Who: Year 9

What: A workshop about fake news

Where: Eastbrook School

When: Tuesday 5th October

Why: Because it’s really important to be discerning readers of media

Today a group of Year 9 students participated in a fantastic workshop hosted by the Guardian newspaper: ‘Fake or for Real?’

The workshop facilitated rich discussions amongst students about news, fake news, how to analyse sources and how to identify misleading stories.

The students explored the concept of unconscious bias through a series of pictures and considered how our thoughts and feelings can be manipulated by misleading news articles.

Students were given a series of headlines and identified if the news was ‘fake’ or ‘for real’. Furthermore, students questioned where we learn information, how trustworthy the source is, and how we manipulate the information.

The big questions when checking the trustworthiness of a story are:

• Who reported the news? (was it a family member? the news? Tiktok? Instagram?)
• Are they a trustworthy source?
• Is the information fact-based or biased? (look out for statistics and fair studies conducted)
• Is it a recent piece of news?
• Where did the source get their information from? Did they link a list of references?
• Why are they reporting the story?

Now that students have considered the importance of critical thinking when reading the news, a follow-up session will involve students creating their own news outlets; they will experiment with the concept of trustworthiness when breaking a story.

Many thanks to Ms Lotter for organising the event and Ms Basir for overseeing and reporting on it!