Ask, Interview, Write: Journalistic Strategies to Engage Secondary ELA Students in Media Literacy and Civics Education

Language arts teachers are increasingly asked to teach media literacy and civics, as seen in the 2021 NCTE Report of the Task Force on Critical Media Literacy and in the 2022 NCTE Civics Guide for Teachers. In addition to meeting required instructional standards for reading, writing, listening, speaking and grammar conventions through literary and informative texts, teachers also want to motivate and engage their students with authentic inquiry. How can they manage it all?

Journalistic learning is a project-based approach that integrates media literacy and civic engagement to activate student voice and choice in the general language arts classroom. This research-based, standards-aligned approach is designed to allow students to tap their own interests and concerns in order to research, write and publish ethical, informative, place-based articles about issues they find relevant to their communities and lived experiences. Teachers guide students to practice research strategies for identifying mis- and disinformation while learning about local news media. The approach’s key elements are distilled in Language Arts in Action: Engaging Secondary Students with Journalistic Strategies (W.W. Norton, 2023), authored by three of this panels’ presenters.