This lesson will help students sort through the myriad points of view offered on the Internet and evaluate the sources and purposes of news articles and Web sites. Students will read articles from National Geographic News and answer questions describing each article's source, purpose, and viewpoint.

Students will then research the topics presented in an article of their choice and evaluate the resources they find. They will conclude by creating checklists they can use in the future to evaluate articles, Web sites, and other information.

Geography, language arts, information literacy

Standard 18: "How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future"

Three hours

• Computer with Internet access
• Writing materials

Students will

• read and answer questions about two articles from National Geographic News, focusing on the articles' purposes and points of view;
• answer questions about a different National Geographic News article of their choice;
• find two additional articles or Web sites on the same topic as the National Geographic News article they chose, and determine the sources, purposes, and viewpoints of these articles or sites; and
• create checklists to use when first reading news articles or Web sites.

Hold up a copy of today's newspaper, and read some of the headlines to the class. Ask students to explain the purposes of the front-page articles. For example, articles can be intended to educate, inform, entertain, or convince.

Ask students if they have seen any different types of news information on the Internet. What news Web sites have they been to? Have they seen articles that have purposes similar to the ones they saw on today's front page?

Have students read the following two articles from National Geographic News and answer the questions that follow about what they have read:

Star-Spangled Banner "Too Fragile to Hang Again"

• What is this article about? Summarize it in two to five sentences. (You can also have students answer the six basic journalistic questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.)
• What is the purpose of this article?
• What organization published this article?
• Does the article have a point of view? Can you tell how the author feels about this issue?

Opinion: The Last Chance to Save Indonesia's Forest Riches

• What is this article about? Summarize it in two to five sentences. (You can also have students answer the six basic journalistic questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.)
• What is the purpose of this article?
• What organization published this article? (This is a wire story, written by others and originally printed elsewhere. How does that impact these questions and this lesson?)
• Does the article have a point of view? Can you tell how the author feels about this issue?
• Why is the first word in this article's headline "opinion"? What if that word were not in the headline? Would you be able to tell that it is an opinion article? Why or why not?

Discuss students' answers as a class. Ask them why they think it is important to be aware of the organization that publishes an article and to determine the author's point of view and the article's purpose. Make sure they understand the difference between an editorial, an opinion article, and an objective journalistic article.

Provide these examples of why it is important to understand the basic aspects of any article or Web site:

• Imagine you are researching the question of whether a certain whale species is experiencing a population decline. You come across two articles on this topic. One says that the whale population has decreased significantly over the past decade, while the other says the population has not decreased at all. Who will you believe? Check the sources of the articles—perhaps one is produced by an environmental organization and the other is produced by a business that uses whale products.
  
  
• Imagine it is a presidential election year, and your school is holding a mock election. You want to use the Internet to help figure out which presidential candidate to vote for. You find two Web sites about a particular candidate: one says this candidate is great and should be elected, and the other says he or she is terrible and should not be elected. Which article, if any, will you believe? Examine the articles' sources, keeping in mind that they are both opinion pieces. Perhaps one article is sponsored by the Republican candidate's campaign committee and the other is sponsored by the Democratic candidate's campaign committee.

Have students, either in groups or individually, choose one story from National Geographic News and answer these four questions about it. The article should be a recent one, published within the last two months.

• What is this article about? Summarize it in two to five sentences. (You can also have them answer the six basic journalistic questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.)
• What is the purpose of this article?
• Which organization published this article?
• Does the article have a point of view? Can you tell how the author feels about this issue?

Have students search the Internet for two additional news articles or Web sites that relate to the topic of the National Geographic News article they chose. Or have them look for related articles in newspapers or magazines.

Have students examine the additional articles they have read and answer the four questions on the list above for each one. A helpful hint to figure out a Web site's source is to look for a button on the Web page that says "Home" or "About Us." Students can also try reducing the URL to its root (e.g., "http://www.nationalgeographic.com" rather than "http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions"). Either of these methods should lead them to a page that provides background information about the Web site and those who produce it.

Have students share some of their articles and answers with the class. Discuss the differences between the articles or Web pages they have read. Did anyone find an article or Web page that expressed a strong viewpoint? If so, did it clearly state that it was an opinion piece? What organization produced this article? What was the article's purpose?

Ask students to describe the reasons why it is a good idea to answer these four questions for every article or Web page they read.

Pose this question to the class: "In the future, when you see an article on the Web or in print, how will you decide whether or not to believe the information in it?" Then have them create checklists that they can use when examining an article or Web site.

Students' checklists should pose questions they would ask themselves as they read news articles in the future. Students should also provide boxes that can be checked off under headings such as "yes," "maybe," or "no." The questions on the checklists should encourage students to look for an article's source, purposes, and biases or viewpoints.

Hold a class debate on an environmental or geographic issue raised in a National Geographic News article. Half the class should take one side, and the other half should take the opposing viewpoint. Have students use the Internet and print materials to find statements that support their assigned viewpoints.

After the debate, "debrief" the class by discussing the processes they went through to find appropriate resources. Was it easy to find their assigned viewpoints represented? How easy was it to figure out which point of view a particular writer held? How convincing did the resources seem to be? If time permits, have students discuss their own opinions about this issue.

Environmental News Network
Media Awareness Network
National Geographic News