Today's Lesson:
Subject Area: Social Studies Grade Level: 11th – 12th Grade(s) Duration: 90 minutes Lesson Title: “Break-Framing News: Identifying Nuances that Sway Public Opinion” Objective: This lesson is designed for students to work collaboratively to distinguish the subtle differences that appear within the reports conducted by various news outlets involving the same issue. Ultimately, the students will come to understand how the political bias of news outlets causes these outlets to write differing accounts about the same event. Students will then evaluate the power in which bias shapes news reporting, and therefore, public opinion. |
Lesson Overview:
Students will work collaboratively to identify the different ways in which three prominent news outlets (the New York Times, British Broadcasting Corporation, and Fox News) initially reported the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, 2018. Students will be separated into groups of three. Although each group member will be tasked to analyze (and become an “expert” on) the way in which one of these companies described the meeting, every student will read each of the three news articles. Each group will then work together in efforts to evaluate how political bias framed the way in which the companies detailed and announced information about the event. Ultimately, students will make a judgment as to which source was the most reliable and provide a detailed description of why they chose one over the others. |
Lesson Plan:
Engagement: (10 minutes)
Instruct students to log on to the following website: https://frame-breakingnews.weebly.com. After students have accessed the site, explain to them that the title of today’s lesson is “Break-Framing News” because they will be working together to identify how certain news outlets frame their reporting based on the political biases they possess.
Distribute a copy of the 5 W’s Organizer to each student, and read the lesson overview posted on the homepage of the website as a class. Then, have the students read the directions for today’s warm-up, and watch the accompanying videos. While doing so, they should be taking notes on their organizer to help set the context for the lesson.
Assignment: (40 minutes)
Discuss the information presented in each video to ensure that the students understand the event/issue they will be reading about throughout the rest of the lesson. They should have a general understanding that President Trump and Kim Jong-un held the first meeting ever between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. The meeting took place in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
Next, have students break into groups of three (and number themselves accordingly). Explain to them that the main activity for today’s assignment will involve each group member reading a report about President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un from one of three prominent news outlets. Notice that each report was written on the day of the meeting, shortly after it took place. However, none of the three articles is exactly alike, each having subtle variations about the event that hint at the bias (or lack thereof) of the news organization.
Analytical Thinking: Sourcing, Contextualization, Close Reading, and Bias Finding
Provide a copy of the Analytical Thinking Chart to every student. Explain that each student will only be responsible for taking notes and answering questions for only one of the three articles. Student #1 in each group will read the article written by The New York Times. Instruct these students to click on the website tab titled “Source #1: NY Times” and follow the instructions written on that page. Student #2 in each group will read the article written by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Instruct these students to click on the website tab titled “Source #2: BBC” and follow the instructions written on that page. Student #3 in each group will read the article written by Fox News. Instruct these students to click on the website tab titled “Source #3: Fox News” and follow the instructions written on that page.
Each page’s directions will instruct the students to access a link provided below the logo for each of their respective news outlets. Once each student has opened the article they are responsible for reading and analyzing, reiterate to them that they are only to answer the Sourcing, Contextualization, and Close Reading questions on their Analytical Thinking Chart. They are not to answer the Corroboration questions at this time! This should take approximately 20 minutes.
After the students have answered the corresponding questions for their article, have them take the next 15-20 minutes to identify any sort of political bias held by that article’s news outlet. To do so, they should research the information provided by the three links at the bottom of the source tabs in today’s website. Upon finishing this task, they must review their answers to the Sourcing, Contextualization, and Close Reading questions on their chart, and identify how the bias of their article’s news outlet might have framed the way in which they reported the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. They should pay particular attention towards the tone in which the article was written, the inherent emotion the author seems to have about the event, and the light in which they portray President Trump. These directions have also been provided on the Weebly.
Corroboration: (40 minutes)
Before the group members come together to share their information and viewpoints on their respective articles, it is imperative that each student be given the chance to read the other two articles to develop a complete understanding of today’s objective. Therefore, allow the students another 15 minutes to read the two articles assigned to their fellow group members. They do not need to answer any questions on their analytical thinking chart, but should be cognizant of the subtle differences between the reporting frameworks of each article (as opposed to the one they have already read).
Finally, groups should corroborate their understandings of the three articles. First, each group member needs to share their answers for the Sourcing, Contextualization, and Close Reading questions on their analytical thinking chart. After each group member has shared his or her article’s information (including the potential bias held by it’s news outlet), the other two students should provide their own insights of the article to try and build a more thorough understanding as a team. While doing so, each student should fill in the blank spaces on the first three rows of their organizer. Next, the three group members need to work together to answer the question posed under the corroboration column of their organizer and collaborate to complete the chart in its entirety. Lastly, students should individually mark which source they found to be the most reliable about the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, and write a detailed explanation as to why they feel this way on the back of their assignment.
A class discussion should be held afterwards to allow students to describe the different ways in which news outlets frame their reporting based on their political bias, and why it is important for people to identify these type of frameworks when it comes to their ability to sway public opinion. Although this will conclude the lesson, an extension assignment for this activity is written below.
Extension Assignment:
Option #1:
Knowing that the meeting between President Trump and Kimg Jong-un took place earlier this year, students should independently conduct some follow-up research to see what has transpired from this event. They need to think about how the relations between the United States and North Korea changed, or remained the same. Have any of the issues presented during the meeting been resolved? Essentially, did the summit lead to any noticeable outcomes?
Students need to write their findings in a well-constructed paragraph. Then, they need to reread the three articles provided in this lesson, and decide which news company wrote the most accurate account of the initial meeting between the two world leaders. Instruct them to focus their attention on the way the articles framed their reporting, and the impact each news outlet predicted this event would have on the two nations involved. Lastly, they need to write another paragraph to describe their thoughts on the matter.
Option #2:
Students are to independently research a topic relating to another U.S. president’s term, such as Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Nixon’s Watergate, and the Carter’s Iranian Hostage Crisis. They should find three articles written on the same day by different news organizations and complete an Analytical Thinking Chart following the same directions that were given to them during today’s lesson. After analyzing the political biases held by the three news outlets they have chosen, they must write a well-constructed paragraph describing which was the most unreliable source to use when studying the event as a historian.