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Session 5. Evaluating Sources, Online Claims and AI Output
Objective. Teach pupils a short routine to check a source, an online message and an AI answer, and bring the course together in a one-page lesson plan with a reasoning check, improved by peer review.
Your pupils will meet more claims in one evening on a phone than you meet in a week at school. Teaching them to slow down and check is one of the most useful things you can do. The skill is not suspicion of everything; it is a short habit: who is behind this, how do they know, and who else says it. This session applies that habit to textbooks, adverts, chat messages and AI answers, and ends with a plan that brings the course together.
Key ideas
Four questions for any source
- Who made this? Why did they make it? How do they know (what is the evidence)? Do other sources agree? These four fit a textbook page, a poster, a video and a message.
- For young pupils reduce to three: Who says? How do they know? Does anyone else say it?
- Check the date and the purpose. An old page may be out of date; an advert is made to sell. Neither is useless, but each must be read with that in mind.
Read sideways: lateral reading
- Wineburg and McGrew compared professional fact checkers with historians and university students. The fact checkers often left the page quickly and looked for what other sources said about it, instead of reading it closely from top to bottom. This is called lateral reading.
- Pupil version: don't only ask the page about itself. Ask a second place: the textbook, the library, a teacher, an official website, a knowledgeable adult.
- No internet in your school? The same skill works with paper: give pupils two printed pages on the same claim and ask what the second page adds, or where else they would check.
Online messages and the pause
- Messages that spread fast in phone chats often share signs: strong feeling (fear, anger), 'share with everyone today', no source, no date, a picture with no explanation, or 'the authorities hide this'.
- Teach a pupil pause: Stop (don't send yet). Ask who is behind it. Look for the evidence. Find one more source. Then decide.
- Feeling strongly is not a reason to doubt a message, but it is a reason to slow down, because strong feelings make sharing quick.
AI output is a draft, not a source
- An AI tool writes fluent text that can sound sure while being wrong. It can invent facts, names, quotations and book titles. Fluent is not the same as true.
- Teach pupils to treat an AI answer as a claim: ask what the reasons are, check one fact in a second source, and check any named book or quotation exists. Pupils think first, then compare with the tool, not the other way round.
- Keep your judgement as the teacher, never enter pupils' names or personal data, and see course 5.9 (AI Literacy for Teachers). UNESCO's guidance on generative AI stresses that the technology should support people without undermining human agency.
The pupil pause before sharing or trusting
A source is good for something
Asking 'Is this source good or bad?' is less useful than asking 'What is this source good for?' A textbook is good for the agreed content of the curriculum; an advert is good for learning what a company wants you to believe; a family story is good for understanding a family's view; an official notice is good for what an authority has decided. Each can mislead when used for the wrong job.
Give pupils a three-column habit: what it says, who says it and why, and where I would check. Even pupils in Grade 3 can complete it for a simple poster. In older grades add a date and a question about what is left out.
Using AI without losing the thinking
An AI tool can write a confident essay in seconds, which makes it tempting for pupils to skip the thinking. Design tasks so the thinking cannot be skipped: ask pupils to reason first and write their claim, then compare it with an AI answer you have prepared, and mark where it agrees, where it adds something, and where it may be wrong. This also works on paper if you print the AI answer yourself.
Keep three rules visible. Pupils never put their name or personal details into a tool. Any fact, name or quotation must be checked in a second place. The pupil, not the tool, is responsible for the final claim. See course 5.9 for the full routine for teachers.
Examples from the classroom
The cancelled exam
Scene. Malika teaches Grade 10 in Fergana. A chat message says the school-leaving exam is cancelled. She asks pupils to apply the pause. They find the message has no sender, no date and an urgent tone. Their second source is the notice board and the headteacher, who says it is false. Of 31 pupils, 20 had planned to forward it and now do not.
Insight. A short pause with a second source stops a rumour before it spreads.
Two pages on cotton
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 8 in Samarkand, with no internet in the classroom. She prints two pages about Uzbek cotton: a company advert and a page from a geography reference. Pupils work in threes to answer: Who made it? Why? How do they know? Which claims appear on both pages? They conclude the advert is useful for prices and the reference for facts about regions.
Insight. The same skill works on paper, and each source is good for something different.
Marking an AI answer
Scene. Aziz teaches Grade 11 history in Tashkent. He prints an AI-style answer about the Registan that includes a book title no pupil can find. Pupils highlight in green the facts that match the textbook, in yellow the facts they cannot verify, and in red the claims that conflict with it. The class decides the book title needs checking before anyone uses it.
Insight. Pupils learn to treat an AI answer as a draft to test, and the teacher keeps control of the checking.
Common pitfalls
- Telling pupils to 'never trust the internet' instead of teaching them how to check.
- Expecting every pupil to have a phone or home internet; offer a paper version.
- Letting an AI-written answer replace the pupil's own first attempt.
- Entering pupils' names or personal information into any tool.
Check It, Then Plan It
- In groups of three (10 min): apply the four source questions to the three sample items in your Activity Kit (a phone message, a company web blurb, an AI answer). For each, write what you would check and where.
- Alone (20 min): write your one-page plan for a 45-minute lesson in your subject that uses at least four ideas from this course: a question ladder, a claim-reason-evidence step, a discussion or routine, a source check, and a reasoning rubric for the exit ticket.
- Peer review (15 min): swap with a partner and read their plan against the checklist in your kit. Give two 'this works' comments and two questions. Take the review back and change one thing.
- Whole group (5 min): each person says the one claim in their lesson that pupils will check, and fill in your final classroom action task.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which of the three samples was hardest to judge, and what did you have to check outside it?
- What did the peer review change in your plan? Which part of the plan was the weakest link?
- How will you collect evidence over the next month to see whether pupils reason better?
Reflect
- Where do your pupils get information outside school, and what do you know about how they check it?
- Which sentence in your own teaching do you state without a source, and could you show the source?
- What is the one habit from this course you will keep for a whole term?
Try it tomorrow
- Print two short pages on the same topic and ask pupils the four source questions.
- Teach the pause (Stop, Who, Evidence, Another source) and practise it on one false rumour you know is circulating.
- Write your one-page plan for a critical-thinking lesson and swap it with a colleague for review.
Further reading and links
Teach pupils to check a source from the outside, to pause before sharing, and to treat AI output as a draft to test.