Introduction

In today’s information-driven world, media literacy has become an essential skill, and it is especially relevant when exploring complex topics like energy. Energy is a critical part of our daily lives, yet it is often surrounded by conflicting narratives and misinformation. This lesson introduces students to the fundamentals of media literacy through the lens of researching energy topics.

Student Objectives

Students will be able to

• Analyze and annotate energy-related news articles to identify claims, author perspectives, assumptions, and use of evidence.
• Evaluate media sources for bias, credibility, and factual accuracy using decoding guides and bias-identification tools.
• Communicate conclusions about an article’s readability and perspective clearly, using evidence to support their reasoning in both group and individual settings.

Materials

• Student Handout
• PLS Media Decoding Guide
• Videos: Consuming Media and Creating Media

Unit Plan (I Do, We Do, You Do)

The goal of this mini-unit is for students to be able to independently analyze and annotate a news article for bias and factuality. The “I Do, We Do, You Do” structure will provide students with opportunities to observe and practice media literacy skills before approaching articles objectively on their own.

Hook: A Journalist’s Perspective
Justin Worland, a Senior Correspondent at TIME, sat down with Switch Energy Alliance chairman Dr. Scott Tinker for a thoughtful discussion on his career in journalism and media literacy. Worland gives tips on how to access reliable news sources and avoid common pitfalls of social media.

To introduce the lesson, show students these video clips, and kickstart a discussion on media bias and the importance of developing media literacy to combat misinformation.

• Justin Worland Interview Clip #1: Consuming Media (3.12 minutes)
• Justin Worland Interview Clip #2: Creating Media (5.48 minutes)

Activity: Thinking Critically About Energy Language
Provide students with the Student Handout, and have them complete the “Thinking Critically About Energy Language” activity. Give students the opportunity to attempt their own definitions first. Then, as a class, students can compare the variety of interpretations. 

Use the following table to guide discussion and help students form clearer, more specific alternatives.

Resources: Switch Classroom, Project Look Sharp, & Ground News
Introduce students to the resources that they will be using in-depth in this unit: Switch Classroom Lessons, Project Look Sharp, and Ground News.

Switch Classroom is a resource library with energy lessons, videos, and activities on the basics of energy, detailed analysis of various energy sources, and additional topics such as energy efficiency and energy poverty. Before jumping into decoding an energy-related article for media bias, prepare lessons and/or activities from Switch Classroom to build students’ background knowledge on the energy topic they will be learning about in the news.

Project Look Sharp is a program dedicated to helping K-12 educators enhance students’ critical
thinking, metacognition, and civic engagement through media literacy materials and
professional development. Students will use this Project Look Sharp guide, PLS Media Decoding Guide, along with the “Identifying Bias” section of the Student Handout to guide their analysis of news articles for bias and factuality.

Ground News is a platform that helps readers, from younger students to adults, conveniently
identify media bias, check source availability, and view ownership data for news outlets around
the world. It’s a good place for students to start when researching a new topic or current
event. Ground News also assists readers in comparing news sources and reading between the
lines of media bias. For each article analyzed, Ground News identifies its bias, factuality, and
ownership background.

Note: Some features of Ground News are available for free. Full access to all bias and fact-checking tools requires a small subscription fee. Switch Classroom is not affiliated with Ground News and does not receive any compensation from them. Any organization mentioned or shared is not a specific endorsement of the services or products offered by those organizations.

Activity #1 (I Do)

Ground News has an energy-focused section called News From Energy. Choose a relevant article from Ground News for students to decode and pair it with one of Switch Classroom’s lessons to build background knowledge. For example, under News for Nuclear Power for October 2025 is the headline “U.S. Opens Historic Nuclear Sites for AI Data Centers.” There are many articles analyzed by Ground News on this topic, with factuality and bias analyses given.

After choosing an article for students to decode:

1. Assign students the relevant Switch Classroom activities. For example, show students the Introduction to Nuclear video and assign connecting analysis and review activities to the students to work on independently.
2. Model how to use the PLS Media Decoding Guide and the “Identifying Bias” section of the Student Handout to analyze an article. For example, choose one of the AI Data Center articles from Ground News to do a brief decoding exercise with, while asking students questions and getting their input to keep them engaged.

Activity #2 (We Do)

After students complete the assigned Switch Classroom activities on the focused energy topic, divide students into groups of 2 or 3. Each student group will work together to analyze an assigned article from Ground News. Do not show the students the Ground News analysis of the article (for example, it leans left and has mixed factuality), giving students the opportunity to analyze the article for themselves and draw their own conclusions. Task students to annotate the articles using the Project Look Sharp media decoding guide and the Identifying Bias Student Handout linked above. At the end, they will give their conclusions on the articles’ bias (left, left-leaning, center, right-leaning, right) and factuality (low factuality, mixed factuality, high factuality).

Activity #3 (You Do)

Once student groups have completed their analyses, open a class discussion where students share their conclusions and their reasoning behind them. Present Ground News’ analyses of the same articles, and have students compare to their own analyses of the articles.

Finally, each student will independently find an article from a news source (in line with the examples given above, on data centers), and decode it using the decoding handouts. Alternatively, the teacher can also assign a specific article for students to decode independently, to keep the activity more streamlined. The key part of this part of the lesson is ensuring that students give solid evidence for their reasoning on the Identifying Bias handout.

An optional end-of-unit activity would be for students to analyze each other’s articles and evidence, and discuss any discrepancies or differences in their conclusions, to see if they can reach a consensus.

Recommended Switch Classroom Lessons & Ground News Energy Headlines