Civic Online Reasoning Print Materials

Many of the activities in the Civic Online Reasoning curriculum have been designed to be delivered electronically via Google Docs and Forms, but we recognize that print materials may be useful to many teachers and students.

The activities listed below were designed to be delivered to students as printed pages. Alternatively, they can be shared electronically as PDFs.

Home Page Analysis

The growth of native advertising has made it more difficult to know when there is an ulterior motive behind online content. This task assesses students’ ability to distinguish between articles and advertisements.

Comparing Articles

In this task, students must evaluate two articles from the same news outlet, consider potential conflicts of interest, and determine which they find to be more reliable.

Article Analysis

Before reading any online source, students need to ask a fundamental question: Who is the author? This task asks students examine the headline of an article about personal finance that is sponsored by a bank.

News Search

In order for students to effectively navigate the news, they need to understand the differences between news stories and opinion columns. This task assesses a student’s ability to recognize and differentiate news and opinion articles in an online format.

News on Twitter

This assessment gauges students’ ability to assess the trustworthiness of different kinds of posts made about breaking news on Twitter.

News on Facebook

In this task, students are presented with two news stories posted on social media and asked to determine which is the more trustworthy source.

Evaluating Evidence

This assessment measures students’ ability to evaluate evidence when it takes the form of a vivid photograph.

Argument Analysis

This task measures students’ ability to evaluate the relative strengths of arguments made in the comments section of a news website.

Comments Section

This task presents students with a claim from the comments section of an online news site and gauges their ability to reason about what makes a comment more or less trustworthy.

Facebook Argument

This task assesses students’ ability to evaluate the evidence used to support claims that appear in a Facebook conversation.