Teacher Feature - Weston Gleiss - September 2024

 

Weston Gleiss is a Social Studies Teacher at Eagle Valley High School. He teaches senior government and politics as well as AP US Government and Politics.  Weston has been working in the district for all of his 12 years in education.  Continue reading below to see how he tackles teaching news literacy with his high school students! 

What question were you trying to answer?

With the advent of smart phones and 1 to 1 devices in the classroom, I set out to answer "How can I teach kids to evaluate news sources in the age of information overload?"

How did you decide to answer that question?

I sought the internet for information on the topic. As I searched I came across a Crash Course series on evaluating digital media. I watched through the videos and created discussion questions for the kids to answer. Throughout the semester I try to play the videos at the start of class as a warm up activity. We then discuss the videos and apply them to what we are doing.

What impact did the solution have on your students? 

It has lead to some really engaging discussions about recognizing perspective when reading. It is cool to see kids recognize that every writer approaches the topic with their own perspective. We also discuss lateral reading or opening a new tab to check on the source you are reading about. That is a quick way to discern whether or not you are getting good, accurate information. When we have conversations later in the semester, students do a good job of challenging each other's sources and information. They are also more comfortable sifting through sources and recognizing perspective and considering that as they evaluate the information.

If you were to do it all again, would you do anything different? Any other tips or tricks you would recommend for teachers wanting to implement something similar in their classroom? 

I’d like to improve this by doing it more frequently. Right now I mainly use a few of the videos. I’d like to have them explicitly practice more of the things the videos show so they can experience it and get comfortable with digital literacy. Oftentimes syncing it with current event activities gives them a good chance to practice.