are still acquiring the language that they need to express ideas on their own.

This week in the Teacher’s Corner, we will discuss how to scaffold questions to help beginning learners become more comfortable with responding to questions. We will also explore several simple response strategies for beginners that help to engage students and to check their understanding.

A teacher who asks an open-ended question to a class of beginner students will likely be met with blank stares, confusion, or silence (See examples of open-ended questions below.). Learners at this level usually do not have the language skills they need to comprehend an open-ended question, much less respond to it. Even if students understand what is being asked, they may be shy to speak or worried about making errors. To avoid this situation, we can ask or adapt questions in several different ways to make them more accessible to our beginners.

Yes/No Questions: Posing questions to which students can simply respond “yes” or “no” allows students to express opinions or show what they have learned without having to depend on vocabulary or language forms they may not have. For instance, compare the following questions:

As shown in the table above, yes/no questions can be used to review content or for students to share information about themselves.

Either/Or Questions: Posing an either/or question allows beginner-level students to choose the correct answer from only two options. Consider the table below, which shows how the same open-ended questions can be posed in the either-or format:

Limiting Answer Choices: Often students take tests or complete work with multiple-choice questions. For beginners, the standard multiple-choice question with four answer choices can be overwhelming or confusing. To make these questions more accessible, we can limit the number of options. To do this, we can simply cross out two of the incorrect options, or create activities with only two options for each question. As beginners become more proficient, we can add in a third choice and eventually work up to four.  

After asking a question, some teachers can become uncomfortable if students do not respond quickly. However, students who are just starting to learn a language need more time to think about what they are hearing and to articulate a response. For this reason, teachers who have beginner-level students are encouraged to give students more time to think about and answer questions. 

Pose, Then Pause: A good strategy with beginner-level students is to include some “think time” after asking a question. This works especially well for questions that require a more open-ended response that requires students to produce more language. For instance, a teacher might say “What will you do after school today?” and then indicate to students that they have time to think about their response. The amount of “think time” may vary based on learners’ ages and proficiency, but 10-30 seconds is usually sufficient. Here are some other options: use a timer; give students a verbal cue by saying something like “Think about this. Then I will ask you to answer”; or give students a visual cue (such as a signal or gesture) to indicate “think time.” Once students have had time to think about their responses, they can raise their hands to respond.  For more information on decreasing teacher talk time, check out this American English webinar: Teacher Talk: Presentation Skills for Teachers.

Calling on Students: Even when beginner students are ready to respond, they may still need additional time to answer. Beginners may start to answer but struggle to produce the needed language, or they may make an error during their responses. As teachers, we are often quick to respond and to assist our students in these situations. However, if our goal is to help learners develop their English, it may actually be better if we wait to let the student work to form a response on his or her own. If the student continues to have difficulty after 5-10 seconds, we can then provide guidance or ask a clarifying question to help.

In addition to asking questions that are easier to respond to, teachers can also let beginner students communicate responses in non-verbal ways. Even though it is important to give beginners frequent chances to practice producing language in the English classroom, mixing in some non-verbal activities can have positive effects. The following non-verbal strategies can be used with any of the question formats described above. These strategies can take away some of the pressure that beginners often feel when speaking English, and successful communication, even if non-verbal, can motivate students.

Hand Signals: Students can respond to yes/no questions by using a hand signal such as the “thumbs up” for yes or “thumbs down” for no. Hand signals can also be used to show agreement or disagreement with a statement, or to indicate whether something is true or false.

If asking students to make a choice between multiple options, designate a number for each option. Then students can indicate their answer choice by holding up one, two, or three fingers, etc. As mentioned in the earlier discussion about multiple-choice questions, do not give beginners too many choices at first.

Stand Up/Sit Down: When responding to questions with two answer options, students can stand or sit to indicate their response. Similar to hand signals, this strategy can be used for yes/no questions, true/false questions, agree/disagree statements, or either/or questions.

Move to the Answer: This strategy also uses the full body to respond. Designate different areas of the classroom for different responses. For example, divide the classroom in half and designate sides as yes/no, true/false, agree/disagree, etc. To respond to the question, students move to the side that indicates their response. This strategy can also be used for reviewing content that lends itself to two different categories or topics.

As students become more proficient, the corners of the room can be used, and thus the number of responses can be increased. For example, if using multiple-choice questions, label the corners A, B, C, and D. This technique can also be used to help students “sort” information into up to four different categories.

This puzzle is called Mountain Climbing, with clues for words that give encouragement to people climbing a mountain or taking on other difficult challenges.

This article profiles the teaching context at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science and describes how educator Santosh Kumar Mahapatra develops creative lessons to motivate his students to learn and achieve success both in and out of the classroom.