English Language Arts Grades 7-9

This two minute video explains the value of source attribution to students and provides MLA examples.

This 3-minute animated video explains why students need to cite their sources in a bibliography and how citations are presented.

This University of Alberta guide provides references to sources that can help students and educators properly cite online sources.

This module provides the What? When? Where? Why? and How? of proper academic citation. See how MLA, APA and Chicago style citations are set out. You can practice identifying the key elements of citations and then try the quiz.

This 4 minute video gives step by step instructions to help students to insert citations and create a bibliography directly in Google Docs.

A brief description of the four ways to give appropriate credit when using a picture or other work that has a creative commons license.

This post offers 6 strategies to embed the proper use of quotation in class. While this content contributor also has a lesson pack for sale, many of their ideas are free and easily incorporated into your existing units.

This 3 minute video explains the basics of copyright. It will help students (and teachers) to understand how source attribution works in the real-world.

Animoto provides an array of tools for creating videos in your classroom. Browse some of the features and check out how others are using this tool.

A great guide for students to learn about how to create an awesome poster presentation.

Teacher Wynne gives viewers tips on how to give a great oral presentation.

Prezi is tool for creating dynamic presentations. Create your own Prezi by using one of the templates provided.

An add-on extension for the Chrome browser that lets teachers easily capture their screen commands in a video. Videos can be edited and marked up.

This rubric for evaluating websites comes from Galileo Educational Network. Use 11 different elements of a website, including layout, sources and content for evaluation.

This post outlines 50 ideas for activities to help students learn research and citation skills.

This is a downloadable poster (recommended grades 6-8) that you can hang in your classroom. Help your students evaluate the websites that they're using.

This is a collection of news and media literacy resources to help your students (various grade levels) explore the implications of the information they create, share, and consume. They'll develop skills that can help them go beyond fake news to identify the most reliable sources.

Google has a collection of helpful lesson plans, videos and presentations for improving your search skills or teaching the skills in a classroom.

This is a search engine that also offers tools to help kids learn to be better searchers.

In this lesson, for grades 7-12, students apply the “5Ws" to online resources. Students use their skills to authenticate the information in an online article about the artificial sweetener, aspartame.

Check out this selection of teaching resources drawing on seven key aspects of digital literacy and connected to curriculum; each lesson has one or more icons to indicate which digital literacy themes it covers.

Did you know that almost a quarter of adults have shared a false news story? This is a great new resource with advice on how to identify hoaxes and other false content.

This is a tip sheet designed to help parents help their kids do homework and research online. Find (reliable) information more effectively.

This is a collection of engaging "missions" during which students read a story on a social network feed; the story might be entirely true, entirely false, or somewhere in between. Students click on different parts to see the clues and then decide how reliable the story is and how to respond. Each scenario is designed to be played in 15 minutes or less.

This news literacy program aims to equip students in grades 4 - 12 with skills to assess information online, determine what sources are accurate and credible, and build awareness of journalism’s role in democracy. The resources, including lessons and videos, are themed: Journalism, The News, The Internet, Fake News and Verification.

Help your students to form essential questions for the research papers by showing them different ways to probe a topic. This webpage offers examples of 7 different types of questions.

This classroom resource, based on the book Ready Player One and created by an educator, has discussion ideas, videos and interviews. The resource promotes critical literacy and the importance of understanding how ideas are constructed and shared.

This article has four sections addressing recent findings about how adolescents do research: critical evaluation, modelling and practice, prompting and healthy skepticism.

When they’re used well, graphs can help us intuitively grasp complex data. But as visual software has enabled more usage of graphs throughout all media, it has also made them easier to use in a careless or dishonest way — and as it turns out, there are plenty of ways graphs can mislead and outright manipulate. Lea Gaslowitz shares some things to look out for.

A site that is dedicated to identifying sources of misinformation (aka 'fake news') about the corona virus

A fact-checking website with an established history of journalistic rigor that partners with Facebook to combat viral fake news. It is focused on US politics

A UK-based fact checking site that is known for it's neutrality.

Lead Stories is a lesser-known website that helps users fact-check information. The website debunks fake news across a variety of beats, including entertainment, tech, politics, and international news.

An excellent bias rating resource -- this site examines sourcing, biased wording, story choices, and political affiliation.

PolitiFact is a non-partisan fact-checking website that focuses on political claims made in the US.

The global edition of PolitiFact reports on the truth of news stories outside of the United States

Snopes started out as a site that mainly dealt with urban legends, myths, common misconceptions, rumors, and conspiracy theories. However, it has expanded to encompass general fact-checking of viral misinformation, including political statements.

TruthOrFiction.com is one of the longest-running fact-checking sites out there. While it initially focused on looking at internet hoaxes and rumors, it has extended its range to include general fake news as well.