FNF Plugin #3: "Detailed" for CER

Lesson Plan

Learning Targets

I can use the Fake News Fitness plugin to analyze a web-based claim and the evidence and reasoning given for that claim.
I can make a evidentiary judgement about whether to trust the claim.

Preparation

NOTE: Your third use of the Fake News Fitness plugin is to make a "detailed" judgement about a page, which includes reading the content and looking at other pages on the website and on other websites that evaluate this site.

STUDENTS: Before moving forward, you should have found a page to investigate, and a claim made by the page that you are going to do deep work with. During the process below, raise any questions you have with the teacher -- don't guess or leave things out.

Outline

Navigate to an article to evaluate and click the red F/N button.
If you see four tabs, that's both Default and Detailed - you're in the right configuration.
Fill any empty On Page (tab 1) form fields with what you can pull from the page.
Switch to Trust Rank (tab 2) and complete that. This is surface analysis with lateral searching.
The lateral searching (for reputation) and consideration of bias should inform your Trust Rank.
Switch to CER Links (tab 3) and delete any Evidence Links that are not connected to the claim. If this is the Washington Post and there are MANY, delete them all and then add a few back below.
Summarize the evidence given and the reasoning that connects it to the claim made.
Switch to Actions (tab 4) and rank the validity of the Claim=>Evidence=>Reasoning links. The 5 options are defined in detail at the bottom of this page.
Explain your Claim Validity Rank, and include a question prompt for students to comment on. This is important, because other students will be doing this next class, as you will on their work.
Save to Google Drive, or copy/paste to a Word doc, and share it so that any visitor can comment.

New Data and Options in the Detailed Version of the Form

Detailed Form: New Fields

Lede Paragraph: This gives context for the claim, although the claim may not be given there.

Focus Claim Summary: For this assignment, choose one claim from the Lede or from within the article and summarize it.

Evidence Links: This is evidence given by the article for the claim. "Only Content Links" might be empty, or might have many links. Keep only links that support the claim you're evaluating. Or, delete all, and add yours back below the list.

Summarize the evidence as you see it, or copy/paste an expert summary if you can't understand the evidence. See the example at right.

Reasoning: Summarize the reasoning connecting the evidence to the claim. If the reasoning is not explicit, say what is implied in the article.

Claim Validity Rank: The 5 options at the top of the right-hand column are explained below in blue. This is the linked help page, reached by clicking the question mark icon at the top.

The Five Claim Validity Ranks

At the top of the Actions tab is a place to rank whether you consider that the article claim you chose to focus on is supported by the evidence and the reasoning connecting that evidence to the claim. There are five options given, followed below by detailed explanations of what that rank means.

OK: Reader: You verify that the evidence is trustworthy, and the way the evidence supports the claim makes sense to you.
OK: Experts: The evidence is by expert you trust, and the way the evidence supports the claim makes sense to you.
Bad Reasons: The evidence given is clear or trustworthy, but you don't see how it supports the claim being made.
Bad Evidence: The evidence given is not trustworthy (or marked as bad), so it does not support the claim.
No Evidence: The link to the evidence is broken or un-reachable, so there's no support for the claim.

Even after choosing one of these, briefly explain why you gave that rank.

Questions for Later

If this article linked to bad evidence, maybe there's another article you can find that makes the same claim, but has better evidence? You could make a note to go do that.

Are there any questions raised by this claim that need further investigation? If another student were going to comment on this document after you save it, what would you like them to think about and respond to?

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