Implementation plan

Grades 6–8 Implementation Plan

Pacing, prerequisites, and extensions for the middle-school band.

The activities

  • Grade 6 — Fair Use Detective. A student creator wants to remix a photo, a song clip, and a quote into a class project — but is it legal? Follow the evidence and crack four locks to close the case. (TEKS §126.17)
  • Grade 7 — Spot the Spin. A post is racing across the internet, and thousands are sharing it without checking. Your job is to slow down, read past the spin, and unlock the truth. (TEKS §126.18)
  • Grade 8 — Evaluate the Source. A trending article is spreading fast, but something about it doesn't add up. Analyze the evidence, crack four locks, and decide whether the source can be trusted. (TEKS §126.19)

Pacing

  • One activity ≈ 25–40 minutes, including debrief. Younger classes may need two sittings.
  • Run one per grading period, or cluster them into a two-week digital-citizenship unit.
  • Order matches the grade sequence; each grade deepens footprint, etiquette, IP, and safety themes.

Prerequisites

  • A browser and the activity link. No accounts, installs, or logins.
  • Students should be able to evaluate short arguments and are ready for real IP, security, and media-literacy vocabulary.
  • Teachers: skim the activity’s teacher launch page and the correlation guide first.

Extension & differentiation

  • Home-language pairs. Use the 🌐 picker so newcomers reason in their strongest language, then answer.
  • Author-a-clue. Students write a new clue (or a real-world example) for the skill they found hardest.
  • Reason aloud. Require a spoken/written justification before each lock check; grade the reasoning, not the click.
  • Bridge to a media-literacy or intro-to-AI unit; have students audit a real (teacher-vetted) source using the Grade 8 criteria.