6 Day Curriculum 

 

Day 1: Let’s Get This Straight: Verifying Hard Facts

Objective: With class and group activities centered around our fake social media accounts and blog, Pop Digest Daily, students will practice identifying quality sources, correcting erroneous information, as well as “ticking” through proper nouns and “triangulating” multiple sources, insider tricks to ensuring accuracy. We’ll also perform a script of personified fact-check terminology called “This Is Who I Am: Fact-Checking’s Cast of Characters” and then play a game called “Who Am I?” to let them demonstrate their new knowledge. 

​

​

Day 2: Survey Says! Finding the Hard Facts in Studies, Polls, and Surveys

Objective: Students will learn to thoughtfully examine the limitations of studies, surveys and polls by assessing things like population size, poorly designed questions, and biased sampling. We’ll fact-check a news item on Ariana Grande built on a poor survey, and conduct our own survey in the class from which I’ll compose a faulty post students will check in the following class.

​

​

Day 3: You Can Quote Me on This! 

Objective: We’ll start the class with a relevant film clip on the topic of faulty quotes and give students the opportunity to verify/correct manipulated and falsified quotes with a post on Billie Eilish. They'll learn the six cardinal rules of properly quoting people and then play a game called "Okay or No Way?" that will allow them to apply their knowledge. I’ll also recruit their teacher to participate in an interview from which I’ll compose copy riddled with misquotations that students will vet in a game of "Okay or No Way?"

​

​

Day 4: Working Out Conflicts of Interest, Biases and Imbalances

Objective: Through movie clips and a fun group activity, students will learn about the ways conflicts of interest and biases interfere with a writer’s objectivity and neutrality, leading to untrustworthy content. They’ll also perform a script called, “The Bad Reporter” that illuminates bias and a conflict of interest, and learn to apply easy to remember signposts for assessing copy for biases and conflicts of interests.

​

​

Day 5: Owning Your Digital Footprint: Applying Journalistic Standards to Your Social Media Presence

Objective: We’ll look specifically at social media (interrogating our fabricated accounts) to teach students how to critically assess their personal networks for conflicts of interest, biases and imbalances. We’ll also perform a script called “The Break Up” that illuminates bias and imbalanced reporting and read a monologue from the 1976 movie Network to discuss how the societal problem's the protagonist  identifies are worse in the age of social media.

​

The School of Hard Facts P.A.U.S.E. checklist, alongside the high journalistic standards we've instilled in our students over the first four classes, will help them ensure they're conducting themselves with civility, integrity and dignity online.

​

​

Day 6: Why Facts Matter? 

Objective: For the final class, we’ll give the students an assessment test to let them demonstrate their mastery over the knowledge they’ve acquired. Then we’ll conduct a socratic seminar, posing thought-starters like: Why do facts matter to you personally? How does it feel when someone gets – and spreads – something inaccurate about you? Why do facts matter to us collectively as a society? How can we as individuals help thwart the spread of misinformation? After our discussion, we’ll invite students to interview a media insider who will be visiting our class as a guest speaker. Finally, we’ll hand out certificates of completion. 

​

​

To register for classes call 917.267.9690 or go to Sign Up!