Evaluating Science in the News

In this activity, students evaluate a science news article to determine whether it is a trustworthy source of information.

Science news articles are a great way to learn about new ideas, discoveries, and research. However, it’s important to evaluate the authority and credibility of sources of information. In this activity, students practice their reading comprehension and source evaluation skills by answering a series of questions about a science news article. They then synthesize their answers to determine whether the article is trustworthy. This activity can be used with any print or online news articles.

Two versions of the “Student Handout” are available for this activity. The short handout focuses on evaluating a science news article, and the extended handout also has students respond to the ideas presented in the article. The additional “Criteria for Evaluating Sources” handout provides more questions for evaluating sources of information based on the CRAP (Currency, Reliability, Authority, and Purpose) test.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.