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.