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Lateral Reading: Use This Skill to Determine if What is Read is Accurate
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Activity Description
Using Civic Online Reasoning we can teach our students the skills to determine if information from the internet is accurate, inaccurate or misleading. In this lesson, you will introduce Lateral Reading, then practice it using posts, news articles or blogs
Preparation
- Check the website to ensure it is not blocked at your site.
- Read through the lesson plan.
- Print and make copies of any handouts.
- Review the Civic Online Reasoning video
How-To
Go to Teaching Lateral Reading. At this site, you will find many lessons prepared for you. To see the complete list of lessons with links, see More Ways.
For this lesson, review Intro to Lateral Reading.
Go through the Access Materials: Teacher Materials and Student Materials (this is a worksheet including a link to a post and questions for student group discussion) Print the worksheet of questions or create your own
More Ways
More lessons available at the site:
- Into to Lateral Reading
- Lateral Reading Resources and Practice
- Lateral Reading vs. Vertical Reading
- Lateral Reading with News Stories
- Lateral Reading with Fact-Checking Organizations
- Lateral Reading Poster
Program Areas
- ABE: Adult Basic Education
- ESL: English as a Second Language
- ASE: High School Equivalency Preparation
- ASE: High School Diploma
Levels
- Intermediate
- High
- All Levels
- Intermediate Low
- Intermediate High
- Advanced
Lesson Plan
Begin with a short discussion to engage students in thinking about online information.
Ask: “When you read something online, how do you decide if it is trustworthy? What strategies do you use to evaluate an unfamiliar source?”
In pairs, have students brainstorm and list common challenges they face when determining if online content is credible. Share lists with the class.
Explain the concept of lateral reading: Unlike vertical reading (staying on the same page to verify credibility), lateral reading involves opening new tabs to research the source itself.
Today's objective: Highlight the importance of identifying who is behind the information to evaluate its reliability. Emphasize how expert fact-checkers often use lateral reading to quickly assess the credibility of a source.
Teacher-led demonstration: Show an example of an online post or article that looks credible at first glance.
Demonstrate vertical reading techniques, then switch to lateral reading:
- Open a new tab to search for the organization or author behind the post.
- Check their background on trusted sites (e.g., Wikipedia, news articles, or fact-checking websites).
Ask the following key questions, follow up by asking why theses questions are important to consider:
- Who is behind the information?
- What is their purpose?
- Do they have any biases or affiliations that could affect their credibility?
Divide students into small groups. Provide each group with a different online post (these could be real social media posts, news articles, or blog entries) or use the link to a post in the Intro to Lateral Reading Guiding Questions.
First, discuss the initial impressions of the post using vertical reading. Then, use lateral reading to investigate who is behind the information.
Guiding questions:
- What did you find when researching the source?
- Does the background of the author or organization impact the reliability of the information?
- What sources did you use to verify the author’s credibility?
If you use the worksheet Intro to Lateral Reading Guiding Questions--the worksheet includes a link to a post for students to evaluate, or you can choose a different one. The worksheet includes 4 questions below. You can print the worksheet or write the short URL and the questions on the whiteboard.
- What is the name of the Twitter account? Do you know anything about this source already?
- What can you learn about the person behind the Twitter account? (Although it’s okay to start with something like the Twitter profile, you also need to go outside the post!)
- What sources did you use to learn about the person behind the Twitter account? How do you know that these are good sources?
- Based on your lateral reading, do you think this account is a trustworthy source of information about the school walkouts? Explain.
Each group presents their findings to the class, explaining how their understanding of the post’s reliability changed after using lateral reading.
Provide feedback on their methods and suggest additional strategies or resources that could be useful in future evaluations.
Have students pick an online article or post they have recently encountered (or provide an article for those who don’t have one).
Ask them to apply lateral reading techniques independently to evaluate the source and answer the question, “Who is behind the information?”
Students write a brief summary of their findings and how lateral reading changed their perception of the source's credibility.
To prepare for further discussions on this topic:
Ask students to use lateral reading to evaluate three different sources on a similar topic (e.g., health advice, current events). In the next class, they can share which source was most reliable and why.
Subjects
- Language Arts - Reading
- Analysis
- Comprehension
- Inference and Interpretation
- Synthesis and Generalization
- Language Arts - Writing
- Organization of Ideas
- Reading
- Critical Thinking/Decision Making
- Learning to Learn
- Vocabulary
- Writing
- Paragraph Skills
Standards
- Reading
- CCR Anchor 1 - Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
- CCR Anchor 2 - Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
- CCR Anchor 4 - Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
- CCR Anchor 8 - Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
- CCR Anchor 9 - Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
- Writing
- CCR Anchor 1 - Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- CCR Anchor 2 - Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
- Speaking and Listening
- CCR Anchor 1 - Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
- Language
- CCR Anchor 4 - Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
- CCR Anchor 6 - Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when encountering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.
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