Lateral Reading: Use This Skill to Determine if What is Read is Accurate

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.