Attention Hijacked Educator Guide

With Attention Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain by Erica B. Marcus (Lerner Books 2022) as a mentor text, students will model the strategies provided in the book to deepen their awareness about how news consumption affects their thoughts, emotions, and body, and then set personal goals about their news habits.

SUBJECT:	English / Language Arts Social Studies Other
GRADE LEVEL:	High School Middle School
OBJECTIVES:	Students will expand their self-awareness of their current news habits. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the connections between news consumption and natural human tendencies like negativity bias, confirmation bias, and a desire for social connection. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the connection between news consumption, brain chemistry, our social drive, and technology's social connection features (such as likes and comments). Students will deepen their self-awareness of how the news they consume impacts them physically, mentally, and emotionally. Students will apply what they learn to develop a plan for aligning their news habits with personal goals regarding their wellbeing.
MATERIALS:	Digital or physical materials for simple drawing including, for physical drawing, red, blue, and purple pencils or markers. Worksheets: Know, Wonder, Learned; News Reaction Log; News Consumption Personal Goals View the PDF Device with Internet access AllSides (https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news) Blindspot from Ground News (https://ground.news/blindspot) Digital or physical writing materials.
TIME NEEDED:	Two 30-minute lessons and one 60-minute lesson on three separate days plus time for homework

INSTRUCTIONAL PROCEDURE

Day One: Reflection on Personal News Diet (30 minutes)

Provide students the Know, Wonder, Learned (KWL) worksheet, or have them create their own. Applying Marcus's concept of a technology diet to news consumption, ask students to fill their Know column with what they recall from the text about how online content can affect the brain, and the Wonder column with what they wonder. After a few minutes for reflection, draw answers from the class to fill the Know and Wonder columns of a collective KWL chart. Highlight or circle key concepts like confirmation bias and dopamine. Encourage students to add to their own charts.

Now ask students to flip over their paper or work digitally with blank page and draw a large circle that represents a dinner plate and covers most of the page/screen. Instruct students to think about their common sources of news in a typical week, including people in their lives who tell them about news, social media apps, influencers they follow, news sites, television, radio, newspapers, etc.

After they've had a moment to gather their thoughts, ask them to print the names of those sources on their dinner plate in letter sizing that reflects whether the source is a big or frequent source of news, a medium or fairly regular source of news, or a small or occasional source of news

Next, have them color-code their sources with a circle or underline that illustrates whether they consider them to have a liberal bias (blue), conservative bias (red), or fall somewhere in between (purple). If they're not aware of bias, that's fine.

Finally, on a separate page or screen, have them write a brief reflection about what they notice.

Collect students' KWL charts and news plate drawings

Homework: Provide students the News Reaction Log worksheet. For two or three days, ask students to keep a log in which they track each news headline they encounter, when they encounter it, where they encounter it (e.g., Twitter, CNN.com, Snapchat, Fox News channel, NPR, local newspaper), who published the story (including self-published content by influencers), who in their personal network shared it (if applicable), and what thoughts, feelings, or bodily sensations it sparked. Have them focus on the power of the headlines and any other lead text—the bait that tempts them to click or stay glued to the screen. For this exercise, they do not need to read, watch, or listen to the related stories.

Day Two: Discussion of New Reaction Logs (30 minutes)

Draw three columns on the board/screen: what social media platform or website the headline was, who originally published it, and mental/emotional/physical responses. Ask students to volunteer examples from their logs for each column without sharing the corresponding headlines

Next, break the students into pairs or small groups and ask them to share one example each of a headline they recorded to which they had the strongest reaction, whether it was mental, emotional, or physical—positive or negative.

Collect students' logs.

Homework: Spend five minutes each exploring two online resources: AllSides and Blindspot from Ground News.

Day Three: Personal Choices about News Consumption (60 minutes)

Return students' KWL charts and news reaction logs. Have them add to the Know and Wonder columns of their chart about AllSides and/or Blindspot from GroundNews. Show Allsides.com and explore it together for a few minutes, comparing it with how it's different from other news sites like CNN.com.

Explore the concept of news blind spots, showing Blindspot from Ground News. Discuss reasons why such blind spots might exist

In pairs, have stuents generate ideas about how to avoid such blind spots, then share out their ideas with the class.

Next, have students examine their logs for any noticeable patterns, such as:

• Whether they're more likely to check news at certain times of the day
• Whether they're more likely to have a strong response to news that they encounter on certain apps/sites or posted by certain people
• Whether news more often affects their thoughts, feelings, or body

Have students compare their news plate with their news reaction log and consider whether any sources on the plate are missing from their log, particularly any that are BIG or frequent sources of news.

Have them fill in the Learned column of their KWL chart. Invite answers for a collective Learned column on the board/screen.

Based on what they've noticed about their personal news habits and what they've learned, students will fill in their News Consumption Personal Goals worksheet. They will set two or three personal goals regarding their news consumption and write a statement explaining why they chose their goals and how they plan to make progress toward them.

Collect their news consumption plans and recollect their logs and KWL charts.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

For more on Attention Highjacked, see Wendy DeGroat's curriculum ideas and resource pairings and the Author Q&A with Erica B. Marcus, where Erica provides additional ideas about how to create community engagement around the book.

For more ideas on teaching news consumption, see:

Adams, Peter and Jacquelyn Whiting. "Teaching with the News in a Time of Challenge and Change." School Library Connection, November 2020. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Webinar/?learningModuleId=2262846&terms=bias&topicCenterId=2247903&citeId=2.

Bergson-Michelson, Tasha. "Fostering Positive News Habits with Students." School Library Connection, April 2018. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Webinar/?learningModuleId=2148392&terms=news&topicCenterId=2247903&citeId=2.

Bober, Tom, and Peter Adams. "News Messengers and the Sharing of News." School Library Connection, February 2021. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Webinar/?learningModuleId=2261592&terms=news&topicCenterId=2247903&citeId=2.