News Analysis: Critical Analysis of the Most Important News of the Day
What's included
1 live meeting
55 mins in-class hours per weekClass Experience
US Grade 8 - 11
News literacy is a subset of media literacy focused on helping people process and understand news media messages, to locate more factual and credible information, and to think critically about what counts as news. News literacy is also about recognizing that quality, credible, independent news and journalism are critical components of any free and democratic society. Each week learners will come to class to read and analyze 2 current events of the day. We will analyze the source to determine where is came from, if it is an opinion or fact piece, if there is bias, if it can be corraborated etc. We will fact check and use critical analysis in order to each determine, individually, how to form our own opinions and ideas from the event. This critical exercise for ethical individuals living in a democratic society will hope to create life-long critical consumers of current events and news in our modern day democratic societies. The topics will be chosen each week depending on class consensus and important news of the week. The teacher will provide several options and the two that most interest the majority of learners that week will be chosen. For example, one week the potential topics could include, the conflict in Ukraine, crypto-currency, rising temperatures in the Arctic, coup d état in Mali. From those topics, the learners will chose which two interest them the most that week. Then, based on the topics we will read several types of source material, such as, for example, a front page news article, a opinion blog post and an editorial in order to compare and understand exactly where the source comes from, whether there is bias or perspective and whether facts can be corroborated.
Learning Goals
This ongoing course hopes to help learners feel confident in their ability to consume news with greater literacy, to identify mis-information and bias, to identify the difference between opinion and fact-based reporting and to critically analyze fact-based information to help inform their own personal opinions about society and the current events of the day.
Other Details
Parental Guidance
Learners will be presented each week with three or four current events and by consensus we will chose two of them to evaluate each week. Parents should be comfortable with their learners analyzing weekly current events around the globe. These topics may include controversial current events such as Covid or recent Supreme Court decisions and/or conflict around the globe such as the Ukraine/Russia situation.
External Resources
In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses:
Sources
current events will be taken from one of the most read global publishers of news.
Reviews
Live Group Class
$17
weekly1x per week
55 min
Completed by 70 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 13-18
4-14 learners per class