Mission (objective): Students will apply the 5Ws of critical literacy in order to

evaluate websites as credible, or unreliable.

Engagement
Students given an Answer Garden warm-up question:
Which website do you trust most for finding reliable information on the
internet?
After a minute or two of students inputting answers, we will share
and discuss 4 or 5 most prominent sites to keep students engaged,
but not get too off task.
Follow up question given to students as to why you may have picked
a particular site: Why did you choose this site? Discuss and talk
through as a whole class.
Informal check of who has heard of sites given from the top 4 or 5
sites discussed, look for any obscure sites to see depth of student
familiarity.

Explore
Students will be given a task of investigating a website using the following
question to guide them: Mind-Control Aliens are invading earth, would
you purchase this product based on this website? Why or why not?
Students will have 5 minutes to review the site and contribute to a
GoogleDoc with the guiding question above. We will spend a few
minutes as a class inputting ideas continuing to circle back to the
central idea of Is this site credible?
In the event the answers are not obvious to students and they do not
see the sarcasm and falsehood of the given page, the teacher will
reference some glaring issues throughout the site.
For example, Testimonials and the History of the product are two
areas that are easily identifiable as being ridiculous, especially when
read aloud.
To wrap up this portion of the lesson prior to the full introduction of
the 5Ws, teacher asks different partners/groups to find the basic
Who, What, When, Where, Why for this site.
The task of the 5Ws is broken up into many groups in order to not
overwhelm any one group, and be able to give an introduction to the
importance of each of these individual items when evaluating a site.
As a whole, each group will contribute their findings in order to
create an anchor chart. This anchor chart will explore the students
findings with respect to the 5Ws. This will transition into the idea of
critical literacy and how to evaluate a website.

Elaborate
Class divides into 6 groups, assigning 1 of the 3 websites listed below:
Site 1: http://gizmodo.com/5809689/a-brief-introduction-to-infinity
Site 2: https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/infinity.html
Site 3: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-infinity/
Students will apply the 5Ws to evaluate their given website using the
ReadWriteThink evaluation tool Is This a Hoax?.
After working in their groups, the class will come together to share
and discuss the given websites.
Bonus note: A plus for this set up is having two different groups look at
one website, which gives a teacher an option to go back and forth between
groups so one is not put on the spot, while the other group is listening to
see if their findings make the opposite groups list.
Whole group discussion solidifies the students understanding of
critical information literacy.
Evaluate (assessment)
Students will be given Wikipedia: Infinity in order to individually evaluate
and apply the 5Ws.
They will respond to the comment section posted on the Weebly site:
Using the 5Ws, critically evaluate Wikipedia: Infinity.
When completed, students will be given the extension below.

Extension
Students will be encouraged to contact the author of the site they worked
on in their groups. Students will be given guiding questions in a similar
format to the 5Ws.
Who do you work with?
What other mathematical concepts are you interested in?
When did you first become interested in the topic?
Where did you study?
Why are you qualified to inform the public about infinity?
How do you spend your free time?
What is your favorite food? (In the event a student decides to make
something up)