Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA

Week of 1/11/2021

Grade Subject

7th ELA

Weekly Focus

The students will read to determine a central idea in a text, analyze relationships and interactions among individuals, events, and ideas in a text, and analyze how an author establishes, conveys, and contrasts point of view.

Standards

RI.KID.2- Determine and analyze the central idea of tex and how it is conveyed through details. RI.KID.3 - Analyze how specific elements of a story or drama interact with and affect each other; Analyze the relationships and interactions among individuals, events, and/or ideas in a text RI.CS.6 - Analyze how an author establishes, conveys, and contrasts the points of view.

Achieve3000 Article of the Week

"How Far Does Free Speech Go?" https://portal.achieve3000.com/kb/lesson/?lid=17952&step=10&c=109&sc=1345&oid=0&ot=0&asn=1

Anchor Text Paired Text

Censorship: For the People or Controlling the On Twitter, Has Greater Allure Than People? Truth Does

Tasks

Day 1 -- Read “: For the People or Controlling the People?” and answer the text-based questions Day 2 -- Complete the short writing prompt on “Censorship: For the People or Controlling the People?” Day 3 -- Read “On Twitter, Fake News Has Greater Allure than Truth Does” and answer the text-based questions Day 4 -- Complete the short writing prompt on (the paired text) Day 5 -- Complete the writing prompt on “Censorship: For the People or Controlling the People?” and “On Twitter, Fake News Has Greater Allure than Truth Does” (synthesis writing)

Anchor Text Text-Based Questions

Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. PART A: Which statement best identifies the central idea of the text? A. All forms of censorship identified in the article are violations of human rights and have no benefits. B. The censorship discussed in the article is only employed when necessary and for the benefit of the public.

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA C. The article presents a complicated debate, in which censoring content is neither clearly right or wrong. D. It would be great to live in a world where information didn't need to be censored, but that's simply impossible. 2. PART B: Which detail best supports the answer to Part A? A. "Censorship is an extremely controversial issue, and each country usually has its own reasons for passing these laws." (Paragraph 2) B. “Governments can censor anything,” (Paragraph 2) C. “a government wants to protect its citizens” (Paragraph 3) D. “Censorship does have some benefits.” (Paragraph 11)

3. PART A: In the context of the passage, what does “controversial” mean as it is used in paragraph 2? A. Likely to cause disagreement B. Inspiring anger C. Agreeable D. Certain of something

4. PART B: Which statement from the text best supports the answer to Part A? A. “It is very common for families to have rules about what can or cannot be said at home,” (Paragraph 1) B. "Governments can censor anything, including spoken words, public or private written communication, communication via the internet, art, movies and entertainment, , and even ." (Paragraph 2) C. “there are a few core reasons why a government would want to restrict communication.” (Paragraph 2) D. “the United States cannot censor ” (Paragraph 3)

Anchor Text Short Writing Prompt

How does paragraph 3 contribute to the overall central idea of the text? Cite several pieces of evidence to support your answer.

Paired Text Text-Based Questions

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA

Paired Text Short Writing Prompt

What is the relationship between the study and prevention of the spread of fake news? Use details from the text in your answer.

Synthesis Essay Writing Prompt

Consider the relationship between censorship and fake news. Does one affect the other? Do they affect

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA you? If so, how? Create a poem or song to express your ideas regarding the impact of censorship and fake news in the world around you. Refer back to the texts and select a few key words or phrases to incorporate into your poem or song.

Teacher Notes / Optional Extra Resources

Closely read “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” and answer the following text-specific questions.

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA

Short written response: Option 1: After reading “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” and the two related informational texts, in your opinion, when is censorship a good thing? When it is a bad thing? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer. Option 2: As a parable, or a simple story used to illustrate a lesson, what knowledge or moral does the poem impart to the audience?

Texts:

Words to know before reading: 1. Deplorable (adjective): deserving strong disapproval or even punishment

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA

2. Intercept (verb): to stop and take someone or something that is going from one place to another place before that person or thing gets there 3. The founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1991 4. An Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, and mathematician responsible for several scientific discovers throughout the 17th century 5. Confine (verb): to limit or restrict, often in a place

Have you ever been told not to say something? It is very common for families to have rules about what can or cannot be said at home, but as it turns out, governments do the very same thing. When a government passes a law restricting what people or organizations can say, it is called censorship.

Governments can censor anything, including spoken words, public or private written communication, communication via the internet, art, movies and entertainment, news media, and even advertising. Censorship is an extremely controversial issue, and each country usually has its own reasons for passing these laws. However, there are a few core reasons why a government would want to restrict communication.

Types of Censorship Moral Censorship Moral censorship occurs when a government wants to protect its citizens from something it considers morally wrong or deplorable. For example, while the United States cannot censor hate speech because it is protected as “free speech” under the First Amendment, it can censor threatening language that could provoke violence. The government also requires television companies to “bleep” bad words from TV shows so the audience does not hear them.

Military Censorship This type of censorship occurs when the government eliminates words from letters and newscasts about the military’s location or strategy during a war. This is to prevent enemies from intercepting any information that lets them know what the military is up to.

The United States practiced military censorship frequently in World War I and World War II. When a soldier sent a letter to his family, the government would first look through it and black out any words that might give away where he was, what he was doing, and any future plans he had heard. Similarly, the government monitored journalists and newscasters to make sure they did not give away any important information that might be useful to the enemy.

Political Censorship is when someone in power restricts others from voicing opposing ideas. A political leader or party might do this to maintain their top position and keep the public from learning about ways they might be wrong.

For example, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union during the late 1900s enforced severe political

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA censorship. Inspectors from the party monitored journalists, writers, and artists to ensure they said nothing negative about the party or the Soviet Union itself. Weather reporters were not even allowed to predict that it might be raining on a holiday!

Religious Censorship This type of censorship occurs when the dominant in a country does not allow people from other to share their beliefs. Usually when this is the case, the dominant religion is tied to the government in some way, which gives them the power to enforce these rules. They do this to maintain the unity and power of their religion in society, and to keep their own power intact.

One famous example of religious censorship happened right around 1600, when Galileo Galilei proved that the sun does not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolves around the sun. This was directly against the beliefs of the Roman at the time, and the Church worked hard to prevent him from spreading his discovery. They eventually forced him to lie and say he had been wrong about the whole thing, and he was sentenced to live out the rest of his life confined to his home.

Corporate Censorship is when a company warns its employees not to say anything that might put the company in a negative light. This kind of censorship is a little different from the others, because it usually does not involve the government or any laws; instead, it might be the company’s own policy that employees feel they must follow so they don’t lose their job. For example, about 40% of reporters say they sometimes avoid writing a newsworthy story because it might say something bad about the company that owns their newspaper.

Pros and Cons Censorship does have some benefits. It can protect people from slander or violent threats. It can strengthen national security by keeping information away from enemies. Some people believe it can make a society more unified or moral. Others support it because it can benefit certain groups in a country, such as the main political party or the main religion (although this is often at the expense of others). However, there are also many downsides to these kinds of restrictions of communication. The government’s decision about what to censor can be random or unfair. Censorship also limits individual freedom to speak openly, and things that are not right. Suppressing opposing views can also hold back social progress and restrict people’s ability to learn more about the world and other people.

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA

Words to know before reading: 1. dupe (verb): to deceive or trick 2. informatics: the science of processing data for storage and retrieval 3. culprit (noun): a person responsible for a crime or wrongdoing 4. debunk: to expose something as false The truth about online fake news is becoming clearer. A new study shows that on Twitter, phony stories reach more people than truthful ones do. Fake stories also spread far faster.

Fake news refers to stories based on false or misinterpreted information. These stories try to dupe readers into believing something that isn’t true. Some might try to make public figures look bad or claim people did something they didn’t. Others might try to discredit scientific findings. Such stories are often shared on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. But scientists have lacked data on how widely they were shared, or by whom. So a team of researchers decided to investigate. They recently analyzed more than 4.5 million tweets and retweets. All had been posted between 2006 and 2017. And their disturbing finding: Fake news spreads faster and further on Twitter than true stories do.

Filippo Menczer studies informatics and computer science at Indiana University in Bloomington. He was not part of the new study but says its findings are important for understanding the spread of fake news. Before this, he notes, most investigations used a few people’s observations rather than a mountain of scientific data. Until now, he says, “We didn’t have a really large-scale, systematic study evaluating the spread of misinformation.”

Deb Roy, who did work on the new analysis, studies media and social networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In the past, he also has worked as a media scientist for Twitter. To study how news spreads on Twitter, Roy and his colleagues collected tweet cascades. These are groups of messages composed of one original tweet and all retweets of that initial post. They examined about 126,000 cascades centered on any of about 2,400 news stories. Each of those original news stories had been independently confirmed as true or false.

The researchers then collected data on how far and fast each cascade spread. Discussions of bogus stories tended to start from fewer original tweets. But they tended to soon spread extensively. Some chains reached tens of thousands of users! True news stories, in contrast, never spread to more than about 1,600 people. And true news stories took about six times as long as false ones to reach 1,500 People.

Overall, these data show, fake news was about 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than was real news. The team reported its results in the March 9 S cience.

Not just bots Roy’s team also wanted to know who was responsible for spreading false news. So they looked at Twitter accounts that were involved in sharing fake stories. Some had been run by computers, not people. These so-called web robots, or bots, are computer programs that pretend to be human. They

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA have been designed to find and spread certain types of stories.

Some people had assumed that bots drive most fake news moving across the internet. To test that, Roy and his colleagues looked at data both with and without bot activity.

Bots spread false and true news about equally, the data showed. So fake news could not be blamed just on bots, Roy's group concluded. Instead, people are the main culprits in retweeting fake news. Why might people be more likely to spread tall tales? These stories may seem more exciting, says data scientist Soroush Vosoughi. He works with Roy at MIT and is a coauthor of the new study. Compared to the topics of true-news stories, fake-news topics were more different from other tweets that users had viewed in the two months before they retweeted a story. Tweet replies to the false news stories also used more words indicating surprise.

The researchers didn’t inspect the full content of every tweet. So they don’t know exactly what users said about these stories. Some people who retweeted fake-news posts may have added comments to debunk them. But Menczer calls the new analysis a “very good first step” in understanding what types of posts grab the most attention.

The study also could guide strategies for fighting the spread of fake news, says Paul Resnick. He works at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Though he was not part of the new study, he uses computer science to study how people behave online. One approach might be for social media platforms to discourage people from spreading rumors, he says. That approach might have more impact than simply booting off bots that behave badly.

Sinan Aral at MIT has some other ideas. He is another coauthor of the new study and an expert on how information spreads through social networks. One way to fight fake news might be to help users identify true stories online, he suggests. Social media sites could label news pieces or media outlets with truthfulness scores, Aral suggests. In fact, at least one September 2017 study has already looked into that. The bad news: Flagging potentially false headlines or news sites only works a little, it found. Sometimes the tactic could even backfire.

Platforms also might try to restrict accounts reputed to spread lies, Aral says. But it’s still unclear how successful such actions might be, he adds. Indeed, he notes, “We’re barely starting to scratch the surface on the scientific evidence about false news, its consequences and its potential solutions.”

Wilson County Schools Blended and Remote Learning ELA