Critical Information Literacy Project

Strengths

We feel we designed a lesson that fits into the third grade language arts curriculum. In this curriculum, students study a unit on inventions and innovations, which has a subunit that focuses on types of renewable energy that can be used in place of fossil fuels. This lesson will incorporate different websites, a t-chart, and a website evaluation sheet that will have the students thinking critically about these different websites. The students will determine if they should use a certain website, should abstain from using a website, or use the website as a good starting point to research further. There are many times throughout the year where the third grade students will need to research using different websites, and it is valuable if they know when a site is credible or not.
 

 

Shortcomings

A lot of the websites we were finding on the internet did not always have an author or a date that was

associated with it. We don’t want students to think just because those items are not listed on the

website that it is not a credible source. We were finding that a lot of credible sources did not always

have all the components we were looking for on the checklist. We want students to really think critically about websites and not just dismiss a website because you cannot check off all the boxes on the checklist. Our hopes are that as they get older and become better critical thinkers that this process will become more routine for them.