I AM Caring and Curious: A Practical Toolkit for Information, AI, and Media Literacy in a Connected World

The Heart of I AM

Care, Curiosity, and Connection

The heart of I AM is not any single literacy, and it is not even the convergence of Information, Media, and AI literacy into one framework. The heart of I AM is Layer 2: the human capacity to sincerely care about people and things in our lives, the curiosity that springs from that caring spark, and the discovery of what is relevant to ourselves and to the world because of it. This capacity does not sit beside Layer 1 and Layer 3. It inspires them. The three literacies are simply where that capacity gets practiced in a connected world. Building the capacity is the point. The literacies are the practice ground, not the purpose.

Care.

Something has to matter to you. Caring is the ignition. Before a student can evaluate a source, question an algorithm, or test an AI output for bias, something in front of them has to feel like it matters. Care is what connects a skill to a life. Without it, every essential in this framework risks becoming a compliance exercise instead of something a student actually does when no one is watching. What a student feels, and the state of mind they bring into a room, falls inside that same care. It is not a separate concern from the ones this framework already names.

Curiosity.

Curiosity is what caring generates when it meets the world's questions. It is not a personality trait a student either has or doesn't. It is the active orientation that prevents passive consumption. A student cannot be curious and passive at the same time, which makes curiosity the antidote to an information environment built to reward passivity. Care gives a student something to protect. Curiosity is what they do next.

Connection.

Connection takes what a student cares about and what they are curious about and uses it to discover what is relevant, to themselves and to the wider world. This is what makes a skill transferable instead of inert. A student who has built this connection is not only checking whether the information environment is serving their interests. They are actively finding what matters to them inside it.

Care, Curiosity, and Connection are not three separate soft skills sitting beside the toolkit. They are the inspiration for everything built on top of them, the three literacies a student practices and the three responsibilities a student carries in a connected world alike. A student who has never been asked to care will treat source verification, media analysis, AI literacy, and the responsibilities of a connected life as separate things to get through. A student who has developed Care, Curiosity, and Connection will treat all of it as one continuous practice of paying attention, to their thinking and to their place in the world. This is not a new idea so much as a confirmation of one already well established: Self-Determination Theory's three universal psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, offer a useful parallel. Autonomy is the freedom to care about what genuinely matters to you. Competence is the confidence to risk a real question instead of settling for a safe one already answered. Relatedness is the discipline of finding genuine connection with people who see things differently than you do. That discipline does not ask a student's own feelings to wait for it. What a student feels matters on its own terms, not only as one perspective to be weighed against someone else's.

Connected World Responsibilities.

The same capacities that inspire the three literacies inspire this too. This framework does not use the term digital citizenship, and that choice is deliberate. In many school implementations, digital citizenship has tended to narrow to online safety and etiquette: be careful, be kind, don't overshare. That is real and worth teaching, but it is not what students most need from us. The term has also grown to cover so much ground that it can be hard to find a firm place for it in a classroom already holding several other frameworks at once. A teacher reaching for it may find there isn't a clear, short answer to what it actually asks a student to do.

Our students are part of a connected world whether we intend that for them or not. Being part of that world carries responsibilities, and we have narrowed those responsibilities to three that can be named, taught, and remembered: Identity & Presence, Privacy & Agency, and Wellbeing & Intentionality. Presence, Agency, and Wellbeing, drawn from those three names, spell PAW: the mark a student leaves behind them in a connected world, the way a paw print is softer and more personal than the term digital footprint usually allows for.

Why Three Sets of Three.

This framework is built on a 3×3×3 structure: three literacies, three human capacities, three connected world responsibilities. That is not an accident of design, and it is not the full picture of everything a student could learn about information, media, and AI. It is a deliberate limit. We chose nine anchors that a teacher and a student can hold in their heads and return to, rather than an exhaustive list that would be hard to carry into a Tuesday morning lesson. Three Converging Literacies per grade level, with three Connected World Responsibilities to keep them anchored, and three Human-Centered Capacities to inspire the student to transfer I AM into their own world of curiosity and creation. What is not included here is not being denied. It is being left for the deeper study it deserves, elsewhere. This toolkit's job is to give every student and teacher three things worth caring about, three things worth being curious about, and three responsibilities worth carrying, and to make sure none of them get lost in a longer list.

What Is I AM?

What I AM Is

I AM, Caring and Curious, is a human-centered, practical toolkit for teachers to deepen existing lessons across all grade levels and subjects, with the essential media, information, and AI literacy skills that students need. Teachers do not need another literacy framework to implement. What they need is something practical, not a standalone lesson, but something to take the existing lessons that they have and make them more meaningful, not heavier. Teachers also want, and students want, to feel like they own their own learning. The I AM Caring and Curious framework helps support the human capacities of caring, curiosity, and connection to take existing lessons and make them far more relevant than if they weren't there to begin with. The I AM Toolkit allows students to transfer their learning beyond the classroom and beyond the assignment. In fact, it encourages the student to apply media, information, and AI literacy not only within assigned lessons, but within their own personal curiosities and the things that matter to them. Our students come to us curious and caring and wanting to connect from the youngest of ages. As they get older, through the K-12 system, much of that seems to leave them. The I AM Caring and Curious toolkit is built on the foundation that what they care about, what they're curious about, and how they connect relevance to themselves and into the world is essential in being able to transfer the information, media, and AI literacy skills into their own lives for a lifetime of learning.

Enhanced Lessons with Ease

I AM Caring and Curious provides three Layer 1 teaching moves per grade level, for any grade, any subject, that allow the teacher to enhance their lesson with one Information Literacy skill, one Media Literacy skill, and one AI Literacy skill that ensures our students are getting a sure foundation to be thoughtful consumers, creators, and participants in a connected world. The other two layers are there to provide the reason for these skills. Layer 2, Care, Curiosity, and Connection, is the why. It is the human capacity that makes a student want to use a literacy skill for their own reasons, not only because an assignment asked for it. Layer 3, the Connected World Responsibilities, is the how: the judgment a student needs to carry their presence, their agency, and their wellbeing into a world that is reading them back, in the moments no lesson plan can fully anticipate. Layer 1, the three converging literacies, is the what, what they need to know and be able to do. Layer 2 is what makes the how and the what worth doing in the first place. It inspires the other two. They do not inspire it.

The Architecture

Three Layer Overview

Three Layers. Nine Elements. One Progression.

A developmental framework from Kindergarten through Grade 12, integrating information literacy, AI literacy, and media literacy with human-centered capacities and connected world responsibilities.

Layer 1

Converging Literacies

What students understand and do. One clear, age-appropriate focus for each grade level.

Information AI Media

Helping students verify information, analyze influence, understand AI systems, and navigate modern information environments through one key age-appropriate focus at each grade level. Information focuses on credibility and evidence. AI focuses on how systems generate responses and shape experiences. Media focuses on purpose, influence, and how messages shape understanding.

Layer 2

Human-Centered Capacities

Why students engage. Not a third skill beside the other two, but the reason a student chooses to use either one.

Care Curiosity Connection

The three human capacities that support lifelong learning and meaningful participation. You have to care about something before you can be genuinely curious. Curiosity is what caring generates when it meets the world's questions. Connection links what you care about and what you are curious about to yourself and the world you are helping to shape.

Layer 3

Connected World Responsibilities

How students participate. Ethical, safe, and responsible participation in digital spaces.

Identity & Presence Privacy & Agency Wellbeing & Intentionality

Helping students participate responsibly, ethically, safely, and thoughtfully within digital and connected spaces. Identity and Presence addresses how actions and participation shape ourselves and others. Privacy and Agency addresses informed decisions about personal information. Wellbeing and Intentionality addresses using technology with awareness, balance, and purpose.

Measured Least, Needed Most.

Layer 2 is measured the least of the three, and that is by design, not oversight. A skill can be demonstrated and a practice observed, but Care, Curiosity, and Connection are assessed only through a Teaching Move and a piece of Encouraging Evidence, never a rubric. It is also the layer this framework depends on most for transfer: a skill practiced once stays in that one lesson unless something makes a student want to carry it into the next unfamiliar situation. Why that's the right call, and what these three capacities actually are, is explored fully under The Heart of I AM above.

The Practice

How to Use It

Everything above is architecture. Here is how it actually shows up in a classroom.

A teacher doesn't need to use all nine anchors at once. Within Layer 1, choose whichever converging literacy fits the lesson at hand: an information literacy move in one lesson, a media literacy move in another, an AI literacy move in a third. These can be used any time throughout the school year, as often as feels meaningful, not on a fixed schedule.

Across all three layers, a single lesson works best with one to three elements chosen intentionally, not all nine at once. Pick a grade level, pick a starting point, and let the practice run alongside the curriculum already in place rather than compete with it.

Because the anchors are so few and so concrete, this is also meant to work as a coaching document, not only a planning one. I AM calls this three-way partnership the Triad: the classroom teacher, who brings the content and knows the students; the teacher librarian or media specialist, who brings expertise in inquiry, information, media, and AI; and the student, who brings the questions and judgment that make the learning meaningful. None replaces the other. A teacher librarian can use this page as shared language for a short conversation inside that Triad: which literacy fits this unit, which capacity is already alive in the room, which responsibility is worth naming out loud. For the full case for why this partnership matters, see Powerful Partnerships below.

The sections that follow, the Teaching Companion, the Assessment Guide, and the grade by grade essentials, are where this becomes concrete.

The Application

Where It Matters

College ready and career ready both assume the readiness ends somewhere, a seat, a job. Life doesn't stop asking things of a person once they get there.

"This is what turns graduation from a life moment into life momentum."

Life ready means never being finished, still learning, still coming to understand something more deeply than you did before, still able to appreciate what's in front of you, still grateful for it. It means telling what's true from what's convenient the moment it actually counts, and making a sound decision, about a career, a diagnosis, a belief, using evidence instead of fear or whoever spoke loudest.

I AM was never built as three separate things happening to sit next to each other. The literacies, the human capacities, and the responsibilities exist because none of them works alone. A student can be taught to verify a source and still share the false one anyway, because no one built the care to ask who might be hurt by passing it along. A student can be taught to care about other people and still be manipulated by something that only looks true, because no one built the skill to check it. What follows is not a list of nice outcomes. It is a description of what is either present or absent in the world right now, and a great deal of what looks broken today is exactly what absence looks like.

In civic life

Where this is alive, a citizen has the literacy to verify what a claim is actually built on, the care to treat the person on the other side of a disagreement as someone worth understanding rather than defeating, and the Privacy & Agency to notice when their own attention is being pulled toward outrage on purpose. Where any one of these is missing, the other two collapse with it. Verification without care produces someone who is right and unbearable. Care without the literacy to check a claim produces someone easily used by whoever they trust. This is close to a fair description of public life in much of the world today, not because people lack one of these, but because most were never taught to hold all three at once.

In science and the environment

Where this is alive, a student has the AI and media literacy to tell a real finding from a manufactured doubt, the care to see the specific people, often not themselves, who bear the cost of environmental harm first, and the Wellbeing & Intentionality to make a sustained personal choice rather than a performed one. Where it is absent, this kind of work collapses into a flag planted rather than a problem understood, competing camps shouting past each other, each one holding a piece of the truth and mistaking it for the whole.

Across the world's biggest shared problems, whatever they happen to be called this decade

Where this is alive, a student has the literacy to separate real progress from a well-designed claim of progress, the care that keeps a big problem tied to an actual person rather than a statistic, and the Identity & Presence to feel personally accountable to it, not just aware of it. Where it is absent, the problem stays a poster, sincere and empty at once. I AM is built to close exactly this gap, not by teaching the list of problems, but by building the capacity every one of them has always assumed and rarely taught.

In the everyday information life every student already lives in

Where this is alive, a student meets a feed or an AI conversation with the literacy to check it, the care to ask who could be hurt if they share it anyway, and the Identity & Presence to recognize that what they give their attention to is quietly shaping who they're becoming. Where it is absent, and this is the condition most students are actually in today, the loudest and most confident version of a claim wins by default.

In the decisions no one else can make for you

This is where the stakes stop being abstract. Choosing a career path, deciding whether to pursue a certification or a degree, evaluating a medical diagnosis for yourself or a parent, a partner, a child, these are moments where being able to tell a real study from a manufactured one, a credentialed source from a confident stranger, is not a school skill anymore. It is the difference between a treatment decision made on evidence and one made on fear or good marketing. Where this is alive, a person facing a frightening diagnosis has the literacy to read past a headline and find the actual research, the care to bring someone they trust into the decision rather than deciding alone in a panic, and the Wellbeing & Intentionality to notice when a choice is being driven by anxiety rather than by what the evidence actually supports. Where it is absent, people make life-altering decisions, about their health, their child's health, their entire working life, based on whichever version of the truth reached them first or loudest. This is not a future-tense stake. People are making exactly these decisions today, right now, with or without the capacity to make them well.

In whatever a student ends up doing

Where this is alive, a tradesperson, a scientist, a parent, an artist, an engineer carries all three into every room: the literacy to tell true from convenient, the care to understand someone whose path to a belief looks nothing like their own, and the Privacy & Agency to act on what they find rather than simply noticing it. Where it is absent, that same person is more easily moved by whoever is loudest, and the world does not stop needing this capacity just because school stopped teaching it.

"One might call this the foundation for civility in civic discourse."

Not civility as politeness, and not agreement as the goal. Civility as the discipline of staying in the room with someone whose conclusion differs from yours, literate enough to check what's actually true, caring enough to ask how they got there before deciding they're wrong, and responsible enough to know the difference between disagreement and disrespect. A world that has forgotten how to do this is not missing manners. It is missing exactly the three things this section has just described, working together. That is what I AM is built to support.

The Foundation

Curiosity

Curiosity is more than engagement. More than participation. More than simply asking questions.

In the I AM framework, curiosity is treated as a human practice — the decision to remain intellectually open, thoughtful, and willing to investigate rather than passively accept, reject, scroll past, or disengage.

"Curiosity is the willingness to move toward understanding rather than away from it."

Curiosity is the antidote to passivity.

It interrupts automatic acceptance. It slows impulsive judgment. It creates space for verification, empathy, perspective-taking, and understanding.

"A caring and curious thinker seeks to understand not only what people believe, but how they came to believe it."

Curiosity is both an expression and a discipline of love

Love for truth

Love for understanding

Love for people

Love for learning

Love for the shared information environment we all help shape

The framework treats curiosity not as a personality trait, but as a learnable discipline rooted in humility, care, connection, and responsibility. Students learn to pause, ask another question, investigate a claim, consider another perspective, and reflect before participating.

In this framework, curiosity is not peripheral to learning. It is the energy that drives meaningful learning itself.

Layer 1 — Developmental Progression

I AM Converging Literacies

One clear, age-appropriate focus for Information, Media, and AI Literacy at each grade level. Designed to integrate into existing lessons across all subjects.

Teaching Companion → I AM Assessment Guide →

Gr.	Information / Authority	Media / Intent	AI / Machine
K	Ask: "How do we know this is real?"	Identify a logo or brand	Notice when something is made by a computer
1	Find two sources for one fact	Identify ads vs. stories	Notice when a suggestion came from a machine
2	Notice when two sources tell the story differently	Ask: "Who made this?"	Notice that a machine's suggestion isn't always right
3	Use source features to investigate credibility	Ask: "Why was this made?"	Experiment with simple prompts
4	Identify who published this and their purpose	Identify persuasion	Ask where AI gets information
5	Look outside a source to see what others say about it	Identify missing perspectives	Identify AI errors
6	Use lateral reading	Analyze clickbait	Understand algorithm sorting
7	Verify quotes externally	Understand how platform design shapes messages	Construct deliberate prompts and evaluate whether the output reflects your intent
8	Check whether sources are independent	Identify logical fallacies	Test for bias in outputs
9	Trace claims to original sources	Analyze visual rhetoric	Evaluate privacy trade-offs, including data as labor
10	Evaluate expertise vs. influence	Distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation	Assess AI synthesis vs. copying
11	Evaluate quality of evidence	Analyze framing	Evaluate who benefits and who is harmed, including environmental costs
12	Synthesize conflicting claims	Create and critically evaluate counter-narratives	Apply human oversight, including civic and democratic accountability

A note on the AI column: I AM takes a strong position on what students need: care, curiosity, connection, discernment, agency, authorship, and responsible participation. It does not require schools or families to take one position on how much AI students should use. Whether AI is embraced, limited, or rejected for student use, young people still need to understand the information and technological systems shaping the world around them and develop the human capacity to make informed choices within it.

Layer 1 — Teaching Companion

I AM Teaching Companion

From grade-level essential to usable classroom move. Each grade includes teacher background knowledge, student-facing meaning, and a practical teaching move for all three literacy domains.

Why This Section Exists

Layer 1 addresses what a student needs to know and be able to do: the converging literacies of information, media, and AI, skills like tracing a claim back to its original source, naming the persuasion technique in an advertisement, or checking an AI's answer against a reliable source. That is the whole job of this section. Layer 2 will address why a student would want to use these skills beyond the assignment, and Layer 3 will address how a student carries them responsibly into a connected world, but neither is this section's concern. This section turns the K–12 progression into grade-level instructional guidance: what the skill means, why it matters developmentally, what students should understand, and how to introduce it without building an entire new unit.

How to Use It

Start with one essential. Choose the teaching move that fits your current lesson. Use the language as a quick planning reference or collaboration point with your teacher librarian. Design with awareness of all nine elements — focus on one to three intentionally.

A Note on Mixed Access

Teachers, students, and families are in genuinely different places on AI tool use. Some classrooms have full access. Some districts restrict individual student accounts. Some parents have asked that their child not use AI tools directly. None of these should block a student from learning the underlying concepts.

Where an essential's Teaching Move calls for individual student use of an AI tool, it can generally be adapted to a whole-class, teacher-operated format: the teacher runs the tool at the front of the room, students direct what to ask or how to revise a prompt as a group, and the class observes and evaluates the output together. Students practice the same thinking, without any individual student creating an account or operating the tool directly. Grades 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10 include this alternative explicitly. The same adaptation can be applied to any essential where it's needed.

Choose a grade

K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Kindergarten Building foundational curiosity and awareness ▾

Information / Authority

Ask: "How do we know this is real?"

What It Means

The foundational epistemological question of information literacy — inviting children to pause before accepting what they see or hear and ask about its origin and reliability.

Why It Matters

Young children are natural believers. At this stage the goal is not skepticism but curiosity — planting the habit of asking before accepting. Information habits formed early are durable.

Students Need to Know

Not everything they see, hear, or read is true — and asking where something came from is a smart, normal thing to do.

Teaching Move

Show two 'facts' about an animal — one true, one silly. Ask: how could we find out if this is real? Let students suggest ways. The goal is generating the question, not the answer.

Media / Intent

Identify a logo or brand

What It Means

A logo is a visual symbol that identifies who made or is selling something. Recognizing logos is the first step to understanding authorship in media.

Why It Matters

Before students can ask who made a piece of media, they need the visual vocabulary to identify makers. Logos are the most concrete marker of authorship available to young children.

Students Need to Know

Almost everything they see — on TV, on food packages, on websites — was made by someone, and logos are clues about who that someone is.

Teaching Move

Gather 5–6 familiar logos. Ask: what does this tell us about who made this? Gradually introduce the idea that the maker has a reason for making it.

AI / Machine

Notice when something is made by a computer

What It Means

Helping children understand that some voices, pictures, characters, and responses they encounter are made or generated by computers, not by people.

Why It Matters

Children at this age often anthropomorphize technology. Laying an early foundation that some things are not made by a person prevents confusion and builds awareness needed for later AI literacy.

Students Need to Know

A voice assistant, a talking toy, a game character, or a computer-made picture is not a person — it doesn't feel, think, or care the way a person does.

Teaching Move

Compare a voice assistant answering a question to a teacher answering the same question. Ask: what's the same? What's different? Guide students toward noticing the machine doesn't know them.

Grade 1 Building sourcing habits and noticing suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Find two sources for one fact

What It Means

When we want to know if something is true, checking more than one place can help — especially when the places didn't just copy the same original story. Two sources that independently agree are stronger than one source alone.

Why It Matters

This is the earliest version of corroboration — a skill professional fact-checkers use every day. Learning to seek a second, independent source is a habit that compounds across a lifetime of information use.

Students Need to Know

When we want to be sure about something, we check more than one place. If two places say the same thing, we can feel more confident it's true.

Teaching Move

Share an interesting animal fact from a picture book. Ask: where else could we check this? Find a second source together — one that didn't just copy the first. Celebrate: two places agree — that helps us feel more sure!

Media / Intent

Identify ads vs. stories

What It Means

Ads are messages made to get us to want or buy something. Stories tell us something that happened or could happen. Learning to tell them apart is the beginning of understanding media purpose.

Why It Matters

Children this age are surrounded by advertising embedded in content they enjoy. Naming the difference between "someone is trying to sell me something" and "someone is telling me a story" is foundational media literacy.

Students Need to Know

Some things we see and hear are trying to get us to buy or want something. Those are ads. Other things just tell us stories or information. It's important to know which is which.

Teaching Move

Show a short TV commercial and a short story clip. Ask: which one is trying to sell something? How do you know? Let students share their reasoning. Introduce the word "advertisement."

AI / Machine

Notice when a suggestion came from a machine

What It Means

Many digital tools suggest things automatically — what to watch next, what word to use, what to search. These suggestions come from computers, not people.

Why It Matters

Learning to notice automated suggestions builds the awareness that digital environments are designed to guide behavior. This awareness is the foundation of AI literacy.

Students Need to Know

Sometimes a computer suggests what to do next — like what video to watch or what word to type. A computer made that suggestion, not a person.

Teaching Move

When using a classroom tablet or computer, point out an autocomplete suggestion or "next video" recommendation. Ask: did a person tell us to watch this? Who decided to show it to us?

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

The teacher uses a single classroom tablet or computer, projected for the class to see. As a video plays or a suggestion appears, the teacher pauses and asks the group: did a person tell us to watch this? Who decided to show it to us? Students answer together, without needing a device of their own.

Grade 2 Authorship, disagreement between sources, and questioning suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Notice when two sources tell the story differently

What It Means

Grade 1 taught that two sources agreeing makes us more confident. Sometimes, though, two sources don't agree. Noticing that disagreement — rather than just picking whichever one we saw first — is the next step in evaluating information.

Why It Matters

Real information is often contested, not just confirmed or unconfirmed. Learning to notice disagreement between sources, instead of averaging or ignoring it, is the seed of the verification habits students will need for the rest of their lives.

Students Need to Know

Sometimes two places tell us different things about the same topic. When that happens, it doesn't mean one of them is lying — it means we need to look closer to figure out what's going on.

Teaching Move

Find two simple sources that describe the same event or fact slightly differently. Read both aloud. Ask: did they say the same thing? What was different? What should we do when that happens?

Media / Intent

Ask: "Who made this?"

What It Means

Everything we see, read, or watch was made by someone. Asking who made it is the first step toward understanding why it was made and whether we should trust it.

Why It Matters

Authorship awareness is the prerequisite for all media analysis. Students who reflexively ask "who made this?" are already thinking critically about information sources.

Students Need to Know

Everything was made by someone — a person, a company, a school. Knowing who made something helps us understand what it's for and whether we can trust it.

Teaching Move

Hold up three different texts: a page from a textbook, a cereal box, a library book. For each: who made this? Why did they make it? What do they want us to do or think?

AI / Machine

Notice that a machine's suggestion isn't always right

What It Means

Grade 1 taught that suggestions come from machines, not people. This grade adds the next piece: a machine's suggestion is not automatically true — it can be right or wrong.

Why It Matters

This is the first seed of critically evaluating machine output rather than just noticing its source. It sets up the more formal skill of identifying AI errors in Grade 5.

Students Need to Know

A computer's suggestion is not automatically true. Just because it suggested something doesn't mean it's correct — we can still check.

Teaching Move

When a suggested search, autocomplete, or "recommended for you" appears, ask: could this suggestion be wrong? How would we find out? Model checking a suggestion against something students already know.

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

During a teacher-led research demonstration on a projected screen, the teacher pauses at an autocomplete suggestion or a suggested search. As a class, students discuss: could this suggestion be wrong? How would we find out? The class checks the suggestion together against something they already know, without individual devices.

Grade 3 Source features, purpose, and simple prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Use source features to investigate credibility

What It Means

Text features — headings, captions, author information, publication dates, citations — are credibility clues, not proof on their own, for investigating whether a source is well-supported and up-to-date.

Why It Matters

Text features are direct connections to CA ELA standards and represent the bridge between reading instruction and information literacy. Reading features for credibility clues, not just comprehension, is a higher-order application.

Students Need to Know

Good information sources usually show us who wrote it, when it was written, and where the information came from. Looking for these features is one step in investigating how credible what we're reading is — not a final verdict on their own.

Teaching Move

Give students two nonfiction texts on the same topic — one with strong text features, one without. Which has stronger credibility clues? Why? Focus on author, date, and citations as key credibility indicators.

Media / Intent

Ask: "Why was this made?"

What It Means

Media is always made for a purpose — to inform, persuade, entertain, sell, or inspire action. Asking why it was made is the central question of media literacy.

Why It Matters

Purpose analysis is foundational to all media interpretation. Understanding that every media message was constructed with intent shifts students from passive receivers to active analysts.

Students Need to Know

Everything made by people was made for a reason. Sometimes it's to teach us something, sometimes to sell us something, sometimes to make us feel a certain way. Figuring out why helps us understand what we're seeing.

Teaching Move

Show three different media examples: a documentary clip, a commercial, and a news story. For each: why was this made? What does the maker want you to do, feel, or believe?

AI / Machine

Experiment with simple prompts

What It Means

A prompt is an instruction or question given to an AI system. Different prompts produce different outputs. Experimenting helps students understand that AI responds to what you ask.

Why It Matters

Early prompting experience builds the foundation for prompt literacy at higher grades. Understanding that AI is responsive — not magical — demystifies it and encourages intentional use.

Students Need to Know

When we talk to an AI, we use prompts — questions or instructions. The AI tries to answer based on what we said. Different questions get different answers. We're in charge of what we ask.

Teaching Move

With a class-visible AI tool, ask the same question two different ways — one vague, one specific. Compare the answers. What changed? What stayed the same? Who was in control of what we got?

Grade 4 Publisher purpose, persuasion, and where AI gets information ▾

Information / Authority

Identify who published this and their purpose

What It Means

Publisher identity shapes content. A scientific institution, a news organization, and a company selling a product all publish information with different purposes and potential biases.

Why It Matters

Understanding that the publisher shapes the message is a leap from simple authorship awareness to systemic thinking about information production. This is the beginning of the "follow the money" analytical habit.

Students Need to Know

Who published something tells us a lot about why they published it. A company, a school, a government agency, and a newspaper all have different reasons for sharing information — and those reasons affect what they say.

Teaching Move

Bring three sources on the same health topic from different publishers: a hospital, a supplement company, and a government health agency. Who published each? Why might they each say something different about the same topic?

Media / Intent

Identify persuasion

What It Means

Persuasion is the use of language, images, and emotion to change what someone believes or does. Identifying persuasive techniques — emotional appeals, repetition, authority — builds resistance to manipulation.

Why It Matters

Students are surrounded by persuasive media. Naming the techniques used — rather than simply being affected by them — shifts the power dynamic from media to student.

Students Need to Know

Some media is designed to change what we think or do. It uses special techniques — like making us feel happy or scared, or repeating something many times — to persuade us. Spotting those techniques helps us think for ourselves.

Teaching Move

Analyze a print or video advertisement together. What techniques does it use? Does it use happy music? Famous people? Repetition? Urgency language? What emotion is it trying to trigger?

AI / Machine

Ask where AI gets information

What It Means

AI systems are trained on large amounts of text from the internet, books, and other sources, and most of what they say is generated from patterns in that training, not looked up fresh. Some AI tools can also search or retrieve information in real time, but even then, the result still needs to be checked.

Why It Matters

Understanding how AI produces an answer, usually from patterns in training data, sometimes combined with a live search, is fundamental to evaluating AI-produced information. Either way, the output needs the same scrutiny as any other source.

Students Need to Know

AI usually answers using patterns from its training, not by looking something up the way we'd look something up in a library or on a website. Some AI tools can also search for current information, but even then, what it gives back still needs to be checked, the same as anything else.

Teaching Move

Ask an AI tool a question about your local community that it couldn't know. Show how it gives a confident-sounding but incomplete answer. Ask: how does it know this? Where did it get this information? What should we do to verify it?

Grade 5 Looking outside a source, missing perspectives, and AI errors ▾

Information / Authority

Look outside a source to see what others say about it

What It Means

A source alone cannot establish its own credibility. Leaving it, even briefly, to see what independent others say about it gives a check that reading the source's own words never can.

Why It Matters

This is the bridge between Grade 4's focus on a source's stated purpose and Grade 6's formal technique of lateral reading. Research from the Stanford History Education Group specifically found that staying within a site, even reading its own "About" page, is a weaker check than looking outward.

Students Need to Know

A website's own description of itself is still the website talking about itself. To really check it, we need to step away and see what other people, outside that website, say about it.

Teaching Move

Find a website on a current topic. Instead of staying on the site, open a new tab and search the organization's name. What do independent sources say about it? Does what you find outside the site change how you read what's on it?

Media / Intent

Identify missing perspectives

What It Means

Every media message includes some voices and excludes others. Asking whose perspective is missing — and why — reveals the choices made in constructing the message.

Why It Matters

Recognizing missing perspectives moves students from accepting media as a window on reality to understanding it as a constructed representation. This is one of the most powerful critical thinking habits in media literacy.

Students Need to Know

Every news story or media message is made by people who chose what to include and what to leave out. Asking "who isn't here?" or "whose story isn't being told?" helps us understand what's complete and what's missing.

Teaching Move

Read a news article or watch a short news clip on a local issue. Ask: whose voices do we hear? Whose don't we hear? Why might those voices be missing? What would the story look like if we included them?

AI / Machine

Identify AI errors

What It Means

AI systems can produce confident-sounding errors — wrong facts, invented citations, outdated information, or culturally insensitive outputs. Identifying these errors requires checking AI outputs against reliable sources.

Why It Matters

Students are increasingly using AI tools for school work. Learning to identify errors — rather than accepting all AI output as correct — is a critical academic and information literacy skill. The confident tone of AI makes this especially important.

Students Need to Know

AI can be wrong — and it often sounds very confident when it's wrong. It can make up facts, invent sources, or give outdated information. We should always check important information from AI against a reliable source.

Teaching Move

Have the class ask an AI tool something verifiable — a historical date, a scientific fact, a book's author. Check the answer against a reliable source. If there's an error, celebrate finding it: "We just caught the AI making a mistake."

Grade 6 Entering lateral reading and algorithmic awareness ▾

Information / Authority

Use lateral reading

What It Means

Lateral reading means leaving a website to search for information about it — rather than reading deeply within the site itself. Professional fact-checkers open new tabs to find out what others say about a source.

Why It Matters

Research by the Stanford History Education Group found lateral reading to be a highly effective information literacy strategy, more reliable than reading About pages or checking design quality.

Students Need to Know

The fastest way to evaluate a source is to leave it — to search the organization, look for news coverage, and find out what independent parties say about it before deciding how much to trust it.

Teaching Move

Show a website that looks professional but has a questionable agenda. Open a new tab and search the organization name plus 'background' or 'reviews.' Model thinking aloud: what am I finding? Does this change how I'd use the original site?

Media / Intent

Analyze clickbait

What It Means

Clickbait is content designed to generate clicks through curiosity gaps, sensational language, or misleading headlines — often regardless of whether the content delivers what the headline implies.

Why It Matters

Clickbait is the dominant form of low-quality media students encounter online. Understanding it as a deliberate technique helps students resist automatic emotional reactions.

Students Need to Know

A dramatic or surprising headline is not evidence of an important story — it may just be designed to make them click. Pausing before clicking and checking whether the headline matches the content are key habits.

Teaching Move

Collect 5 real clickbait headlines and 5 straightforward news headlines on similar topics. Have students sort them and explain their choices, then show the full articles to compare whether the headlines matched the content.

AI / Machine

Understand algorithm sorting

What It Means

Algorithms are rules that determine what content you see — in social media feeds, search results, and recommendation engines. They sort and prioritize content based on predicted engagement, not accuracy.

Why It Matters

Students who don't understand algorithmic sorting think that 'what's at the top' means 'what's most true.' Top results reflect engagement optimization, advertising, and prior behavior.

Students Need to Know

The order in which they see things online is not random and not based on truth — it's based on what an algorithm predicts they'll click on, shaped by what they've clicked on before.

Teaching Move

Have students search the same question on two different devices or in private mode. Compare results. Ask: are they the same? Why might they differ? Who decides what appears first?

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

The teacher runs the same search twice on a single projected device, once in a regular browser and once in a private or incognito window. As a class, students compare the two sets of results and discuss: are they the same? Why might they differ? Who decides what appears first? The comparison happens as a shared observation, not on individual devices.

Grade 7 Quote verification, platform design, and deliberate prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Verify quotes externally

What It Means

Quotes attributed to real people circulate widely online, often altered or fabricated. Verifying a quote means tracing it to a primary source — the original speech, interview, or document — not just another website that repeats it.

Why It Matters

Fake quotes are among the most effective forms of misinformation. They borrow the credibility of a real person to spread a false message. Learning to trace quotes to primary sources is a high-value verification skill with direct application to academic research.

Students Need to Know

Just because a quote has someone's name on it doesn't mean they said it. Famous people have quotes attributed to them that they never said. To trust a quote, we need to find the original source — a recording, a transcript, or a direct document.

Teaching Move

Provide a widely-shared quote attributed to a historical figure. Task: find the original source. Search for the speech or document. Many well-known quotes are misattributed or altered. Discuss what you found and how it changes your understanding.

Media / Intent

Understand how platform design shapes messages

What It Means

Platform design — character limits, like buttons, autoplay, infinite scroll — shapes what kind of content gets created, shared, and consumed. The medium influences the message in concrete, analyzable ways.

Why It Matters

Understanding platform design as a form of editorial choice helps students see that the environment they're in shapes what they see and how they engage. This is a more sophisticated layer of media analysis.

Students Need to Know

Every platform has a design that shapes what we do and see. Character limits encourage short, hot-take content. Like buttons reward emotional reactions. Autoplay keeps us watching. These aren't neutral choices — they were designed with specific goals.

Teaching Move

Compare the same news event covered in a tweet, a short video, and a long article. How does each platform's design change what information is included? What gets left out in the shorter formats? Who benefits from those design choices?

AI / Machine

Construct deliberate prompts and evaluate whether the output reflects your intent

What It Means

Prompt literacy means crafting instructions that guide AI output toward a specific goal — and then evaluating whether the output actually achieved that goal. It requires intentionality about what you want and critical evaluation of what you get.

Why It Matters

Research identifies prompt literacy as an emerging critical competency for middle school AI literacy. As AI becomes embedded in academic work, students who can use it intentionally — and evaluate its outputs critically — have a significant advantage over students who use it passively.

Students Need to Know

The quality of what an AI produces depends heavily on how you ask. Vague prompts get vague answers. Specific, well-structured prompts get more useful results. And the most important skill is evaluating whether what you got is actually what you needed.

Teaching Move

Give students a writing task. First, create a vague prompt. Then revise it to be more specific. Compare the outputs. Ask: which output is more useful? What would you still need to do to use this for the assignment? Did the AI understand your intent?

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Where school policy or parent preference restricts individual student use of AI tools, this essential can be taught as a whole-class activity. The teacher operates the AI tool at the front of the room, and students construct the prompt together as a group: proposing what to add, what to make more specific, what context to include. The teacher types the group's prompt exactly as directed and displays the output for everyone to see. As a class, students discuss whether the output reflects what they intended, then revise the prompt together and compare the new result.

A note on primary sources

In this investigation, the original speech, the contemporaneous document, the unedited recording, functions as a primary source. A secondary source reports on, interprets, or analyzes the primary one. This distinction is one of the most durable skills a student can carry forward, useful far beyond any single research task.

The school library's collection, and any local or regional archive the teacher librarian can connect a student to (see Powerful Partnerships), are natural places for this work to go deeper. A teacher librarian can extend this essential from verifying a single quote into a fuller investigation: not just what a primary source says, but why it survived at all, and what its presence in a particular collection reveals about whose story was considered worth keeping.

Grade 8 Source independence, logical fallacies, and bias testing ▾

Information / Authority

Check whether sources are independent

What It Means

Multiple sources that trace back to the same original report are not independent — they're echoes. True corroboration requires sources that arrived at the same conclusion independently.

Why It Matters

The illusion of consensus is one of the most common features of misinformation spread. When many sites report the same false information, it can appear confirmed by multiple sources. Understanding source independence breaks this illusion.

Students Need to Know

Five websites saying the same thing doesn't mean five sources confirmed it. If they all copied from one original report, that's still just one source. True confirmation requires different organizations doing their own independent investigation.

Teaching Move

Find three articles reporting the same claim. Ask students to trace each back to its source. Do they all cite the same original report? If so, is that one report reliable? Discuss: three articles, one source — how confident should we be?

Media / Intent

Identify logical fallacies

What It Means

Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that make an argument sound more convincing than it actually is. Common examples include ad hominem attacks, false dilemmas, straw man arguments, and appeals to authority.

Why It Matters

Fallacies are the structural basis of much political and commercial persuasion. Students who can name fallacies gain a vocabulary for analyzing why an argument feels convincing even when it's logically flawed.

Students Need to Know

Some arguments sound good but have a hidden flaw in their logic. When we attack the person instead of their idea, or pretend there are only two choices when there are many, or exaggerate someone's position to dismiss it — those are fallacies.

Teaching Move

Analyze a political advertisement, opinion column, or debate clip. Which fallacies appear? Have students identify the fallacy, name it, and explain why the argument fails on its own terms — separate from whether they agree with the conclusion.

AI / Machine

Test for bias in outputs

What It Means

AI systems inherit biases from the data they were trained on — including historical inequities, dominant cultural perspectives, and the overrepresentation of some voices. Testing for bias means examining AI outputs for patterns that reflect these embedded assumptions.

Why It Matters

AI bias is not a technical problem waiting to be solved — it is a reflection of existing social patterns. Students who understand this can critically evaluate AI outputs and advocate for more equitable AI systems as future citizens.

Students Need to Know

AI systems learned from human-created data, and human data contains biases. So AI can reproduce those biases — in the images it generates, the stories it tells, the recommendations it makes. Testing for bias means asking: who benefits from this output? Who is left out or harmed?

Teaching Move

Ask an AI tool the same question about different groups — e.g., describe a "successful person" or describe professions associated with different demographics. Compare the outputs. What patterns emerge? What do those patterns reflect about the training data?

Grade 9 Original sources, visual rhetoric, and privacy as labor ▾

Information / Authority

Trace claims to original sources

What It Means

Claims degrade as they travel through the information ecosystem — details change, context is stripped, nuance disappears. Tracing a claim back to its original source reveals how and where distortion entered the chain.

Why It Matters

This skill is the foundation of academic source evaluation and professional fact-checking. It transforms students from passive consumers of secondhand claims into active investigators who can evaluate information at its source.

Students Need to Know

By the time a claim reaches us, it may have passed through dozens of sources. Each one may have changed something — left out context, exaggerated a finding, or misunderstood the original. Going back to the original source is the most reliable way to know what was actually found or said, though even original sources can be incomplete or mistaken.

Teaching Move

Present a widely-shared statistic or research finding. Working backward from a news article, have students trace it through successive sources until they find the original study, data set, or primary source. Compare the original claim to what the final article says. What changed?

Media / Intent

Analyze visual rhetoric

What It Means

Visual rhetoric is the use of images, composition, color, and design to convey meaning and persuade. Every image contains choices — framing, subject selection, color saturation — that shape the message.

Why It Matters

Visual media dominates contemporary information environments. Students who can analyze images rhetorically — not just descriptively — have a critical tool for navigating political imagery, advertising, and social media.

Students Need to Know

Images are constructed, not neutral. The angle, lighting, framing, and subject selection in a photograph all communicate something. Asking what choices were made in creating an image — and what effect those choices produce — is analyzing visual rhetoric.

Teaching Move

Compare two photographs of the same news event taken from different outlets. Ask: what is included in each? What is excluded? What emotional response does each photo invite? What choices produced those different emotional responses?

AI / Machine

Evaluate privacy trade-offs, including data as labor

What It Means

When we use free digital services, we typically pay with our data — behavioral data, attention, and the content we create. Understanding this transaction as a form of economic exchange — data as labor — reframes the terms of digital participation.

Why It Matters

Privacy education that focuses only on personal safety misses the economic and political dimensions of data collection. Understanding data as labor gives students a framework for evaluating the terms of digital platforms and advocating for their own interests.

Students Need to Know

Nothing online is really free. When we use platforms without paying money, we're usually paying with our attention and our data. Our clicks, searches, and posts train AI systems and generate advertising revenue. Our data has value — and someone is profiting from it.

Teaching Move

Examine the privacy policy of a commonly used platform. What data is collected? How is it used? Who profits? Then reframe: if you were paid minimum wage for each hour of data you generated, what would you earn in a year? What does that suggest about whose interests are being served?

Grade 10 Expertise vs. influence, misinfo types, AI synthesis ▾

Information / Authority

Evaluate expertise vs. influence

What It Means

Being widely followed is not the same as being credible. Expertise is established through demonstrated knowledge, peer review, and accountability to a field. Influence is a function of attention. These are different, and often inverse, things.

Why It Matters

Social media amplifies influence independent of expertise. Students who conflate follower count with credibility are vulnerable to misinformation from high-influence, low-expertise sources. This distinction is one of the most important in contemporary information literacy.

Students Need to Know

Having millions of followers doesn't make someone an expert. Expertise is earned through study, practice, and accountability to a field — not through virality. Asking "what are their actual credentials in this area?" is more useful than asking "how many followers do they have?"

Teaching Move

Find a high-follower social media account making a claim about a scientific or medical topic. Research the account holder's actual credentials in that specific field. Then find a low-follower expert in the same field. Compare their claims. Whose claims should carry more weight, and why?

Media / Intent

Distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation

What It Means

Misinformation is false information spread without intent to deceive. Disinformation is false information spread deliberately. Malinformation is genuine information used maliciously, often by revealing private details or stripping away context, to cause harm. Amplification, the mechanism by which any of these spreads at scale, is worth naming as context, but the essential skill is telling the three apart.

Why It Matters

Understanding these distinct categories prevents the oversimplification that all "fake news" is the same. Each requires a different response: correction, attribution of intent, or contextual analysis.

Students Need to Know

Not all false or harmful information is the same. Some people spread it by mistake. Some spread it on purpose. Some spread true information with harmful intent. And algorithms amplify all of it regardless of accuracy — because engagement, not truth, drives what spreads.

Teaching Move

Present three real-world information examples — one misinformation, one disinformation, one malinformation. For each: how did it spread? Who spread it, and why? What's the right response to each? How does the algorithm treat them the same, even though they're different?

AI / Machine

Assess AI synthesis vs. copying

What It Means

AI systems can combine information from multiple sources into synthesized responses — which is different from directly copying text. Understanding this distinction matters for academic integrity and for evaluating whether AI-generated content adds genuine understanding.

Why It Matters

Students and educators both need to understand how AI-generated content is produced in order to make informed decisions about its use. The line between synthesis and copying is not always clear in AI outputs.

Students Need to Know

When AI writes something, it's usually synthesizing, blending patterns from many sources, though it can sometimes reproduce recognizable language or material from its training data too. That's different from typical plagiarism, but it's also not the same as original thinking. The question isn't only whether AI copied. It's whether the output represents your own understanding or someone else's.

Teaching Move

Have students use AI to produce a paragraph on a topic they've studied. Then ask them to fact-check each claim, identify the likely sources, and rewrite the paragraph in their own words. What did the AI get right? Wrong? What understanding does the revised paragraph demonstrate that the AI version didn't?

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

The teacher uses a single AI tool, projected for the class, to produce a paragraph on a topic the class directs and has studied. Students then work individually or in small groups, without any AI tool, to fact-check each claim against trusted sources, identify likely sources for the AI's claims, and rewrite the paragraph in their own words. The class discusses together what the AI got right, what it got wrong, and what understanding the rewritten paragraphs demonstrate that the AI version didn't.

Grade 11 Evidence quality, framing, and stakeholder harm ▾

Information / Authority

Evaluate quality of evidence

What It Means

Evidence quality exists on a spectrum — from anecdote and personal testimony to peer-reviewed research to systematic reviews of multiple studies. Understanding this hierarchy helps students evaluate the strength of claims in context.

Why It Matters

Policy debates, health decisions, and civic arguments all depend on how evidence is evaluated. Students who understand evidence hierarchies are better equipped to navigate the genuine complexity of empirical disagreements.

Students Need to Know

Not all evidence is equal. A personal story is evidence, but it's not the same as a study of thousands of people. A single study is evidence, but a review of dozens of studies is stronger. Asking "how strong is this evidence?" is one of the most important questions in critical thinking.

Teaching Move

Present four types of evidence for the same claim: a personal anecdote, a news article, a single study, and a systematic review. Ask students to rank them by strength and explain their reasoning. Then discuss: when does weaker evidence still matter?

Media / Intent

Analyze framing

What It Means

Framing is the way a story's context, language, and emphasis shape how the audience understands an issue — what causes it, who's responsible, and what should be done. Two accurate stories about the same event can communicate very different meanings through framing choices.

Why It Matters

Framing analysis is a sophisticated form of media literacy that addresses the ways truthful information can still mislead through context, emphasis, and selection. It prepares students for the complexity of journalism, advocacy, and political communication.

Students Need to Know

Two news stories can both be factually accurate and tell completely different stories about the same event — depending on what they emphasize, what language they use, what context they provide, and what they leave out. That's framing, and it's one of the most powerful tools in media.

Teaching Move

Find two news articles about the same policy or event from outlets with different editorial perspectives. Compare headline language, quote selection, expert sources chosen, and what context is included or excluded. What story does each frame tell? What framing choices create the difference?

AI / Machine

Evaluate who benefits and who is harmed, including environmental costs

What It Means

AI systems can produce differential impacts across social groups, and their training and operation carry real environmental costs, including energy and water consumption. Asking who benefits and who is harmed, and by how much, is a stakeholder analysis applied to technology.

Why It Matters

Preparing students to be informed citizens about AI means helping them investigate its distributional effects: who may benefit, who may be harmed, and who bears the environmental costs. This connects AI literacy to broader questions of equity and sustainability.

Students Need to Know

AI systems don't necessarily benefit everyone equally. They can amplify existing inequalities, displace workers in specific industries, and carry real environmental costs, including energy and water used in training and running models. Asking "who benefits and at whose expense?" is a civic question to investigate, not a conclusion to accept.

Teaching Move

Research a specific AI deployment — a hiring algorithm, a medical diagnosis tool, or a content moderation system. Conduct a stakeholder analysis: who benefits from this system? Who might be harmed? What are the environmental costs? What accountability exists for those harms?

Grade 12 Synthesis, counter-narrative, and human oversight ▾

Information / Authority

Synthesize conflicting claims

What It Means

Synthesis means bringing together multiple conflicting sources, evaluating their relative credibility and evidence quality, and forming a reasoned position that accounts for genuine uncertainty.

Why It Matters

Real information environments are full of legitimate disagreement alongside manufactured controversy. Students who can synthesize understand the difference between genuine scientific uncertainty and false balance.

Students Need to Know

Synthesis isn't picking a side or splitting the difference — it's understanding why sources conflict and reaching a position that is honest about what we know and don't know.

Teaching Move

Give students three sources on a genuinely contested topic that conflict for different reasons. Have them produce a synthesis paragraph that accurately represents the state of the disagreement.

Media / Intent

Create and critically evaluate counter-narratives

What It Means

A counter-narrative challenges a dominant or misleading narrative. Critically evaluating counter-narratives means recognizing that they can themselves be used as disinformation tools.

Why It Matters

Media production is the highest level of media literacy. Students who can craft effective counter-narratives understand both how media works and how it can be used for civic good.

Students Need to Know

Creating media is a form of power — and with it comes responsibility. A counter-narrative should be more honest than the narrative it counters, not just more emotionally effective.

Teaching Move

Students identify a misleading local or national narrative, produce a short counter-narrative in any format, then critically evaluate each other's work: is it accurate? Does it use the same emotional manipulation it critiques?

AI / Machine

Apply human oversight, including civic and democratic accountability

What It Means

Human oversight means maintaining meaningful human judgment in systems that use AI — reviewing outputs, auditing decisions, maintaining the ability to override, and ensuring consequential decisions are not fully delegated to automated processes.

Why It Matters

As AI is deployed in high-stakes contexts — hiring, healthcare, criminal justice, education — the question of who is responsible for outcomes becomes urgent. Democratic accountability for AI is a legitimate form of civic participation.

Students Need to Know

'The AI decided' is never an acceptable final answer when real consequences for real people are involved. Humans who deploy AI systems remain responsible for their outcomes.

Teaching Move

Present a scenario where an AI system made a consequential error. Ask: at what point should a human have intervened? Have students design a human oversight protocol for a specific AI use case, then extend it to ask: what civic or democratic mechanisms should govern this system at scale?

Layer 1 — Assessment Guide

I AM Assessment Guide

"I can" statements, performance indicators, and sample tasks for every essential. Tasks require no special materials and take 10–20 minutes.

What This Section Provides

For each grade level: three essentials, each with a student-facing "I can" statement, a teacher-facing performance indicator describing observable evidence of the skill, and a concrete sample task that can be embedded in an existing lesson without special materials or preparation time.

How to Use It

The "I can" statements can be shared directly with students. They may also inform progress-monitoring language, but they are not ready-made IEP goals — writing them into a student's IEP requires collaboration with SPED staff. Performance indicators describe what to look for — not a rubric score, but observable thinking. Sample tasks are starting points; adapt the context to your content area and students.

Choose a grade

K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Kindergarten Building foundational curiosity and awareness ▾

Information / Authority

Ask: "How do we know this is real?"

"I can" Statement

I can ask "how do we know this is real?" and suggest at least one way we could find out.

Performance Indicator

Student spontaneously asks or responds to the question "how do we know?" and can name at least one checking strategy (ask a teacher, look in a book, look it up).

Sample Task

Show two animal "facts" — one true, one silly. Ask: how could we find out if this is real? Students suggest checking strategies. Look for the question itself, not the correct answer.

Media / Intent

Identify a logo or brand

"I can" Statement

I can point to a logo and say who made this thing.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies a logo as belonging to a maker/company and can explain in simple terms that someone made this on purpose.

Sample Task

Show 4–5 familiar logos. Ask: who made this? What does the logo tell us? Students respond verbally or by pointing. Look for the connection between logo and maker, not brand recall.

AI / Machine

Notice when something is made by a computer

"I can" Statement

I can notice when something is made by a computer, not a person.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies a voice assistant response as coming from a computer and can name at least one way it is different from a person (doesn't know me, doesn't feel, is a program).

Sample Task

Play two responses to the same question — one from a voice assistant, one from you or another person. Ask: which one is the computer? How do you know? What's different? Look for the human/machine distinction, not technical vocabulary.

Grade 1 Building sourcing habits and noticing suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Find two sources for one fact

"I can" Statement

I can find two different places that say the same thing, and explain why that can help me feel more confident it's true.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies two distinct sources for a single fact and articulates that independent agreement between sources increases confidence — without prompting from the teacher.

Sample Task

Give students a simple animal fact. Ask them to find it in two different books. Then ask: do both books say the same thing? Does that make you feel more sure? Look for the reasoning, not just the sources.

Media / Intent

Identify ads vs. stories

"I can" Statement

I can tell the difference between an ad and a story, and explain how I know.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies an advertisement as distinct from a story and gives at least one reason — "it's trying to sell something," "it keeps showing the product," or similar.

Sample Task

Show three media clips — two stories, one ad. Ask: which one is an ad? How do you know? Students respond verbally. Look for a reason, not just a correct identification.

AI / Machine

Notice when a suggestion came from a machine

"I can" Statement

I can notice when a computer is suggesting something to me, and say that a computer — not a person — made that suggestion.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies an automated suggestion (autocomplete, recommended video, etc.) as coming from a computer program, not a person who chose it for them specifically.

Sample Task

During a classroom digital activity, a suggestion appears. Ask: did a person pick this for you, or did a computer? How do you know? Look for understanding of the machine-generated nature of the suggestion.

Grade 2 Authorship, disagreement between sources, and questioning suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Notice when two sources tell the story differently

"I can" Statement

I can notice when two sources tell me different things about the same topic, and say that this means we need to look closer.

Performance Indicator

When presented with two sources that disagree, student identifies the disagreement specifically (not just that "something's off") and responds with curiosity or a next step rather than picking one at random.

Sample Task

Present two short, simple sources that describe the same fact or event slightly differently. Ask: what did each one say? Are they the same? What should we do about that? Look for the student naming the specific difference, not just sensing something is wrong.

Media / Intent

Ask: "Who made this?"

"I can" Statement

I can look at something and ask who made it, and explain why that matters.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies the maker of a media example and connects that identity to a reason for making it — even at a simple level ("a cereal company made this to sell cereal").

Sample Task

Show three different texts (magazine ad, school newsletter, library book). For each: who made this? Why does it matter who made it? Look for connection between maker and purpose, however simple.

AI / Machine

Notice that a machine's suggestion isn't always right

"I can" Statement

I can notice a computer's suggestion and say that it might not be true, so I can check it.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies an automated suggestion and articulates, unprompted or when asked, that the suggestion is not automatically true — going beyond simply naming its machine origin.

Sample Task

During a search or app activity, a suggestion appears. Ask: is the computer definitely right about this? How could we find out? Look for the student treating the suggestion as checkable, not automatically correct.

Grade 3 Source features, purpose, and simple prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Use source features to investigate credibility

"I can" Statement

I can use source features — like the author's name, when it was written, and where the information came from — as clues to investigate whether a source is credible.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies at least two relevant source features and uses them to investigate a source's credibility, explaining the connection between feature and credibility.

Sample Task

Give two texts on the same topic — one with author name, date, and citations; one without. Ask: which has stronger credibility clues? Use specific source features to explain your answer. Look for feature-to-credibility reasoning.

Media / Intent

Ask: "Why was this made?"

"I can" Statement

I can look at a piece of media and identify why it was made — to inform, entertain, sell, or persuade.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies the primary purpose of a media example (inform, entertain, sell, persuade) and provides evidence from the media itself for their conclusion.

Sample Task

Show three media examples of different types. For each: why was this made? How do you know? Students provide evidence from the text or visuals. Look for purpose identification with evidence — not just guessing.

AI / Machine

Experiment with simple prompts

"I can" Statement

I can write a question or instruction for an AI and notice how the answer changes when I change my question.

Performance Indicator

Student compares the output of two different prompts and identifies at least one specific difference that resulted from the change in the prompt, demonstrating that the question shapes the answer.

Sample Task

Students write two prompts on the same topic — one vague, one specific. Compare the outputs together. Ask: what was different? Why? What does that tell us about how to use AI? Look for understanding of prompt-output relationship.

Grade 4 Publisher purpose, persuasion, and where AI gets information ▾

Information / Authority

Identify who published this and their purpose

"I can" Statement

I can identify who published a source and explain how their purpose might affect what they say.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies the publisher of a source and provides a reasonable explanation of how that publisher's interests or goals might shape the information presented.

Sample Task

Provide three sources on the same topic from different publishers. Students identify each publisher and explain how their purpose might affect their information. Look for a real connection between publisher identity and potential perspective — not just "they might be biased."

Media / Intent

Identify persuasion

"I can" Statement

I can identify at least two persuasion techniques in a media message and explain what each technique is trying to make me feel or do.

Performance Indicator

Student names at least two distinct persuasion techniques (emotional appeal, repetition, celebrity endorsement, urgency, etc.) and explains the intended emotional or behavioral effect of each.

Sample Task

Analyze a print or video advertisement. Students identify two persuasion techniques, name them, and explain what each is trying to make the audience feel or do. Look for technique identification with effect explanation — not just "it's an ad."

AI / Machine

Ask where AI gets information

"I can" Statement

I can explain that AI usually answers using patterns from its training, and that even when it looks something up, I still need to check what it tells me.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly describes that AI typically generates answers from patterns in training data (and, for tools that can search, from retrieved sources) and explains why AI outputs still need to be verified either way.

Sample Task

Ask an AI tool something it can't know (a local event, a recent change). Observe the result. Ask: how did it know that, or make that up? Students explain the training data concept in their own words. Look for the student treating the AI's answer as something to verify, not something to trust automatically.

Grade 5 Looking outside a source, missing perspectives, and AI errors ▾

Information / Authority

Look outside a source to see what others say about it

"I can" Statement

I can leave a source to find out what independent others say about it, and use what I find to decide how much to trust it.

Performance Indicator

Student searches for information about a source outside the source itself, identifies at least one relevant independent finding, and connects that finding to a credibility judgment about the original source.

Sample Task

Provide a URL with a not-immediately-obvious publisher. Students step away from the site to search the organization's name, then answer: what did you find outside the site? Does it change how you would use their information? Look for genuine independent searching, not just rereading the site's own claims.

Media / Intent

Identify missing perspectives

"I can" Statement

I can identify at least one voice or perspective missing from a media message and explain why that absence matters.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies a specific missing voice (a community affected by the story, a dissenting expert, an alternative viewpoint) and articulates why including that voice would change the story or the reader's understanding.

Sample Task

Read a news article together. Students answer: whose voices are here? Whose aren't? Who might have a different perspective on this story? Why does it matter that they're not included? Look for specificity — "this person" is missing, not just "someone."

AI / Machine

Identify AI errors

"I can" Statement

I can verify an AI-generated claim against a reliable source and identify whether the AI was correct, partially correct, or wrong.

Performance Indicator

Student takes an AI-generated fact, identifies a reliable source to check it against, and provides a specific comparison: the AI said X, the source says Y, therefore the AI was [correct/wrong/partially right].

Sample Task

Have students ask an AI a factual question, then check the answer in a verified source (encyclopedia, textbook, government site). Students write: what did the AI say? What does the source say? Are they the same? Look for the comparison, not just "I checked it."

Grade 6 Entering lateral reading and algorithmic awareness ▾

Information / Authority

Use lateral reading

"I can" Statement

I can leave a website to search for information about it — and use what I find to decide how much to trust the original source.

Performance Indicator

Student opens a new tab to search the organization or author rather than reading within the original site, finds at least one external source commenting on the original, and uses that to revise their initial assessment.

Sample Task

Provide a professionally designed website with a credibility question. Students have 8 minutes: spend no more than 2 minutes on the site itself, then search externally. They submit: what did you search? what did you find? does it change how you'd use this site?

Media / Intent

Analyze clickbait

"I can" Statement

I can identify clickbait techniques in a headline and explain what emotional reaction they are designed to trigger.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies at least two clickbait techniques (curiosity gap, sensational language, vague pronoun, superlative claim) and names the emotional response each is designed to produce.

Sample Task

Provide 6 headlines — 3 clickbait, 3 straightforward news. Students sort them and for each clickbait example: name the technique, name the emotion targeted, and rewrite it as a straightforward headline covering the same story.

AI / Machine

Understand algorithm sorting

"I can" Statement

I can explain why two people searching the same thing might see different results, and why "top result" does not mean "most true."

Performance Indicator

Student correctly explains that algorithms sort by predicted engagement (not accuracy), that prior behavior shapes results, and that position in results does not indicate credibility.

Sample Task

Compare search results for the same query from two devices or one in private mode. Students write 3 sentences: What was different? Why might that be? What does this tell you about trusting the top result?

Grade 7 Quote verification, platform design, and deliberate prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Verify quotes externally

"I can" Statement

I can trace a widely-shared quote to a primary source — a recording, transcript, or original document — and determine whether the quote is accurate, altered, or fabricated.

Performance Indicator

Student traces a quote through at least two intermediate sources to reach a primary source, and provides a specific comparison between the circulating quote and the original — noting any differences in wording or context.

Sample Task

Provide a widely-circulated quote attributed to a historical or contemporary figure. Students find the original source and compare. Submit: the quote as circulated, the original source found, and a one-sentence description of any differences. Look for the primary source, not just another secondary source.

Media / Intent

Understand how platform design shapes messages

"I can" Statement

I can identify at least two platform design features and explain how each shapes the kind of content that gets created or consumed on that platform.

Performance Indicator

Student names specific design features (character limits, like counts, autoplay, etc.) and explains with specificity how each feature shapes the type of content produced or the audience behavior it encourages.

Sample Task

Compare the same news event covered on Twitter/X vs. a long-form article. Students identify two design differences between the platforms and explain how each creates a different kind of message. Look for the design-to-content connection, not just "they're different lengths."

AI / Machine

Construct deliberate prompts and evaluate whether the output reflects your intent

"I can" Statement

I can write a deliberate prompt with a specific goal, evaluate whether the AI's output achieved that goal, and explain what I would change to get a better result.

Performance Indicator

Student (1) states a specific intended output, (2) writes a prompt designed to achieve it, (3) evaluates whether the output matches the intent, and (4) proposes a specific revision to the prompt based on that evaluation.

Sample Task

Students select a writing task, write a prompt, and evaluate the output against their intent. Submit: original prompt, AI output, evaluation (did it do what I wanted? why or why not?), and revised prompt. Look for all four components — not just the output.

Grade 8 Source independence, logical fallacies, and bias testing ▾

Information / Authority

Check whether sources are independent

"I can" Statement

I can determine whether multiple sources on the same claim are truly independent by tracing each one to its original source.

Performance Indicator

Student traces at least two sources reporting the same claim, identifies whether they share a common original source, and correctly evaluates the degree of independent corroboration based on that finding.

Sample Task

Provide three articles reporting the same claim. Students trace each to its source and submit: what is the original source of each article? Are they truly independent? How confident should we be in this claim, given the source structure?

Media / Intent

Identify logical fallacies

"I can" Statement

I can identify a logical fallacy in an argument, name it, and explain why the argument fails — regardless of whether I agree with the conclusion.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly names a specific fallacy, explains what makes it a fallacy, and analyzes the argument on its logical merits separately from whether they agree with the conclusion.

Sample Task

Provide two opinion arguments containing fallacies — on topics where students might hold different views. Students name the fallacy and explain why the argument fails logically, even if they agree with the conclusion. Look for the logical analysis, not the opinion.

AI / Machine

Test for bias in outputs

"I can" Statement

I can design a test to reveal potential bias in AI output, identify a pattern in the results, and explain what that pattern suggests about the training data.

Performance Indicator

Student designs a comparative test (same question across different groups), identifies a specific pattern in the outputs, and connects that pattern to a plausible explanation rooted in training data rather than inherent truth.

Sample Task

Students design and conduct a bias test: ask an AI the same question about two or more groups and compare responses. Submit: the prompts, the outputs, the pattern observed, and an explanation of what the pattern suggests. Look for the pattern + explanation, not just "it treated them differently."

Grade 9 Original sources, visual rhetoric, and privacy as labor ▾

Information / Authority

Trace claims to original sources

"I can" Statement

I can trace a circulating claim back through its source chain to the original study, document, or statement, and identify where distortion entered the chain.

Performance Indicator

Student successfully traces a claim to a primary source, identifies at least one specific point in the source chain where the claim changed, and explains how that change distorts the original.

Sample Task

Provide a widely-circulated statistic or study finding. Students trace it backward through the source chain to the original. Submit: a map of the source chain, the original claim, and a specific comparison between the original and what the final article says. Look for the change identification, not just the chain.

Media / Intent

Analyze visual rhetoric

"I can" Statement

I can identify specific visual choices in an image — framing, lighting, subject selection, composition — and explain what rhetorical effect each choice produces.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies at least three specific visual choices in an image and explains the rhetorical effect of each — not just what it shows, but what it communicates or how it makes the viewer feel.

Sample Task

Compare two photographs of the same event. Students analyze: what visual choices were made in each? What effect does each choice produce? What is different about the story each image tells? Submit a written analysis identifying at least three specific choices per image.

AI / Machine

Evaluate privacy trade-offs, including data as labor

"I can" Statement

I can explain what data a digital platform collects from me, how that data generates value, and what I receive and give up in the exchange.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies specific types of data collected by a platform, explains the economic mechanism by which that data generates value, and articulates both what the user receives and what they give up in the exchange.

Sample Task

Read a simplified privacy policy. Students submit: what data does this platform collect? How does it generate revenue from that data? What do you get from the platform? What do you give? Is this a fair trade? Look for the data-to-value mechanism, not just "it's free."

Grade 10 Expertise vs. influence, misinfo types, and AI synthesis ▾

Information / Authority

Evaluate expertise vs. influence

"I can" Statement

I can evaluate a source's relevant expertise separately from their social media influence, and explain why follower count is not a reliable indicator of credibility on a specific topic.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies the specific credentials (or lack thereof) of a high-influence source in a topic area, compares that to a credentialed expert with lower influence, and provides a reasoned argument for which source carries more weight on that topic.

Sample Task

Provide a high-follower social media claim on a scientific topic. Students research the claimant's credentials in that field, find a lower-follower credentialed expert, and write: whose claim should carry more weight on this specific topic? Why? Look for credential-to-topic specificity.

Media / Intent

Distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation

"I can" Statement

I can correctly classify an information example as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation based on intent, and explain how algorithmic amplification affects all three regardless of accuracy.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly classifies an information example using the appropriate category, provides a rationale based on intent (not just accuracy), and explains how engagement-driven amplification treats all three categories similarly.

Sample Task

Provide three real-world information examples — one of each type. Students classify each, explain their reasoning (focusing on intent), and answer: how would an algorithm treat these three differently — or the same? Look for intent-based reasoning, not just "it's false."

AI / Machine

Assess AI synthesis vs. copying

"I can" Statement

I can distinguish between AI synthesis and copying, evaluate whether AI-generated content represents genuine understanding, and explain what original thinking adds that AI synthesis cannot.

Performance Indicator

Student accurately describes the difference between AI synthesis and copying, evaluates a specific AI output for the presence or absence of genuine insight, and articulates what a human writer would add that the AI did not.

Sample Task

Students generate AI output on a topic they've studied, fact-check each claim, rewrite the paragraph in their own words drawing on their actual knowledge. Submit both versions and answer: what does your version contain that the AI's doesn't? What does that difference mean for academic work?

Grade 11 Evidence quality, framing, and stakeholder harm ▾

Information / Authority

Evaluate quality of evidence

"I can" Statement

I can evaluate the quality of evidence supporting a claim by identifying its type, assessing its strengths and limitations, and explaining how it compares to other available evidence.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly identifies the evidence type for at least three examples, ranks them by strength with reasoning, and acknowledges any legitimate role for weaker evidence in building context or identifying questions for further study.

Sample Task

Provide four types of evidence for the same claim. Students rank them by strength, explain their reasoning, and answer: when might the weaker evidence still matter, even though it's less conclusive? Look for the hierarchy plus the nuanced acknowledgment of weaker evidence's role.

Media / Intent

Analyze framing

"I can" Statement

I can identify specific framing choices in two news articles on the same event and explain how those choices produce different interpretations, even when both articles are factually accurate.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies at least three specific framing choices (headline language, quote selection, expert sources, context provided) across two articles and explains how each choice contributes to a different overall interpretation of the same event.

Sample Task

Compare two articles on the same policy or event from outlets with different perspectives. Students identify at least three framing choices per article and write: how does each frame interpret the event? Could both be factually accurate and still tell different stories? Look for framing-to-interpretation connections with specific evidence.

AI / Machine

Evaluate who benefits and who is harmed, including environmental costs

"I can" Statement

I can conduct a stakeholder analysis of a specific AI system that identifies who benefits, who is harmed, and what the environmental costs are, and propose at least one accountability mechanism for each harm identified.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies at least two beneficiaries and two harmed parties for a specific AI system (with evidence), provides data on environmental costs, and proposes a specific, plausible accountability mechanism for each harm identified.

Sample Task

Research a specific AI deployment (hiring algorithm, facial recognition, content recommendation). Submit a stakeholder analysis: who benefits? Who is harmed? What are the energy/environmental costs? For each harm, propose a specific accountability mechanism. Look for specificity and evidence, not just general claims.

Grade 12 Synthesis, counter-narrative, and human oversight ▾

Information / Authority

Synthesize conflicting claims

"I can" Statement

I can bring together conflicting sources on a topic, evaluate why they disagree, and produce a synthesis that honestly represents the state of the evidence — including genuine uncertainty.

Performance Indicator

Student produces a synthesis paragraph that accurately characterizes the positions of at least three conflicting sources, correctly identifies why they conflict, and acknowledges genuine uncertainty without false balance.

Sample Task

Provide three sources on a genuinely contested topic that conflict for different reasons. Students write a 200-word synthesis paragraph that maps the terrain of disagreement, explains why sources conflict, and takes a position on what we can and cannot confidently claim.

Media / Intent

Create and critically evaluate counter-narratives

"I can" Statement

I can create a counter-narrative that is more accurate than the narrative it challenges, and I can critically evaluate whether my counter-narrative uses the same manipulative techniques it is trying to counter.

Performance Indicator

Student produces a counter-narrative that (1) accurately represents the facts, (2) addresses the emotional appeal of the original, and (3) passes a self-evaluation showing it does not use the same manipulative techniques.

Sample Task

Students identify a demonstrably misleading narrative, produce a counter-narrative in any format, and complete a self-evaluation checklist: Is every factual claim verifiable? Does it use emotional manipulation? Could it be taken out of context? They exchange with a peer who completes the same checklist.

AI / Machine

Apply human oversight, including civic and democratic accountability

"I can" Statement

I can design a human oversight protocol for a specific AI system that includes individual review, institutional accountability, and democratic governance mechanisms.

Performance Indicator

Student produces an oversight protocol that addresses at least three levels of accountability (individual review, institutional audit, civic/regulatory oversight), provides a rationale for each, and identifies what would need to change for implementation.

Sample Task

Students select a specific AI use case and design a human oversight protocol answering: (1) What decisions can the AI make alone? (2) What decisions require human review? (3) What institutional audit should exist? (4) What democratic/regulatory oversight should govern this system? (5) What is the appeals process for people harmed?

Layer 2 — Developmental Progression

Human-Centered Capacities

How Care, Curiosity, and Connection develop from Kindergarten through Grade 12.

Gr.	Care	Curiosity	Connection
K	I notice something I like or don't like, and I can say why.	I ask "why" about things I see and hear.	I notice that my friend can feel differently than I do about the same thing.
1	I can point to something that matters to me and to someone else, and notice they might not be the same.	I ask more than one question about something that interests me.	I notice that a friend feeling differently than me doesn't mean their feeling is wrong.
2	I can explain, in my own words, why something matters to me.	I ask a follow-up question when my first question doesn't fully answer what I wondered.	I notice that someone with a different experience might need something different than I do.
3	I can name a few things that matter to me and explain what they have in common.	I ask a question before I'm told the answer.	I notice that people from a different family or place might see the same thing differently.
4	I notice that the things I care about connect to people and situations beyond myself.	I ask questions to figure out how something works, not just what it is.	I notice that a story sounds different depending on who is telling it.
5	I can explain how something I care about connects to a responsibility, even a small one.	I ask a question, then look for more than one answer before deciding what I think.	I notice that a disagreement can come from two people caring about different things, not just seeing things differently.
6	I notice that what I care about has started to change as I've grown.	I ask a question and then check whether my first answer actually holds up.	I notice that two people can read the same story and walk away with different lessons.
7	I can explain how my identity and experiences shape what I care about.	I ask questions that challenge my own first assumption, not just other people's.	I recognize that my own background gives me blind spots too, not just other people's.
8	I can identify a value I hold and explain where it came from.	I ask a question precisely enough that I can actually go find a real answer to it.	I recognize that my own information environment shapes my perspective just as much as anyone else's shapes theirs.
9	I can take on a responsibility I didn't choose and still find a genuine reason to care about it.	I keep asking after the first answer stops being satisfying.	A disagreement between two people can come from each having been shown a different set of facts, not from either one being unreasonable.
10	I can act on something I care about, not just describe it.	I sit with a question that doesn't have a clean answer, rather than forcing one.	I can represent someone else's perspective accurately enough that they would recognize it as fair.
11	I can weigh competing things I care about and explain which one I'm choosing to prioritize, and why.	I follow a question across more than one field or discipline to understand it fully.	I can identify what a perspective I disagree with gets right, not only what it gets wrong.
12	I can explain how what I care about is starting to shape a direction for my life, not just an opinion.	I pursue a question because it matters to me, not because it was assigned.	I can hold a perspective I disagree with long enough to understand how someone arrived at it.

Layer 2 — Teaching Companion

Human-Centered Teaching Companion

Recurring practices for Care, Curiosity, and Connection, additive to whatever is already being taught.

Why This Section Exists

Layer 1 addresses what a student needs to know and be able to do. Layer 3 addresses how a student carries that knowledge responsibly into a connected world. Layer 2 addresses why a student would want to apply any of it beyond the assignment or the classroom. Honoring these essential human capacities, Care, Curiosity, and Connection, provides the foundation and inspiration for Layers 1 and 3, carrying a student toward a lifelong love of learning. This section is built for Layer 2: not a lesson to schedule, but a habit to return to inside whatever is already being taught.

How to Use It

Each grade offers one recurring teacher move per capacity, plus Encouraging Evidence: what a teacher might notice over time, not a rubric or a single sitting checklist. Choose a grade, pick one capacity to start with, and let the practice run alongside your existing curriculum rather than compete with it.

Grounded in Research

Care, Curiosity, and Connection parallel Self-Determination Theory's three universal psychological needs — autonomy, competence, and relatedness — present across the whole lifespan rather than staged by grade. That's also why these practices repeat at every grade level here instead of being unlocked in sequence. Full citation in Research & Foundations.

A Necessary Balance.

A student who is hurting is not first asked to understand the other side. Perspective-taking is something to invite when a student is ready for it, not a condition for being heard.

Choose a grade

K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Kindergarten Noticing preferences, feelings, and wonder ▾

Care

I notice something I like or don't like, and I can say why.

Teaching Move

Begin a simple, visible "things I like" list for each student, a page, a card, a symbol they choose. When something comes up in a story or lesson, ask: do you like this or not, and why? Add it to the list together. The practice is the noticing and the saying why, not building a long list.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who says why they like or dislike something without being asked, or who wants to add something to their list unprompted.

Curiosity

I ask "why" about things I see and hear.

Teaching Move

Whenever something new comes up, a read-aloud, a science observation, a classroom event, pause and ask: why do you think that happened? Collect a few "why" questions out loud without needing to answer all of them.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who asks "why" about something unprompted, without being cued by the teacher's own question.

Connection

I notice that my friend can feel differently than I do about the same thing.

Teaching Move

After a shared classroom moment, a book, an event, a game, ask: how did your friend feel about that? Was it the same as you, or different? Keep it simple and frequent rather than saved for a designated lesson.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who notices, unprompted, that a friend felt differently than they did about the same thing.

Grade 1 Naming what matters, multiplying questions, honoring differing feelings ▾

Care

I can point to something that matters to me and to someone else, and notice they might not be the same.

Teaching Move

Continue the list, now adding a second question: does this matter to your friend too, or does it matter to them for a different reason? Model that two people can care about the same thing differently, or care about entirely different things.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who notices, unprompted, that a friend cares about something differently than they do.

Curiosity

I ask more than one question about something that interests me.

Teaching Move

When a topic clearly interests students, invite more than one question about it before moving on, not just the first thing that comes to mind. Write a few up where everyone can see.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who offers a second or third question on their own, beyond the first one they asked.

Connection

I notice that a friend feeling differently than me doesn't mean their feeling is wrong.

Teaching Move

When two students report feeling differently about the same thing, resist deciding who's "right." Say plainly: you can feel differently about this, and you're both allowed to. Repeat this consistently enough that students start saying it themselves.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who tells a friend "that's okay, you can feel different than me" unprompted, or who doesn't try to talk a friend out of a differing feeling.

Grade 2 Explaining why, following up, sensing different needs ▾

Care

I can explain, in my own words, why something matters to me.

Teaching Move

When a student names something on their list, push a step further: ask them to explain, in their own words, why it matters, not just that it does. Model your own "why" first so students have a pattern to follow.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who gives a real reason, not just a restated preference, when asked why something matters to them.

Curiosity

I ask a follow-up question when my first question doesn't fully answer what I wondered.

Teaching Move

After answering a student's question, ask: does that fully answer what you wanted to know, or is there more? Model asking your own follow-up question when an answer feels incomplete.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who asks a follow-up question without being prompted, because the first answer didn't fully satisfy them.

Connection

I notice that someone with a different experience might need something different than I do.

Teaching Move

When a story or classroom situation involves someone with a different life experience, a new student, a character from a different family situation, ask: might they need something different than what you'd need? Why?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a specific different need for someone with a different experience, not just that they're "different."

Grade 3 Finding common threads, asking before being told, seeing background differences ▾

Care

I can name a few things that matter to me and explain what they have in common.

Teaching Move

Continue the list from earlier grades. Periodically ask students to look at three or more things on their list and name what they have in common, a theme or value running through them, not just a re-listing.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who identifies a genuine common thread across several things on their list, not just repeating the items.

Curiosity

I ask a question before I'm told the answer.

Teaching Move

Before revealing new information in a lesson, pause and ask students to generate their own questions about what's coming, before you tell them anything.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who asks a genuine question about upcoming content before being given the answer.

Connection

I notice that people from a different family or place might see the same thing differently.

Teaching Move

When a topic comes up, ask how someone from a different family or place might see it differently, and why that might be.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a specific way someone from a different background might see something differently, unprompted.

Grade 4 Connecting care beyond self, asking how things work, noticing whose story it is ▾

Care

I notice that the things I care about connect to people and situations beyond myself.

Teaching Move

Before a new unit starts, ask students to predict how it might connect to something on their list, specifically to people or situations beyond themselves, not just their own preferences. Check afterward whether the connection held.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who predicts a connection to something or someone beyond themselves before being told the topic.

Curiosity

I ask questions to figure out how something works, not just what it is.

Teaching Move

When new content is introduced, specifically prompt "how" questions alongside "what" questions, how does this work, not just what is this.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who asks a "how does this work" question on their own, going beyond simply naming or describing something.

Connection

I notice that a story sounds different depending on who is telling it.

Teaching Move

Tell or read the same event from two different tellers, two characters, two accounts of the same happening. Ask: what's different? Why might that be?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who notices, unprompted, that the same event sounds different depending on who's telling it.

Grade 5 Tying care to responsibility, weighing more than one answer, spotting value-based disagreement ▾

Care

I can explain how something I care about connects to a responsibility, even a small one.

Teaching Move

Once a student names something they care about, ask what small responsibility might follow from that, something they could actually do, not just feel.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a small, concrete responsibility connected to something they care about, without being asked to justify it.

Curiosity

I ask a question, then look for more than one answer before deciding what I think.

Teaching Move

Continue the individual question-generating routine, now adding a step: before settling on an opinion, deliberately seek a second source or answer to the same question.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who seeks a second answer or source before deciding what they think, without being told to.

Connection

I notice that a disagreement can come from two people caring about different things, not just seeing things differently.

Teaching Move

When two people disagree in a text or a real classroom moment, ask: are they just seeing this differently, or do they actually care about different things?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who identifies that a disagreement comes from differing priorities, not just differing perception.

Grade 6 Noticing change over time, checking your own answers, comparing takeaways ▾

Care

I notice that what I care about has started to change as I've grown.

Teaching Move

Have students look back at an earlier entry on their list (from a prior year if available, or from earlier this year) and ask: does this still matter to you the same way? What changed?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who identifies something they used to care about differently, without being told to look for change.

Curiosity

I ask a question and then check whether my first answer actually holds up.

Teaching Move

After a student answers their own question, ask them to test it: where could you check this? Does your first answer actually hold up once you look?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who revisits and revises their own first answer after checking it, without being told their answer was wrong.

Connection

I notice that two people can read the same story and walk away with different lessons.

Teaching Move

After a shared text, ask two students (or two groups) what lesson or takeaway they got from it. If they differ, ask the class why the same story landed differently for each.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who notices, unprompted, that a classmate took something different from the same text.

Grade 7 Identity shaping care, challenging your own assumptions, recognizing your own blind spots ▾

Care

I can explain how my identity and experiences shape what I care about.

Teaching Move

When a student names something they care about, ask what in their own life, a family experience, a community, an identity they hold, might explain why that thing matters to them specifically.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who traces something they care about back to a specific piece of their own identity or experience, not just a general reason.

Curiosity

I ask questions that challenge my own first assumption, not just other people's.

Teaching Move

When a student forms a question, ask what assumption is baked into the question itself, and whether that assumption deserves to be questioned too, not just the answer.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who identifies and questions an assumption underneath their own question, unprompted.

Connection

I recognize that my own background gives me blind spots too, not just other people's.

Teaching Move

When discussing why someone's background shapes what they notice, turn the question back on the student: what might your own background be causing you to miss, not just someone else's?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a specific blind spot in their own perspective, not just in someone else's.

Grade 8 Naming a value's origin, precise questions, seeing your own information environment ▾

Care

I can identify a value I hold and explain where it came from.

Teaching Move

Distinguish a value from a preference explicitly: ask students to name a value (not just a like) and trace it to where it came from, a person, an experience, a community.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names an actual value (not a preference) and gives a credible origin for it.

Curiosity

I ask a question precisely enough that I can actually go find a real answer to it.

Teaching Move

Take a broad or vague student question and work with them to narrow it until it's specific enough to actually research and answer.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who narrows their own vague question into a researchable one without being walked through it step by step.

Connection

I recognize that my own information environment shapes my perspective just as much as anyone else's shapes theirs.

Teaching Move

Have students reflect on what shapes their own feed, search results, or recommendations, and ask: does this mean your view is shaped the same way you'd say someone else's is?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who applies the "shaped by information environment" idea to themselves specifically, not just to others.

Grade 9 Caring about an unchosen responsibility, persistent questioning, disagreement from differing exposure ▾

Care

I can take on a responsibility I didn't choose and still find a genuine reason to care about it.

Teaching Move

When a student is handed a responsibility they didn't pick, a required course, an assigned role, a duty at home or work, ask them to find one genuine, honest reason to care about it, not a forced or performative one.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a real reason to care about an unchosen responsibility, distinct from simply complying with it.

Curiosity

I keep asking after the first answer stops being satisfying.

Teaching Move

When a student gets an answer that feels incomplete, notice and name that feeling with them: what about that answer isn't fully satisfying? What would you ask next?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who keeps pursuing a question past a first answer because it didn't fully satisfy them, without being told to dig deeper.

Connection

A disagreement between two people can come from each having been shown a different set of facts, not from either one being unreasonable.

Teaching Move

When two people disagree, ask what each of them might have seen or been shown that the other hasn't, before assuming either one is being unreasonable.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who traces a disagreement to differing information exposure rather than jumping to a judgment about either person's reasonableness.

Grade 10 Acting on care, sitting with ambiguity, representing a view fairly ▾

Care

I can act on something I care about, not just describe it.

Teaching Move

When a student names something they care about, ask what action, however small, would follow from that, and hold them to actually doing it, not just discussing it.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who takes a concrete action connected to something they've said they care about, without being assigned to.

Curiosity

I sit with a question that doesn't have a clean answer, rather than forcing one.

Teaching Move

When a genuinely unresolved or contested question comes up, resist resolving it for students. Let the ambiguity sit, and ask: what makes this hard to answer cleanly?

Encouraging Evidence

A student who tolerates an unresolved question without forcing a false resolution, and can articulate why it's genuinely hard.

Connection

I can represent someone else's perspective accurately enough that they would recognize it as fair.

Teaching Move

Ask a student to summarize a view they disagree with, then check: would the person who holds that view say you got it right? Revise until they would.

Encouraging Evidence

A student whose summary of an opposing view is accurate enough that a holder of that view would recognize it as fair, not a caricature.

Grade 11 Weighing competing cares, cross-disciplinary inquiry, finding what an opposing view gets right ▾

Care

I can weigh competing things I care about and explain which one I'm choosing to prioritize, and why.

Teaching Move

When a student holds two things they care about that pull in different directions, ask them to name both, choose which one they're prioritizing in this instance, and explain why.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names a real trade-off between two things they care about and gives a reasoned account of their priority.

Curiosity

I follow a question across more than one field or discipline to understand it fully.

Teaching Move

When a question naturally touches more than one subject area, encourage the student to pursue it across those fields rather than staying within the one where it started.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who pursues a question into a discipline outside the one it was assigned in, on their own initiative.

Connection

I can identify what a perspective I disagree with gets right, not only what it gets wrong.

Teaching Move

When a student critiques a view they disagree with, ask them to also name at least one thing that view gets right, before moving on to its flaws.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who names something valid in a perspective they disagree with, unprompted.

Grade 12 Care shaping a life direction, intrinsic pursuit, understanding how someone arrived at a view ▾

Care

I can explain how what I care about is starting to shape a direction for my life, not just an opinion.

Teaching Move

Ask students, as they plan beyond high school, how something they care about is shaping an actual direction, a field of study, a kind of work, a way of living, not just an opinion they hold.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who connects something they care about to an actual life direction, not just a stated belief.

Curiosity

I pursue a question because it matters to me, not because it was assigned.

Teaching Move

Give room for self-directed inquiry where the question itself is the student's own, not a given prompt. Ask what they'd want to know if no one had assigned anything.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who pursues a question that wasn't assigned, purely because it matters to them.

Connection

I can hold a perspective I disagree with long enough to understand how someone arrived at it.

Teaching Move

When a student encounters a view they strongly disagree with, ask them to trace the path someone might have taken to arrive at it, not to agree, but to understand the route.

Encouraging Evidence

A student who can describe how someone arrived at a view they disagree with, not just what's wrong with the conclusion.

Layer 3 — Developmental Progression

Connected World Responsibilities

How students develop Identity & Presence, Privacy & Agency, and Wellbeing & Intentionality from Kindergarten through Grade 12.

K–2

I share and protect.

Identity & Presence

I am the same me whether I'm talking in person or through a screen.

Privacy & Agency

I learn what information should stay private and how to ask trusted adults for help.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

I begin recognizing when and how to use technology with balance and purpose.

3–5

I build and protect.

Identity & Presence

What I post can be seen, copied, or resurfaced, even after I've stopped thinking about it.

Privacy & Agency

I recognize the difference between public and private information and make safer choices online.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

I reflect on how technology affects my attention, emotions, and daily habits.

6–8

I manage and evaluate.

Identity & Presence

The version of me I show online is one I'm choosing, not the whole truth of who I am.

Privacy & Agency

What I enter into an AI tool may be stored, reviewed, or used, depending on the tool and its settings.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

I develop healthy boundaries with technology, including AI chatbots and companions, and recognize the difference between a conversation with a machine and a relationship with a person.

9–12

I curate and sustain.

Identity & Presence

The presence I build now will be read by people I never get to explain myself to.

Privacy & Agency

Free services often monetize my attention, behavior, or personal data.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

I sustain balanced technology practices, including with AI tools designed to feel like relationships, and choose human connection when that is what I actually need.

Layer 3 — Teaching Companion

Connected World Teaching Companion

Recurring practices for Identity & Presence, Privacy & Agency, and Wellbeing & Intentionality, additive to whatever is already being taught.

Why This Section Exists

Layer 1 addresses what a student needs to know and be able to do. Layer 2 addresses why a student would want to apply any of it beyond the assignment or the classroom. Layer 3 addresses how a student carries that knowledge responsibly into a connected world, in the moments no lesson plan can fully anticipate. This section is built for Layer 3: a recurring habit, with an occasional moment inside it where a teacher poses a slightly new version of a familiar situation and simply listens.

How to Use It

Each band offers one recurring teacher move per responsibility, plus Thoughtful Choices: a short note on the reasoning to look for, not a scored assessment. Choose a band, pick one responsibility to start with, and let the practice run alongside your existing curriculum rather than compete with it.

Choose a grade band

K–2 3–5 6–8 9–12

Grades K–2 I share and protect. ▾

Identity & Presence

Treat a message through a screen like a message in person

Teaching Move

Whenever students communicate through any tool, a class chat, a recorded message, a shared drawing app, treat it exactly like talking in person: same kindness rules, same "would you say this to their face" check. Make the two contexts explicitly the same thing, not two separate sets of manners.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who catches themselves and softens or reconsiders something in a digital message, without being told, the same way they would in person.

Privacy & Agency

Pause before sharing, every time

Teaching Move

Whenever a digital tool asks for information, pause as a habit, not only when something feels risky, and ask together: is this something we share, or something we check with a trusted adult about first? The habit is the pause itself, practiced routinely, not just in the moment something goes wrong.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who pauses to ask what's being requested before being told to, or who names a trusted adult as an option on their own.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Say thank you to the maker, protect chosen reading

Teaching Move

When sharing a book, a song, or a piece of art, regularly pause to say who made it and take a moment to appreciate that someone made this for us. Separately, protect and name time for a student's own chosen reading or exploring as something good for them, not just extra, and make a book they picked themselves a visible, celebrated option, not a substitute for "real" activity.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who names appreciation for a maker unprompted, or who chooses a book over a screen and can say why that felt like the right call.

Grades 3–5 I build and protect. ▾

Identity & Presence

Make posting a stays-there decision

Teaching Move

Before anything goes up, a class blog post, a shared photo, a comment on a discussion board, pause and ask: are you okay with this being here even after you've moved on to something else? Make the pause about permanence, not just appropriateness.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who reconsiders posting something specifically because it will still be there later, not just because it might get them in trouble now.

Privacy & Agency

Ask what a new tool wants, and why

Teaching Move

Before using any new digital tool or app in class, build in a standing question: what is this asking us for, and why might it want that? This becomes a routine check, not a one time lesson.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who raises the standing question about a new tool without being asked to.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Name gratitude toward a source; normalize choosing to read

Teaching Move

Students begin naming, in their own words, gratitude toward a source: this author helped me understand something, this artist made something I enjoyed. This is the same habit that becomes sourcing and citation later, introduced here as appreciation rather than requirement. Keep a standing, easy answer available when a student has open time: read something you chose, normalizing it as a genuine option alongside anything screen based.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who names gratitude toward a specific source in their own words, or who chooses reading during open time without being reminded.

Grades 6–8 I manage and evaluate. ▾

Identity & Presence

Notice the gap between presented and actual self

Teaching Move

As students participate across digital spaces and group work, periodically ask: does how you're showing up here feel like you? This isn't a discipline conversation. It's a standing invitation to notice the gap, if any, between a presented self and an actual self.

Thoughtful Choices

When occasionally asked "does this feel like you?" in a new context, listen for whether the student can locate the gap themselves. That reflective noticing matters more than any particular answer.

Privacy & Agency

Extend the pause to AI tools

Teaching Move

Extend the practice of pausing before sharing information, established since earlier grades, to AI tools specifically. Before relying on an output, ask what was given to the tool, and what the tool's own settings say may happen to that information next — it may be stored, reviewed, or used, depending on the tool. Make this a standing habit before any AI assisted task, not a single unit on privacy.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who asks what happens to what they enter into an AI tool, without being asked to consider it.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Credit sources; notice reading versus screen time

Teaching Move

Extend gratitude toward information sources specifically. When research turns up something useful, name the source and what it gave you before moving on to what you disagree with or want to add. Continue protecting self chosen reading and learning time, now with students naming why they chose what they chose, and periodically ask students directly how their chosen reading compares to their screen time, without judgment, just as a noticing habit.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who credits a research source before critiquing it, or who can honestly compare their chosen reading and screen time without prompting toward a particular answer.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Name what a chatbot can't do

Teaching Move

Whenever students use an AI tool that responds conversationally, pause to name specifically what it cannot do: it cannot know you outside this conversation, disagree with you because it actually sees something differently, or notice if you seem off today unless you tell it to. Make this a comparison with a specific real person, not an abstract rule.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who can name, in their own words, something a real relationship offers that a conversation with an AI tool can't, or who mentions choosing to talk to a person about something instead of a chatbot.

Grades 9–12 I curate and sustain. ▾

Identity & Presence

Weigh the reader who wasn't there

Teaching Move

When students publish or post anything with some permanence, a portfolio piece, a public account, a comment under their name, ask them to name a specific person who might read it later without any context, a future employer, an admissions reader, a stranger, and ask what that reader would assume without being able to ask a follow up question.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who names a specific absent reader and adjusts something because of them, not just an abstract awareness that "people can see this."

Privacy & Agency

Bring the pause to every digital choice

Teaching Move

Students bring the habit of pausing before sharing information, built since earlier grades, to their own digital choices independently: what am I sharing, with whom, and why, across whatever tool or platform the moment involves, academic or personal.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who can explain a choice about what they shared or withheld, including outside an academic context, without being asked to justify it.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Treat gratitude and self-chosen learning as intellectual life

Teaching Move

Gratitude toward sources becomes part of how students discuss their own research and creative work, acknowledging influence and origin as a normal, valued part of intellectual life, not a citation formality. Self chosen learning is treated as a legitimate form of wellbeing worth defending, even against the pressure of assigned workload, and a student choosing a book over a screen, even occasionally, is worth naming as a real act of intentionality, not a quaint alternative.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who names influence and origin as part of discussing their own work, or who advocates for their own chosen reading or learning time against competing pressure.

Wellbeing & Intentionality

Choose the harder conversation on purpose

Teaching Move

When students describe relying on an AI tool for support, advice, or company, don't discourage the tool itself. Instead, ask what talking to a person about the same thing would require that talking to a machine doesn't: risk, patience, the chance of being told something you didn't want to hear. Make choosing that harder conversation, when it's warranted, a visible act of intentionality worth naming, not an assumed default.

Thoughtful Choices

A student who can articulate why a human conversation was worth the extra friction, or who chooses to bring something to a person specifically because an AI tool would have made it too easy.

I AM Caring and Curious

The Creator's Golden Rule

A caring and curious thinker is the foundation of a caring and curious creator. We do not create in a vacuum. Every creator stands on the shoulders of sources, influences, ideas, and the work of others. The caring and curious thinker learns to see and respect that. The caring and curious creator learns to acknowledge it — in their own work, every time.

The Mirror Principle

The same standards a caring and curious thinker applies to any creator's work apply equally to their own. Students who learn to evaluate information but never turn that lens on what they create and share remain half-formed. The Curious Creator section completes the arc: from consumer to producer, from evaluator to author — with the same intellectual honesty throughout.

Renée Hobbs — among the most influential voices in media literacy education — frames this connection directly: the fully media-literate person "appreciates and respects legal rights and responsibilities — copyright, intellectual freedom, fair use, attribution — and is active in participating in advocacy and self-governance, using the power of information and communication to make a difference in the world" (Hobbs, 2010). That is the Curious Creator.

Trust and Transparency

Copyright law protects specific expression, not ideas, so an idea alone can never be copyrighted. But the spirit behind copyright is older and simpler than the law that codifies it: if someone gave you something, whether that is an idea, a sentence, or a finished piece of writing, you say so. Taking someone's work and presenting it as your own breaks trust, not because a law was technically violated, but because the credit was erased.

That same spirit is what makes AI disclosure matter. Trust between a creator and their audience depends on knowing how something was made. A reader who finds out afterward, rather than being told upfront, does not just learn a fact. They lose trust in everything else that creator has shared. Transparency is what earns that trust, and keeps it.

Naming How Something Was Made

Just like you need to give credit to where you got your information, and to those who helped you, if you use AI you need to be transparent about how it helped you. Generally, if you used AI to help you, it was either as an assistant (editing, organization, framing, and so on) or as an author, meaning it created the text at your direction. These are two very different things. If you plan on publishing your work, you will need to declare what level of support you received from AI.

Level 1

No AI

Entirely the creator's own work, unassisted.

Level 2

AI-Assisted

The creator did the thinking and made the decisions. AI helped along the way, with brainstorming, editing, research, or refining a draft.

Level 3

AI-Authored

AI produced the actual content at the creator's direction. The creator's role was direction and curation, not authorship of the words or pixels themselves.

The Creator's Golden Rule

"Hold your own creations to the same standard you expect from everyone else's."

Creator's Companion — Grade-Band Engagements

Just as the I AM framework has one essential learning per grade across three literacy columns, the Creator's Companion provides grade-band engagements for what responsible creation looks like at each developmental stage.

Kindergarten – Grade 2

The Emerging Creator

At this level, creators are learning that what they make and share comes from somewhere — and that saying so matters.

I check that what I am sharing is true before I share it.
I tell people where I learned what I am sharing.
I make sure the words and pictures I use belong to me, or that I have permission to use them.

I statement: "When I create or share something, I tell the truth and give credit to others and myself."

Grades 3 – 5

The Developing Creator

At this level, creators are learning that their work has an audience — and that being honest with that audience is their responsibility.

Before I share my work, I check that my facts are accurate and that I can support what I am saying.
I tell my audience what I know for sure, what I think, and where my information came from.
If I used a tool — including an AI tool — to help me create something, I say so.

I statement: "When I create or share something, I check my facts, own my opinions, and am honest about how I made it."

Grades 6 – 8

The Reflective Creator

At this level, creators are learning to look at their own work the way a caring and curious thinker would look at anyone else's.

Before I publish or present, I ask myself the same questions I would ask about anyone else's work — who am I to speak on this, what is my evidence, and whose perspective might be missing.
I am transparent about what is my original thinking, what came from sources, and what AI contributed — and I verify what AI helped me produce before I present it as accurate.
I give credit to the creators whose work I used, understanding that crediting someone is a matter of respect and honesty — and that it is separate from whether I actually had permission to use their work.

I statement: "I hold my own work to the same standard I hold everyone else's."

Grades 9 – 12

The Responsible Creator

At this level, creators understand that everything they publish adds to — or subtracts from — the quality of the information environment everyone shares.

Before I publish, post, or present, I apply the full caring and curious lens to my own work — evaluating my sources, my expertise, my evidence, my transparency, and the perspectives I may have left out.
I disclose AI use clearly and specifically — what I used it for, what I verified, and what remains my own original thinking — understanding that intellectual honesty is not a policy, it is who I am as a creator.
I understand that attribution, permission, licensing, and fair use are related but different things — giving credit does not by itself give me the right to use someone's work, and I seek permission or rely on a license where the law requires it. I recognize that my own creative work deserves the same protection I extend to others.

I statement: "Every time I add my voice to the world, I ask: would a caring and curious thinker trust what I just made?"

Student Thinking Document

I AM Caring and Curious — A Curious Creator

The Student Thinking Document gives students a structured way to apply the Creator's Lens to their own work before they share, publish, or present. It asks the same questions a caring and curious thinker would ask — turned inward.

Step 0 — Start Here

What are you making or sharing? Who is your audience?

Step 1 — Choose Your Creator's Lens Focus (Select 1–3)

Information Integrity

Accuracy Expertise Attribution

AI Transparency

Disclosure Verification Originality

Ethical Communication

Honesty Perspective Copyright

Step 2 — Apply the Lens (This is the work)

What is my claim or main message?

What evidence supports it?

Did I use AI? If so, how — and what did I verify?

Whose perspective might be missing?

The Caring and Curious Creator Check

"Hold your own creations to the same standard you expect from everyone else's."

Sample Student Document — Grade 4

What the Caring and Curious Creator looks like in practice: Maya, Grade 4, writing about ocean pollution, filling out the Student Thinking Document above.

Step 0 — Start Here

What are you making or sharing? Who is your audience?

An article about ocean pollution and plastic waste.

My class, and my family at home.

Step 1 — Choose Your Creator's Lens Focus (Select 1–3)

Information Integrity

☑ Accuracy

☐ Expertise

☑ Attribution

AI Transparency

☑ Disclosure

☐ Verification

☐ Originality

Ethical Communication

☐ Honesty

☑ Perspective

☐ Copyright

Step 2 — Apply the Lens (This is the work)

What is my claim or main message?

Ocean pollution from plastic is hurting sea animals like sea turtles and fish. We need to use less plastic.

What evidence supports it?

I read a NOAA article that said 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year. I also found a video from National Geographic.

Did I use AI? If so, how — and what did I verify?

No AI. I used my own words. The picture is my drawing. Picture by Maya R. — I am the source!

Whose perspective might be missing?

Maybe people who make plastic things. They might say it's hard to stop. I didn't include that side.

✅ The Caring and Curious Creator Check

"I checked my facts and said where they came from. A caring and curious thinker would trust this."

The Triad

Powerful Partnerships

Three Voices. One Coherent System.

Partnering with your teacher librarian turns isolated lessons into a coherent K–12 system, and it starts with a simple shift: treating the teacher librarian as a full partner. Together with the student, the three of you form what this framework calls a Triad, three roles that each bring something the other two cannot reach alone.

The Student

Lived Context

Bring your teacher librarian in on what a specific student actually needs, not just what the curriculum covers this week. A student who only receives content and connection remains a recipient of someone else's plan. Partnering with your teacher librarian makes room for what the student actually brings into the room, their own questions, interests, and circumstances, which is the reason this partnership exists at all.

The Classroom Teacher

Content Context

The subject expertise, pedagogical judgment, and relational knowledge of individual students that makes this framework live in specific classrooms with specific young people. Teachers make hundreds of real-time judgments every day about when to push and when to bridge. They integrate these skills into living content rather than standalone lessons. They build the trust with students that makes learning possible. That capacity is the most important variable in whether any of this works.

The Teacher Librarian

Connected Context

The cross-disciplinary reach, vertical coherence across grades, and credentialed expertise in information, media, and AI literacy that connects student learning across subjects, years, and life beyond school. Teacher librarians work with every grade level, every department, every year. Teacher librarian credentials, whatever a given state or country calls them, recognize this as a distinct professional domain. California's Teacher Librarian Services Credential, for example, explicitly covers information literacy, digital literacy, and digital citizenship.

That connection reaches further than the digital search. Digital information is not all there is, and a student trained to expect the answer to arrive online can come to assume that what doesn't arrive doesn't exist. The teacher librarian partners with both student and teacher to open a wider world:

The school's own collection. Print materials, primary source documents, and relevant works of fiction from a given era or community, each holding a kind of knowledge a search engine does not surface: what a time or place believed to be true without needing to say so, what a record's survival or absence reveals, whose story was kept.

What lies beyond it. Interlibrary loan, public library partnerships, and professional networks with other librarians mean a student's question is not limited to what one school happens to own. A student does not know what is possible until someone shows them a door they didn't know was there.

The teacher librarian is the educator who can open both.

Without the teacher librarian's part in this Triad, none of this disappears loudly. A student still gets an answer. A lesson still gets taught. What is lost is quieter and harder to notice: the primary source that would have reframed the question, the archival silence that went unrecognized as a silence at all, the out-of-print book that held the one perspective missing from the unit, the interlibrary loan that would have connected a student's curiosity to something the school never owned. A classroom without a teacher librarian does not fail. It simply never discovers what it did not know to look for. That is the cost this partnership exists to prevent.

Lived Context + Content Context + Connected Context = Powerful Transferable Skills

Standards Alignment

Curriculum Integration

Every I AM essential maps to existing California ELA, History–Social Science, and Science/NGSS standards. The core principle: integration over addition.

The Integration Principle

The question for each teacher is not "when do I teach this?" but "which lesson I already teach is the right vehicle for this essential?" Every I AM essential is designed to be embedded in an existing lesson — not delivered as a new add-on. These skills belong inside the content you are already teaching, not alongside it.

Gr	Information Essential	Media Essential	AI Essential	CA Standards · Time
K	Ask: "How do we know?"	Identify logo/brand	Notice when something is made by a computer	RI.K.1 · SL.K.3Embedded
1	Find two sources	Ads vs. stories	Notice machine suggestions	RI.1.1 · RI.1.9Embedded
2	Two sources disagree	Who made this?	Machine can be wrong	RI.2.1Replaces fact/opinion lesson
3	Use source features	Why was this made?	Experiment with prompts	RI.3.520 min tech session
4	Publisher and purpose	Identify persuasion	Where AI gets info	RI.4.6 · RI.4.8Embedded in research
5	Look outside a source	Missing perspectives	Identify AI errors	RI.5.6 · W.5.7Embedded
6	Lateral reading	Analyze clickbait	Algorithm sorting	RI.6.8 · RH.6–8.8Full 45 min
7	Verify quotes	Platform design	Deliberate prompts	RI.7.1 · RST.6–8.825–30 min
8	Source independence	Logical fallacies	Test for bias	RI.8.8 · RH.6–8.9Embedded
9	Trace to original	Visual rhetoric	Privacy/data as labor	RI.9-10.1 · RH.9–12.130–40 min
10	Expertise vs. influence	Misinfo/disinfo/malinfo	AI synthesis vs. copying	RI.9-10.8 · RH.9–12.825–40 min
11	Evidence quality	Analyze framing	Stakeholder harm + env. costs	RI.11-12.8 · RST.9–12.9Full lesson
12	Synthesize conflicting claims	Counter-narratives	Human oversight + democracy	W.11-12.7 · RH.9–12.9Project

Equity & Access

California's CDE Model AI Policy identifies equitable access and instruction as a priority area for local policy (the policy is exemplary guidance, not a mandate; see California Education Code §33308.5). This appendix gives every teacher the scaffolding guidance to make I AM work for every student.

The foundational equity claim of this framework: Critical literacy is not a luxury for advanced students. It is a necessity for every student — and the students who most need it are the ones least likely to have been taught it. This appendix is the practical implementation of that claim.

English Learners

Core I AM questions work in any language

The Equity Approach

The "who made this?" and "can we check this?" questions are linguistically accessible and culturally transferable. Accept evidence of learning in any language. Connection makes these cultural links explicit — these are not English-language literacy skills, they are human information skills that can be expressed across languages and cultures.

Long-Term English Learners

Connection as the equity engine

The Equity Approach

The "why does this matter to me?" question is a direct response to LTEL disengagement. Use student-generated questions as the starting point for inquiry: when students ask what matters to them, the framework's skills become tools for their own purposes, not skills performed for someone else's agenda.

Students with IEPs / 504s

Enter at instructional level, not grade placement

The Equity Approach

The explicit prerequisite chain means every student can enter the framework at their instructional level. "I can" statements may inform progress-monitoring language, but they are not ready-made IEP goals — writing them into a student's IEP requires collaboration with SPED staff. The Encouraging Evidence captures observable thinking, not performance output — making it inherently more accessible to students who express understanding in varied ways.

Under-Resourced Classrooms

Low-tech by design

The Equity Approach

Every essential can be taught without devices or with minimal intermittent access. The framework's focus on conceptual understanding makes it more accessible in low-tech environments than any comparable AI literacy framework. The thinking skills — sourcing, purpose analysis, bias detection — are fully teachable with print materials, discussion, and concrete examples from students' lives.

Historically Underserved Communities

Name the systems, not just the skills

The Equity Approach

Teaching students to test for AI bias and understand data as labor transforms skill-building into civic preparation. Use media, AI, and information examples from students' actual communities and lived experiences. When students recognize themselves as subjects of information systems — not just consumers — the framework's analytical tools become personally meaningful and politically legible. The goal is not just informed citizens. It is students who understand why the information environment looks the way it does and who has shaped it in whose interests.

Fiction from a given era or community is its own kind of record. A story does not have to argue for what it assumes, it simply carries it, and that unspoken assumption often tells a student more about what a time and place believed than a factual document from the same era ever states outright. Whose stories were written down, published, and preserved, and whose were not, is not a neutral fact of literary history. It is the same question of power and access that shapes every archive. Helping students recognize a novel or a children's book as evidence, not just entertainment, extends the same critical lens the framework already asks them to bring to a feed, a source, or an AI output.

"Critical literacy is not a luxury for advanced students. It is a necessity for every student — and the students who most need it are the ones least likely to have been taught it."

That is not their failure. It is ours to correct.

Policy and Global Context

The Global Context

Why I AM

Across the United States and around the world, educators, legislators, and international bodies are grappling with the same urgent question: how do we prepare students to navigate an information environment shaped by algorithmic persuasion, AI-generated content, and the collapse of trusted gatekeepers?

This is not a question any one state, or any one country, is answering alone. Legislators in a dozen states, international bodies representing dozens more, and researchers working independently of one another are converging on the same conclusion, without having coordinated the answer.

The answer being reached, independently, in multiple places, at the same moment, is the same one that grounds this framework: integrated, developmental, literacy-centered education beginning in Kindergarten. The examples below are illustrative. The need is universal.

A National Movement, Not an Outlier ▾

As of Media Literacy Now's January 2026 Policy & Impact Report (reflecting legislative activity through October 30, 2025), 25 states have media literacy laws on the books, with eleven states taking new steps since January 2024. AI literacy and media literacy are rapidly converging in state policy, with lawmakers incorporating evaluation, ethics, and misinformation skills into broader media literacy frameworks.

States are embedding these literacies across subject areas including English language arts, civics, health, and science, rather than isolating them as standalone topics. This is exactly the integrated approach I AM was designed for.

California — State Example ▾

The most comprehensive state mandate and a direct connection to the California Model School Library Standards.

Governor Newsom signed AB 873 in October 2023. The law directs the Instructional Quality Commission to consider incorporating the California Model Library Standards into the next revision of the ELA/ELD curriculum framework, and to consider incorporating media literacy content at each grade level and into the math, science, and history-social science frameworks at their next revisions. It is often described as the most comprehensive state media literacy law to date, covering four core subjects in the state with the largest K–12 population — though the law directs the Commission to consider these changes rather than mandating them outright.

The law explicitly references the California Model School Library Standards by name — the state's foundational K–12 information literacy framework, co-authored by Glen Warren and adopted by the State Board of Education in 2010.

Two additional developments complete the picture. AB 2876 similarly directs the Instructional Quality Commission to consider incorporating AI literacy content into the math, science, and history-social science frameworks. Separately, California's CDE Model AI Policy offers exemplary, non-mandatory guidance for AI use in schools, including AI literacy as a core academic competency; it complements, but does not require, curriculum content. I AM was built to align with the direction all of these point toward: the media and AI literacy content the state is considering incorporating, and the AI4K12 Five Big Ideas.

I AM offers a grade-specific progression already built for the media and AI literacy content California is considering.

New Jersey — National Pioneer ▾

The first state in the nation to mandate K–12 information literacy — and a model for integration.

In January 2023, New Jersey became the first state to standardize information literacy lessons for all K–12 students. The law requires standards covering the research process, critical thinking, the difference between facts and opinions, accessing peer-reviewed resources, and the ethical production of information.

The law specifies that the school library media specialist shall be included in the development of curriculum concerning information literacy whenever possible — a direct legislative validation of the partnership model at the heart of I AM.

I AM offers a grade-specific structure aligned to what New Jersey's law calls for — with teaching guidance and assessment structure built in.

UNESCO — International Context ▾

A global mandate for integrated media and information literacy.

UNESCO supports 32 countries in developing national media and information literacy policies and strategies, with 81 countries celebrating Global MIL Week 2024. UNESCO's 2024 publication on AI and media literacy directly addresses the convergence of these two domains — the same convergence that defines Layer 1 of the I AM framework.

UNESCO's 2024 "Behind the Screens" survey of 500 digital content creators across 45 countries found that 62 percent — roughly two thirds — do not systematically fact-check information before sharing it. The international consensus is clear: integrated, developmental, AI-aware literacy education is urgent.

I AM is the practical classroom-ready implementation tool that international frameworks point toward but do not provide.

How I AM Relates to Existing Frameworks ▾

I AM is not a replacement for Common Sense Media, ISTE, the OECD/EC AILit Framework, or AI4K12. It is an integration layer — the practical, grade-specific, teacher-ready framework that connects what those bodies have identified as essential and delivers it in a form educators can actually use.

Each of these frameworks has made an essential contribution. None provides what I AM provides.

Common Sense Media

Offers widely used digital citizenship and media literacy resources. I AM differs by providing a K–12 integrated progression across Information, AI, and Media with grade-level essentials, teaching guidance, and assessment structure.

ISTE

Provides essential technology and digital learning standards. I AM translates related literacies into a practical classroom-facing progression built around inquiry, verification, AI literacy, media analysis, and responsible participation.

AI4K12

Provides a major conceptual foundation for AI literacy. I AM incorporates AI literacy into a converged model with information literacy, media literacy, human-centered capacities, and connected-world responsibilities.

OECD / EC AI Literacy

Identifies emerging competencies for AI literacy. I AM helps operationalize these ideas in developmentally sequenced, teacher-ready classroom language.

The Bottom Line

What the research, the legislation, and the international consensus all point toward is a framework that is integrated, developmental, teacher-supported, and built for the conditions students actually live in.

The I AM Caring and Curious: A Practical Toolkit for Information, AI, and Media Literacy in a Connected World was built for exactly those conditions. It was built in California, for California students, and is ready to serve anywhere those conditions exist.

Which is everywhere.

The states, the legislation, and the research all point to the same conclusion. This framework is not ahead of that consensus. It is the practical, classroom-ready form of it.

Research & Foundations

I AM did not emerge in isolation. It was shaped by the work of researchers, librarians, educators, and thinkers who have spent their careers helping students navigate a complex and changing world. We are grateful for that foundation. This section honors the scholarship and traditions that informed our thinking and explains what we built from it.

Research Foundations

Information Literacy Research ▾

Information literacy forms one of the central foundations of I AM. For decades, researchers, librarians, and educators have studied how individuals locate, evaluate, verify, interpret, and use information. As information environments have become increasingly complex, information literacy has evolved beyond simply finding information toward understanding credibility, evidence, authority, context, and perspective.

A particularly important influence is the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2016), which establishes authority as contextual and constructed — a foundational idea for how I AM approaches source evaluation at every grade level.

Research by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew (2019) demonstrates that lateral reading outperforms traditional within-source evaluation — findings drawn primarily from studies of adults, college students, and professional fact-checkers. That evidence informed I AM's decision to introduce lateral reading as a formal technique at Grade 6; the specific grade placement is I AM's design judgment, not a claim the studies themselves make.

Breakstone, Smith, Wineburg and colleagues (2021), publishing in Educational Researcher, conducted the largest nationally representative study of civic online reasoning to date. Their finding that fewer than one in twenty high school students questioned the credibility of a fossil fuel industry-funded climate science website underscores both the urgency of I AM's work and the specific skills the framework targets.

The California Model School Library Standards (CDE, 2010) provide the foundational K–12 information literacy framework for California schools and are named in AB 873, which directs the state Instructional Quality Commission to consider incorporating them into the next revision of the ELA/ELD curriculum framework. I AM is designed to be fully aligned with these standards.

These traditions inform I AM's emphasis on verification before acceptance, evidence-based reasoning, multiple perspectives, source evaluation, lateral reading and corroboration, and intellectual humility.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

Media Literacy Research ▾

Media literacy provides a second major foundation for I AM. Media literacy scholars have long argued that messages are constructed, distributed, interpreted, and influenced by social, cultural, political, and economic forces. Modern media environments require individuals not only to understand information but also to recognize purpose, audience, persuasion, representation, and influence.

The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) Core Principles (2023) ground I AM's emphasis on purpose, perspective, production, audience, and media influence across grade levels. NAMLE's foundational argument — that all media messages are constructed — is a thread that runs through every media essential in the framework.

The scholarship of Renée Hobbs at the Media Education Lab, University of Rhode Island, has been a direct and significant influence on I AM's media literacy strand. Her work on digital and media literacy (2011, 2021) grounds the principle that purpose analysis should precede content analysis — a sequencing reflected throughout I AM's grade-level progressions. We are grateful for her leadership in this field.

These traditions inform I AM's emphasis on audience awareness, purpose and intent, influence and persuasion, representation and perspective, responsible participation, and critical media analysis.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

Artificial Intelligence Literacy Research ▾

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how information is created, distributed, recommended, and consumed. Students now encounter AI-generated text, images, video, recommendations, search results, summaries, and conversational systems as part of everyday life. Understanding AI is therefore becoming an essential component of modern literacy.

The AI4K12 Initiative and the Five Big Ideas in AI (Touretzky et al., 2019) provide the conceptual architecture underlying I AM's AI literacy strand. Their framework for K–12 AI education aligns closely with emerging California educational guidance and directly informed how I AM sequences AI concepts across grade levels.

Research on prompt literacy by Annapureddy and colleagues (2025), together with the OECD/EC AI Literacy Framework, establishes prompt engineering as a component of generative-AI literacy. That research informed I AM's decision to introduce constructing deliberate prompts and evaluating whether outputs reflect the user's intent at Grade 7; the specific grade is I AM's developmental judgment rather than an empirically validated placement.

UNESCO's 2024 publication on AI and media literacy directly addresses the convergence of these two domains — the same convergence that defines Layer 1 of the I AM framework, underscoring the urgency of the framework's AI literacy strand.

These traditions inform I AM's emphasis on human versus machine authorship, appropriate and intentional use of AI tools, transparency, bias and limitations, verification of AI outputs, and the primacy of human judgment and responsibility.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

Inquiry and Curiosity Research ▾

At the center of I AM sits curiosity. Research across learning sciences, inquiry learning, constructivism, motivation theory, and design thinking consistently demonstrates that meaningful learning is strengthened when learners ask questions, investigate ideas, connect concepts, and pursue understanding.

The motivation and transfer research of Kuhn (2019) and Eccles and Wigfield (2002) provides direct support for I AM's human-centered disposition layer. Their work demonstrates that literacy practices without motivational grounding often fail to transfer into authentic real-world application — a finding that directly shaped I AM's decision to embed Care, Curiosity, and Connection as a distinct layer of the framework rather than treating them as incidental outcomes.

I AM treats curiosity as more than engagement. Curiosity is a disposition that supports deeper thinking, better questioning, stronger reasoning, and greater intellectual independence. Students who are curious do not merely consume answers. They actively pursue understanding.

I AM therefore emphasizes question generation, investigation, exploration, reflection, perspective taking, and intellectual openness as essential practices across all grade levels and subject areas.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

School Library Research ▾

School libraries and teacher librarians have long occupied a unique position within education. Unlike most instructional roles, teacher librarians work across grade levels, content areas, technologies, and information environments. They help students develop transferable skills that move beyond a single classroom or subject.

Research consistently demonstrates positive relationships between effective school library programs and student learning outcomes. I AM draws heavily from this tradition and reflects the belief that information literacy, media literacy, AI literacy, inquiry, and civic participation are not isolated skills. They are transferable capacities that can be developed across disciplines and throughout a learner's educational experience.

The California Model School Library Standards (CDE, 2010) were co-authored by Glen Warren and are named in AB 873, which directs the state Instructional Quality Commission to consider incorporating them into the next revision of the ELA and ELD frameworks. I AM is designed to implement what those standards call for at the classroom level.

These traditions inform I AM's emphasis on transferable learning, cross-disciplinary application, inquiry, resource evaluation, student agency, and lifelong learning.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

Civic Literacy Research ▾

Democratic societies depend upon informed participation. Students increasingly encounter civic issues through social media, online communities, algorithmic recommendation systems, and digital information networks. As a result, civic literacy can no longer be separated from information literacy, media literacy, or AI literacy.

The civic online reasoning research of Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone and colleagues is particularly relevant here. Their nationally representative research (2021) documents the gap between what students can do and what democratic participation requires and provides direct evidence for the specific skills I AM targets at the secondary level.

I AM draws upon research that explores how individuals engage with information, evaluate claims, participate in discourse, and contribute responsibly to civic life. The framework reflects the belief that critical thinking and civic participation are deeply connected and that schools have a responsibility to prepare students not just for academic success but for thoughtful participation in a connected and democratic world.

These traditions inform I AM's emphasis on responsible participation, civil discourse, perspective taking, community engagement, ethical decision making, and democratic citizenship.

For full citations see the Research Citations section below.

Framework Lineage

I AM is best understood as a synthesis rather than a replacement. The framework does not seek to replace information literacy, media literacy, AI literacy, digital citizenship, or inquiry learning. Instead, it brings these traditions together within a unified structure that can be implemented across grades and subject areas.

Information literacy contributes evaluation, verification, and evidence-based reasoning. Media literacy contributes analysis of messages, audiences, influence, and persuasion. AI literacy contributes understanding of machine-generated content, algorithmic systems, and responsible AI use. Digital citizenship contributes participation, ethics, identity, privacy, and responsibility. Inquiry learning contributes questioning, exploration, and agency.

I AM brings these traditions together under a common framework designed for the learning environments students actually inhabit today.

I AM's Contribution

Converging Literacies ▾

I AM intentionally brings Information Literacy, AI Literacy, and Media Literacy together rather than treating them as separate initiatives. Students do not experience these domains separately in daily life. A student reading a news article encounters information credibility questions, media construction choices, and algorithmic recommendation effects all at once. The framework reflects that reality.

Rather than adding more programs to an already crowded curriculum, I AM offers a structure that allows teachers to address all three domains through a single embedded teaching move.

The Reader Is Being Read ▾

Traditional literacy frameworks often focus on the evaluation of information itself. I AM expands this perspective by emphasizing that modern information environments are responsive. Algorithms, platforms, recommendation systems, and AI tools continuously collect information about users and adapt what they see, shaping attention, belief, and behavior in ways that are largely invisible.

Understanding the information is important. Understanding the system delivering the information is equally important. I AM helps students see both.

Curiosity as the Foundation ▾

Many frameworks identify curiosity as a desirable outcome of learning. I AM positions curiosity as a prerequisite. Curiosity supports verification, investigation, perspective taking, empathy, discernment, and learning. Without curiosity, skepticism can become cynicism. With curiosity, questioning becomes a path toward deeper understanding rather than a reason to disengage.

I AM treats curiosity not as a personality trait but as a learnable discipline — one that can be cultivated intentionally across all grades and subject areas.

This emphasis was not built in response to any external framework. It is worth noting, though, that when the OECD and European Commission opened their AILit Framework to global consultation, more than 2,000 educators and practitioners across 100 countries named reflection and healthy skepticism toward AI among the priorities that mattered most to them. I AM arrived at the same place independently, through its own foundation in Care, Curiosity, and Connection.

Embedded Teaching Moves ▾

Rather than requiring new courses, standalone programs, or extensive curriculum redesign, I AM is built around embedded instructional practices. Teachers select one essential skill from a menu of nine grade-level teaching moves and integrate it into learning already taking place. The skill deepens the existing lesson rather than replacing it.

This approach lowers implementation barriers significantly while increasing opportunities for transfer. Students encounter these skills in authentic contexts, which makes them more likely to use them beyond the classroom.

Teacher Librarian-Enabled Transfer ▾

I AM recognizes the unique role teacher librarians can play in helping students apply these skills across disciplines, grade levels, technologies, and personal interests. Teacher librarians work with every student, every teacher, and every subject area across an entire school. That cross-disciplinary reach is rare in education and uniquely valuable for a framework built on transferable skills.

I AM positions teacher librarians as connectors who help students recognize patterns, apply skills in new contexts, and see the relationship between information, media, AI literacy, and their own lives.

Care, Curiosity, and Connection ▾

I AM intentionally pairs literacy skills with human capacities. The framework argues that successful participation in a connected world requires more than knowledge and technical skill. It also requires care for others, curiosity about ideas, and meaningful connection to people, communities, and learning.

Care provides the motivation to engage honestly and responsibly. Curiosity provides the energy to keep questioning. Connection provides the purpose that makes learning meaningful beyond the classroom. Together these three capacities form the human foundation that makes every skill in the framework transferable and durable.

A Curated Synthesis, Not a Competing Framework ▾

The AILit Framework, published by the OECD and European Commission in 2026, is a comprehensive international reference: four domains, nineteen competences, built through consultation with more than 2,000 educators and practitioners across 100 countries. It is thorough by design, because it has to serve every education system that might adopt it.

I AM was never trying to be that document. Its task is to take what a global reference like AILit establishes and place it where it belongs inside a structure a classroom teacher can hold in their head: three layers, three per grade level, nothing new to learn. Where AILit's Create with AI domain describes AI as a creative partner while maintaining human agency, I AM already says the same thing through the Creator's Companion and its Machine-Assisted authorship distinctions. Where practitioners worldwide asked for reflection, healthy skepticism, and agency to be central rather than incidental, I AM had already built its foundation around Care, Curiosity, and Connection. The value I AM adds is not new content standing beside AILit. It is the same priorities, carried by a structure light enough for a teacher already stretched thin to actually use.

UNESCO, and the Potential Energy Waiting to Be Connected ▾

UNESCO holds three of the most consequential bodies of work in global education, all built by people who clearly believe in the same underlying thing, and all of it work I AM is grateful for and has been shaped by over the years, even where that debt was never fully traced until now. The Sustainable Development Goals name what the world most needs solved. The Media and Information Literacy Curriculum builds the discernment a person needs to engage with anything honestly. The AI Competency Frameworks for Students and Teachers, published in 2024, build the newest layer of that same discernment. Each is real, valuable work, carried by people who have given a great deal to it.

What hasn't happened yet, even within UNESCO itself, is what happens when all three move as partners rather than three separate tracks. The AI Competency Frameworks were developed as their own standalone publications, separate from the MIL Curriculum's own history and structure. UNESCO's own MIL guidance already names direct links between media and information literacy and several Sustainable Development Goals, education, gender equality, decent work, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities, peace and justice, and global partnership, and the current MIL Curriculum edition already gestures toward AI as an issue worth folding in. The intention is visibly present across all three. What would help is architecture, a way to let that shared intention become one coherent thing a teacher, or a librarian, could actually pick up and use.

I AM did not set out to solve this on UNESCO's behalf, and it would be wrong to suggest it did. What I AM can offer is support: one small, tested example of what it looks like when Information, Media, and AI literacy are taught as one converged strand rather than three adjacent subjects, grounded in the human capacities, Care, Curiosity, and Connection, that make literacy durable rather than performative. It is offered in a spirit of partnership and gratitude for the foundation UNESCO has already built, not as a corrective to it.

Worth naming directly: librarians worldwide are already positioned to help carry this. Intellectual freedom, equitable access to information, and helping a community tell a credible source from an unreliable one predate any of these three frameworks and run close to the library profession's actual reason for existing. A school or public librarian in nearly any country is already living out some version of this integration daily, often without a name for it. Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states that education shall be directed toward the full development of the human personality and its sense of dignity, and shall enable all people to participate effectively in a free society, sits close to what I AM hopes to support, alongside the article UNESCO more typically cites for media and information literacy, UDHR Article 19, the right to opinion and expression. Both belong in the conversation.

Human-Centered Literacy ▾

At its core, I AM is a human-centered framework. The goal is not merely to help students evaluate information, understand AI, or analyze media. The goal is to help students maintain agency, think independently, participate responsibly, and continue learning throughout their lives.

In a world increasingly shaped by intelligent systems, I AM seeks to ensure that human judgment, curiosity, and connection remain at the center of education. The framework is offered not as a finished answer but as a living invitation to every teacher, librarian, and student to engage more deeply, question more carefully, and participate more thoughtfully in the world they are helping to shape.

Research Citations

Every essential learning within the framework was evaluated against five guiding criteria. The framework synthesizes research traditions that are often treated separately in schools into one connected K–12 developmental model.

Developmental Appropriateness Research Support Sequence Logic Teachability Non-Redundancy

ACRL Framework for Information Literacy

Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016

Establishes authority as contextual and constructed — foundational to the Information dimension of the framework.

Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy

UNESCO, 2016

Establishes that media and information literacy is acquired as a lived process rather than all at once, and that every citizen is a creator of knowledge, not only a consumer, grounding both I AM's developmental, grade-by-grade architecture and its Creator's Companion authorship work. Modeled explicitly on Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science.

Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers

UNESCO, 2011

Establishes information and media literacy as a single, convergent discipline rather than two separate subjects, long before "convergence" became common language in the field, paralleling I AM's own decision to treat Information, Media, and AI as one layer rather than three adjacent strands.

AI Competency Frameworks for Students and Teachers

UNESCO, 2024

States that AI should never be allowed to usurp or replace human critical thinking, and that protecting human agency must remain a core principle, directly paralleling I AM's Privacy & Agency responsibility and the human-agency language in the Machine-Assisted authorship category.

Lateral Reading Research

Wineburg & McGrew (2019); Breakstone et al. (2021)

Demonstrates that lateral reading strategies outperform within-site credibility evaluation in controlled studies (with adult, college-student, and professional-fact-checker samples). This research informed I AM's decision to introduce lateral reading at Grade 6 — the grade placement itself is I AM's design judgment, not an empirical finding of the studies.

AI4K12 Five Big Ideas in AI

Touretzky et al. (2019)

Provides the conceptual architecture underlying the AI dimension of the framework and aligns closely with emerging AI literacy expectations within California educational guidance.

Prompt Literacy Research

Annapureddy et al. (2025); OECD/EC AI Literacy Framework

Establishes prompt engineering as a component of generative-AI literacy. This research informed I AM's decision to introduce the Grade 7 prompting essential — the specific grade is I AM's developmental judgment, not a research-validated placement.

NAMLE Core Principles

National Association for Media Literacy Education, 2023

Grounds the framework's emphasis on purpose, perspective, production, audience, and media influence across grade levels.

Digital and Media Literacy

Renée Hobbs — Media Education Lab, URI (2011, 2021)

Grounds multiple media literacy learning progressions, especially the principle that purpose analysis should precede content analysis.

California Model School Library Standards

California Department of Education (2010)

The foundational California framework for K–12 information literacy. Named in California AB 873, which directs the state to consider incorporating it into the next revision of the ELA/ELD framework.

Motivation and Transfer Research

Kuhn (2019); Eccles & Wigfield (2002)

Supports the human-centered disposition layer by demonstrating that literacy practices without motivational grounding often fail to transfer into authentic real-world application.

Self-Determination Theory

Deci & Ryan (2000)

Identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as universal psychological needs present across the entire lifespan, not staged or outgrown. I AM's mapping of Care to autonomy, Curiosity to competence, and Connection to relatedness is I AM's own interpretive synthesis — a close parallel, but not a claim Deci and Ryan make themselves. What the theory does support directly is I AM's decision to treat Care, Curiosity, and Connection as present at every grade rather than unlocked in sequence, since SDT holds these needs to be lifelong rather than developmental.

Scope, Named Plainly

Coverage Comparisons

This toolkit does not attempt to cover every established concept within Information, Media, and AI literacy, and we do not want that scope hidden inside what we chose not to say.

The thirty-nine Layer 1 essentials came from a judgment call, not a formula. We asked a direct question: of every standard across all three literacies, if a teacher could be given only one per grade level, which single standard would carry the highest value and could be embedded inside any lesson a teacher of any subject was already teaching? We drew on each discipline's own foundational statements, on the evaluations of other experts working toward a human-centered approach to literacy, and on AI tools to help survey that landscape and stress-test our thinking. The decisions themselves, what made the list and what didn't, were ours. This was a judgment call, not a perfect science.

That question was not asked out of a preference for brevity. Media literacy and Information literacy have existed in American education for years, with real professional consensus behind their value, and have still gone largely untaught, either folded into nothing or left as standalone units that rarely survive contact with a crowded school year. AI literacy does not yet have that level of agreement behind it. If it is introduced the way Media and Information literacy were, as an additional list layered onto teachers already stretched thin, there is little reason to expect a different outcome. The one-essential-per-grade constraint, and the decision to leave some real and valuable concepts open for now, is a bet that narrower and embedded beats comprehensive and ignored.

What follows names, plainly, where each foundational idea from four widely used frameworks lives within I AM: taught directly within one of the essentials, supported elsewhere within the toolkit's architecture, or left open for now. Three are strand-specific foundations for Information, Media, and AI literacy. The fourth, the AILit Framework, is a comprehensive international AI literacy reference built for a global audience, and it is included here for a different reason: not because I AM needed to match its structure, but because its four domains and the priorities named by the practitioners who shaped it are a useful check on whether a lean, three-per-grade toolkit still carries what matters most.

Taught directly in an essential Supported elsewhere in the toolkit's architecture Genuinely open

Information Literacy

The ACRL Framework

Six frames, higher-ed information literacy

Authority Is Constructed and Contextual

The strongest thread in this strand, running from Gr4 publisher and purpose analysis, through Gr8 source independence, to Gr10 expertise versus influence.

Research as Inquiry

Gr1's multi-source habit through Gr12's work synthesizing conflicting claims.

Information Creation as a Process

Not among the essentials directly, but carried by the Creator's Companion, K through 12, from the production side.

Scholarship as Conversation

Carried by the Creator's Companion's attribution language at every grade band.

Information Has Value

Half answered by Connected Context's attention to access inequity. The economic and paywall dimension is still untouched.

Searching as Strategic Exploration

Lateral reading at Gr6 is adjacent, but framed as verification, not general search strategy.

Media Literacy

Hobbs's Five Competencies

Access, Analysis, Creation, Reflection, Action

Analysis

The strand's dominant mode, six of the thirteen essentials, Gr4 through Gr11.

Creation

A full K through 12 progression via the Creator's Companion, not just the Gr12 essential.

Reflection

The Creator's Companion's organizing idea, the Mirror Principle, named directly at Gr6 through 8.

Access

Present but unnamed, implicit in the K through 2 essentials and the Emerging Creator band.

Action, civic participation and advocacy

Partially carried by Layer 3's Identity & Presence, through participation and contribution, framed as personal identity rather than public advocacy.

Media economics and profit motive

Not named within Media, but the mechanism is taught in Layer 3's Privacy & Agency, Gr6 through 8, through tracking and data collection.

Media and self-perception, wellbeing

Not in Media, but squarely covered by Layer 3's Wellbeing & Intentionality across all four grade bands.

Audience interpretation

Different audiences construct different meaning from the same message. No essential or layer addresses this directly yet.

Genre literacy at older grades

News versus opinion versus satire is present in spirit at K through 3, but not revisited at an age where it matters more.

AI Literacy

AI4K12's Five Big Ideas

Perception, Representation & Reasoning, Learning, Natural Interaction, Societal Impact

Societal Impact

Four of the thirteen essentials, Gr8 through 12: bias, privacy and data as labor, benefits and harm and environment, and oversight.

Natural Interaction

K's human versus machine voice, Gr3's simple prompts, Gr7's deliberate prompts and intent.

Learning, how machines learn from data

The one gap with no support anywhere in the toolkit yet. Bias, errors, and data as labor all depend on it, but the root mechanism has no essential of its own.

Representation & Reasoning

Thin across the whole toolkit, and arguably a reasonable gap given the toolkit's stated digital environment scope.

Perception

Absent, and the most defensible omission. Computer vision and sensor perception fall outside I AM's stated scope.

International Reference

The AILit Framework

OECD / European Commission, four domains, K–12 specific

Create with AI

The closest match in this comparison. The Creator's Companion and the Machine-Assisted authorship distinctions already do this domain's work, in classroom language rather than policy language.

Engage with AI

Carried by the "Looks confirmed. Is it?" skepticism throughline at Gr6 through 8, and by Layer 3's Privacy & Agency, which picks up where evaluating an output leaves off.

Manage AI

Echoed by the same authorship distinctions, though I AM does not yet name the decision to delegate a task to AI as its own moment the way this domain does.

Shape AI

The one domain I AM does not attempt. This is technical, systems-level work that the AILit Framework itself flags as requiring specialized scaffolding, and it sits outside what a one-essential-per-grade toolkit is built to carry.

Reading this map: seven items across the four strands are genuinely open right now, unsupported anywhere in the current architecture. Four of them, Perception, Representation & Reasoning, Searching as Strategic Exploration, and Shape AI, are reasonably defensible given the toolkit's stated scope and its one-essential-per-grade design. The other three, how machines learn, audience interpretation, and genre literacy at older grades, are worth a closer look as future development priorities.

Trust and Accountability

Authorship and Transparency

Because the I AM framework emphasizes transparency, attribution, inquiry, and responsible participation, we believe it is important to openly share how this work was developed.

Core Principle

This framework is a human-centered educational work, informed by many, authored by Glen Warren and Stephanie Gamache, and machine-assisted through the responsible use of artificial intelligence. All final decisions, meaning, and responsibility rest with the authors.

Informed

Informed by existing research, scholarship, frameworks, standards, and the work of many thought leaders and practitioners.

Authored

Authored through human experience, educational judgment, instructional design, and intentional synthesis. This work reflects the ideas, decisions, and final responsibility of the authors.

Machine-Assisted

Machine-assisted through the responsible use of artificial intelligence to accelerate organization, iteration, visualization, and refinement, while maintaining human agency over every decision the work reflects.

Transparent. Human-centered. Responsible.

A Personal Word

Note from the Author

What I AM Is and Why It Matters

I AM: Caring and Curious in a Connected World is a free, open educational resource designed to help schools make sense of an expanding literacy ecosystem.

It does not attempt to replace information literacy, media literacy, AI literacy, digital citizenship, or inquiry learning. Each of those traditions contributes important knowledge. I AM brings them together in a practical K–12 structure that teachers, teacher librarians, media specialists, and students can actually use.

The need is increasingly clear. Students are not simply reading information anymore. They are navigating media systems, search engines, algorithms, artificial intelligence, recommendation systems, creators, platforms, and communities that influence what they see and increasingly respond to who they are. The reader is now being read. Helping students thrive in that environment requires more than another technology lesson or another set of rules about using AI. It requires those literacies working together with human judgment, curiosity, agency, and responsible participation.

I AM organizes that work into three connected layers: the Converging Literacies of Information, Media, and AI; the human capacities of Care, Curiosity, and Connection; and the Connected World Responsibilities of Presence, Agency, and Wellbeing.

But the three layers are not equal partners in the way that phrase might suggest. Care, Curiosity, and Connection function as the human and motivational center of the framework, not simply as another set of skills beside the other two layers. Literacy skills tell a student what to do. Connected World Responsibilities tell a student how to carry that skill responsibly into the world. Neither one, on its own, tells a student why any of it should matter to them personally.

A student who can evaluate a source but has no curiosity left to wonder about it, or who can cite a policy but feels no genuine connection to the people it affects, has the skill without the reason for the skill. I AM treats Care, Curiosity, and Connection as the layer that inspires the other two, not a soft add-on beside them.

The goal is not to give educators one more program to implement. It is to provide a small, coherent architecture they can carry into learning that is already happening.

Why I Helped Create It

I AM began as a labor of love and is offered as an OER because I wanted this work to be useful, accessible, and shared.

I come to this work as a District Teacher Librarian at Laguna Beach Unified School District, where I've spent my career at the intersection of information literacy, media literacy, and now AI literacy. I co-authored the California Model School Library Standards and the California CTE Standards for Information and Communication Technology, was named Orange County Teacher of the Year in 2014 and a California Teacher of the Year semi-finalist, and now teach a technology-in-the-classroom course at Vanguard University's School of Education. None of that makes I AM correct. But it's the ground it was built on, and I think it's fair for anyone using this framework to know where it came from.

I AM is also, very intentionally, a gift to teacher librarians and media specialists.

Much of the current conversation about artificial intelligence has centered on technology: which tools students should use, which tools they should avoid, how teachers should respond, and what policies schools should create. Those questions matter. But AI is entering an educational landscape that already depends upon information literacy, media literacy, inquiry, source evaluation, intellectual freedom, authorship, and ethical participation. Teacher librarians and media specialists have been working in that landscape for generations.

I AM is meant to make that contribution more visible and more usable.

It offers teacher librarians and media specialists a way to step forward not simply as technology support or resource providers, but as literacy coaches in an expanding literacy ecosystem: educators who can help colleagues connect information literacy, media literacy, and AI literacy instead of treating each new development as another separate initiative.

And the work is not meant to belong to the library alone.

At its best, I AM operates through a triad: teacher, teacher librarian or media specialist, and student. The classroom teacher brings the content, learning goals, and knowledge of the students. The teacher librarian or media specialist brings expertise in inquiry, information, media, research, AI, resources, and transferable literacy practices. The student brings the questions, interests, experiences, judgment, and agency that ultimately make the learning meaningful.

None replaces the other. The strength is in the partnership.

That is ultimately what I AM is trying to make possible: not another initiative competing for space in schools, but a shared language and practical structure that helps educators work together to prepare students for a world in which literacy continues to expand.

I AM isn't ultimately about AI. AI is the pressure revealing why the literacies and partnerships need to come together.

The technologies will change. The platforms will change. The tools will change. Our responsibility remains: help students care, stay curious, think independently, make informed choices, and remain authors of their own learning and participation in the world.

The People Behind the Work

Authors & Acknowledgments

Glen Warren

Teacher Librarian · Educational Leader · Co-Author

Glen Warren is a teacher librarian and educational leader focused on curiosity-driven learning, information literacy, AI literacy, media literacy, inquiry, and student-centered instructional design. His work centers on helping students and educators navigate modern information environments with curiosity, discernment, creativity, and care.

He co-authored the California Model School Library Standards and the California Career Technical Education Standards for the Information and Communication Technology sector.

Stephanie Gamache

Educational Collaborator · Co-Author

Stephanie Gamache has contributed to the development, refinement, implementation, and instructional framing of the I AM Caring and Curious Toolkit through collaboration, educational insight, and a shared commitment to student-centered learning.

Special Thanks

Dr. Renée Hobbs — Media Education Lab, University of Rhode Island

Special thanks to Dr. Renée Hobbs for her longstanding leadership and scholarship in media literacy education. Her work helping educators and students critically analyze media, communication, persuasion, and civic participation has informed and inspired aspects of this framework's development.

The I AM Caring and Curious: A Practical Toolkit for Information, AI, and Media Literacy in a Connected World exists within a broader community of educators, researchers, librarians, scholars, and practitioners committed to helping students navigate information, media, AI, and participation in a connected world with wisdom, care, and responsibility.

No framework is created alone. Learning is always connected.

Creative Commons Licensing

Unless otherwise noted, the I AM Caring and Curious Toolkit and accompanying materials are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Educators, schools, librarians, and learning organizations are encouraged to use, adapt, share, and build upon this work for non-commercial educational purposes with appropriate attribution.

Human-centered. Transparent. Shared for learning.

Why This Matters

The System, Not Just the Text

Making Invisible Systems Visible

A Foundation Too Often Skipped

The Heart of I AM

Care.

Curiosity.

Connection.

Connected World Responsibilities.

Why Three Sets of Three.

What Is I AM?

What I AM Is

Enhanced Lessons with Ease

Three Layer Overview

Measured Least, Needed Most.

How to Use It

Where It Matters

In civic life

In science and the environment

Across the world's biggest shared problems, whatever they happen to be called this decade

In the everyday information life every student already lives in

In the decisions no one else can make for you

In whatever a student ends up doing

Curiosity

I AM Converging Literacies

I AM Teaching Companion

Why This Section Exists

How to Use It

A Note on Mixed Access

Ask: "How do we know this is real?"

Identify a logo or brand

Notice when something is made by a computer

Find two sources for one fact

Identify ads vs. stories

Notice when a suggestion came from a machine

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Notice when two sources tell the story differently

Ask: "Who made this?"

Notice that a machine's suggestion isn't always right

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Use source features to investigate credibility

Ask: "Why was this made?"

Experiment with simple prompts

Identify who published this and their purpose

Identify persuasion

Ask where AI gets information

Look outside a source to see what others say about it

Identify missing perspectives

Identify AI errors

Use lateral reading

Analyze clickbait

Understand algorithm sorting

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Verify quotes externally

Understand how platform design shapes messages

Construct deliberate prompts and evaluate whether the output reflects your intent

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

A note on primary sources

Check whether sources are independent

Identify logical fallacies

Test for bias in outputs

Trace claims to original sources

Analyze visual rhetoric

Evaluate privacy trade-offs, including data as labor

Evaluate expertise vs. influence

Distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation

Assess AI synthesis vs. copying

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Evaluate quality of evidence

Analyze framing

Evaluate who benefits and who is harmed, including environmental costs

Synthesize conflicting claims

Create and critically evaluate counter-narratives

Apply human oversight, including civic and democratic accountability

I AM Assessment Guide

What This Section Provides

How to Use It

Ask: "How do we know this is real?"

Identify a logo or brand

Notice when something is made by a computer