Selecting Appropriate Scaffolding for Students’ Engagement with Online Sources

A critical element of the Digital Civic Inquiry lessons is that they engage students in evaluating and then reading actual online sources– the kinds of sources they might come across if they searched for information about civic issues outside of school. We view this kind of engagement as critical to prepare students for informed civic life.  However, it is also challenging, especially because students may have vastly different prior experiences with navigating and evaluating online information and may read at levels that make it challenging to successfully comprehend an online article about a policy topic. With this in mind, we created two versions of Lessons 2 and 3: Level 1 (more scaffolded) and Level 2 (less scaffolded). 

Use the table below to help you select the level most appropriate for your students: 

Lesson 2
Level 1Level 2
  • Feature a slower progression from providing sources and source information (Unit 1) to providing sources for students to read laterally about (Units 3 and 4) to asking students to search for sources using a custom search engine that delivers 6–8 pre-selected online articles (Units 5, 6, and 7).
  • Provide additional background information on sources and the internet (Unit 1).
  • Provide a more scaffolded graphic organizer just for Lesson 2 to guide students to consider a source’s expertise and trustworthiness as they evaluate it (all units).
  • Provide vocabulary slides to display while students read laterally about sources (still done via open online searches) to help them interpret clues about the source’s credibility (all units).
  • Progress from providing sources and source information (Unit 1) to providing sources for students to read laterally about (Unit 3) to asking students to search for sources using a custom search engine with 6-8 pre-selected online articles (Unit 4) to asking students to search using a traditional search engine (Units 5, 6, and 7).
  • Provide a combined graphic organizer for Lessons 2 and 3.
Lesson 3
Level 1 Level 2
  • Provide modified articles for all credible sources that students evaluated in Lesson 2 at 5th- and 8th-grade reading levels, along with guiding questions for each article.
  • Provide a Lesson 3 graphic organizer for students to complete as they read online articles they deemed credible.