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

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.

AI Literacy Efforts

Currently, there is much talk about "AI literacy." And the focus is typically on what students should know and be able to do, very common language for frameworks. The challenge that the I AM Caring and Curious toolkit is addressing is that these "new literacies" are built on media literacy, and some have forgotten or failed to mention information literacy. Information literacy comes out of the library world, and media literacy comes out of the media world. And our students have long needed media and information literacy, and it has been identified by media and information literacy research efforts that not only are our students' information and media skills weak, but now we're building a new literacy without building on the foundation of what we should have been doing all along. Research shows that undergraduates are not equipped with basic information literacy skills (Granias & Nelson-Dusek, 2026), and that media literacy is "a constellation of competencies" reflecting the full complexity of human communication, not one simple thing (Hobbs et al., 2025). Research documents "strong and successful collaboration between social studies teachers and school librarians" as a model for effective media literacy instruction (Hobbs et al., 2025, p. 6). Media literacy has effective implementation impact when taught in the context of what the content teacher is already teaching, and in collaboration with a teacher librarian. The I AM Toolkit provides tools for implementing both.

Enhanced Lessons with Ease

I AM Caring and Curious provides three 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. The human capacities are the why. The Connected World Responsibilities provide the how, how a student needs to conduct themselves in a connected world. The three literacies provide the what, what they need to know and be able to do. Together, these make I AM Caring and Curious, the why of the whole thing, come to life. The teacher can choose when any of these moves are included. For example, in one lesson, a media literacy move; in another, an information literacy move; in another, an AI literacy move. These can be used any time throughout the school year, and as often as the teacher decides is meaningful.

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 something older than all three: 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. 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.

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.

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. Digital citizenship, as it is commonly used, tends 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. Take the second word of each and you get PAW: Presence, Agency, Wellbeing, 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.

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.

The Architecture

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

How students think. The motivational infrastructure that makes Layer 1 skills durable.

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.

Layer 2 — Human-Centered Capacities

Care. Curiosity. Connection.

Three human capacities that work together as a cycle. Not a checklist. The living orientation that makes every skill in this framework transferable, durable, and genuinely human.

01

Care

Something has to matter to you. Caring is the ignition. You cannot be genuinely curious about something you don't care about. Care connects learning to life and makes the rest of this framework personal rather than procedural. Our interests, identities, values, questions, and responsibilities become the foundation for meaningful learning.

02

Curiosity

Curiosity is what caring generates when it meets the world's questions. It is not a personality trait you either have or don't. It is the active orientation that prevents passive consumption. You cannot be genuinely curious and passive at the same time. Curiosity is the antidote to passivity in an age that profits from passive consumption.

03

Connection

Connect what you care about and what you are curious about to yourself and the world you are helping to shape. This is what makes learning transferable rather than inert. A student who can make this connection recognizes when the information environment is serving their interests and when it is serving someone else's.

"A student with Care, Curiosity, and Connection can navigate anything."

Layer 1 — Converging Literacies

Essential Learnings

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 → Assessment Guidance →

Gr.	Information / Authority	Media / Intent	AI / Machine
K	Ask: "How do we know this is real?"	Identify a logo or brand	Distinguish human vs. machine voice
1	Find two sources for one fact	Identify ads vs. stories	Notice when a suggestion came from a machine
2	Ask: "Can we check this?" — verified vs. unverified	Ask: "Who made this?"	Notice system suggestions
3	Use text features to verify	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	Check "About" pages	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	Understand amplification and 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

Layer 2 — Developmental Progression

Grade Band Engagements

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

K–2

I notice and wonder.

Care

I notice what matters to me and others.

Curiosity

I ask questions about the world around me.

Connection

I recognize that other people think and feel differently too.

3–5

I check and ask why.

Care

I begin understanding how my interests, experiences, and responsibilities shape what matters to me.

Curiosity

I ask questions to better understand ideas, people, and the world.

Connection

I begin recognizing how different experiences and perspectives shape understanding.

6–8

I analyze and connect.

Care

I reflect on how my identity, values, experiences, and communities influence what matters to me.

Curiosity

I ask questions that evaluate, challenge, and deepen understanding.

Connection

I examine how people's experiences, beliefs, and information environments shape perspectives.

9–12

I synthesize and act.

Care

I consider how purpose, responsibility, and participation in the wider world shape what matters to me and others.

Curiosity

I pursue complex questions that explore uncertainty, evidence, and meaning.

Connection

I analyze and synthesize diverse perspectives while recognizing the humanity behind them.

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 share and communicate with kindness and care.

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

I begin building a positive and respectful presence in connected spaces.

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

I manage my identity, communication, and participation across digital spaces and communities.

Privacy & Agency

I recognize manipulation, scams, tracking, and data collection while making more informed decisions online.

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

I intentionally shape my identity, participation, and contribution within connected environments.

Privacy & Agency

I evaluate privacy systems, data practices, digital influence, and personal agency within connected systems.

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.

Teacher Resource

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

Teachers do not need another abstract framework. They need to know what the skill means, why it matters developmentally, what students should understand, and how to introduce it without building an entire new unit. This section turns the K–12 progression into grade-level instructional guidance.

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

Distinguish human vs. machine voice

What It Means

Helping children understand that some voices and responses in digital environments are generated by computers, not by people.

Why It Matters

Children at this age often anthropomorphize technology. Laying an early foundation that some voices are not human prevents confusion and builds awareness needed for later AI literacy.

Students Need to Know

A voice assistant, a talking toy, or a game character is a computer program — 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 gives us more confidence. Two sources that 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 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. Celebrate: two places agree — that makes us 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 Checking, authorship, and noticing suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Ask: "Can we check this?" — verified vs. unverified

What It Means

Some information has been checked and confirmed by trusted sources. Some hasn't. Learning to ask "can we check this?" and then doing it is the practice of verification.

Why It Matters

Verification is the core habit of information literacy. Introducing it at Grade 2 as a natural, everyday question — "can we check this?" — makes it part of students' thinking before it needs to be a skill.

Students Need to Know

Before we believe something, we can ask: has anyone checked if this is true? If we can find it in a book, an encyclopedia, or a trusted website, it's more likely to be verified.

Teaching Move

A student shares something they heard. Ask the class: can we check this? Where would we look? Model the checking process together. Introduce the word "verified" — "we checked it and it checks out."

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 system suggestions

What It Means

Digital systems constantly suggest what to do next — autocomplete, recommended content, "you might also like." These are system decisions, not human ones, and they shape what we see and do.

Why It Matters

Building the habit of noticing suggestions — and pausing before following them — is the beginning of intentional digital participation. Students who notice are already more in control.

Students Need to Know

The computer is always suggesting — what to click, what to watch, what to type next. We don't have to follow those suggestions. We can make our own choices.

Teaching Move

During a research activity, point out autocomplete or suggested searches. Ask: should we follow the computer's suggestion, or do we have a better idea? Emphasize: we decide, not the machine.

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. The class discusses together: should we follow the computer's suggestion, or do we have a better idea? Students practice deciding as a group, without conducting their own individual searches.

Grade 3 Text features, purpose, and simple prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Use text features to verify

What It Means

Text features — headings, captions, author information, publication dates, citations — are tools for evaluating 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. Evaluating features for credibility signals, 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 helps us decide how much to trust what we're reading.

Teaching Move

Give students two nonfiction texts on the same topic — one with strong text features, one without. Which would you trust more? 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. They don't "know" things the way people do — they generate responses based on patterns in that training data.

Why It Matters

Understanding that AI outputs are generated — not retrieved from a reliable database — is fundamental to evaluating AI-produced information. This understanding prevents over-reliance on AI as a source of truth.

Students Need to Know

AI doesn't look things up the way we do in a library. It was trained on huge amounts of text from many places — some reliable, some not. When it answers, it's using patterns from that training, which means it can be wrong.

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 About pages, missing perspectives, and AI errors ▾

Information / Authority

Check "About" pages

What It Means

An "About" page reveals who runs a website, what their mission is, and who funds them. This information is essential for understanding whether a source has any conflict of interest or organizational agenda.

Why It Matters

Checking "About" pages is a transitional skill between surface-level source evaluation and the professional fact-checker practice of lateral reading introduced in Grade 6. It focuses credibility evaluation on the publisher rather than the text.

Students Need to Know

Most websites have an "About" page that tells us who runs the site and why. Checking it can reveal if the organization has a reason to present information in a particular way — which helps us evaluate what they're saying.

Teaching Move

Find a website on a current topic. Navigate to the "About" page together. Who runs this? Is it a nonprofit? A company? A government agency? Does knowing this change how you read the information on the main page?

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 that lateral reading is the single highest-value verifiable information literacy skill. It is 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

What students are tracing to in this essential, the original speech, the contemporaneous document, the unedited recording, is called 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 only way to know what was actually found or said.

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, amplification and 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

Understand amplification and 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 true information used to harm. Amplification is the mechanism by which any of these spreads at scale.

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, not copying from one. That's different from plagiarism, but it's also not the same as original thinking. The question isn't 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 are not neutral — they produce differential impacts across social groups, and they have real environmental costs including significant energy and water consumption. Asking who benefits and who is harmed is a stakeholder analysis applied to technology.

Why It Matters

Preparing students to be informed citizens about AI requires that they understand AI's distributional effects — who wins, who loses, and who pays the environmental costs. This connects AI literacy to broader questions of equity and sustainability.

Students Need to Know

AI systems don't benefit everyone equally. They can amplify existing inequalities, displace workers in specific industries, and generate significant environmental costs — including large amounts of energy and water for training and running models. Asking "who benefits and at whose expense?" is a civic question, not just a technical one.

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?

Section 05 — Classroom Assessment

Assessment Guidance

"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 of the 39 essentials: 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 or adapted as IEP goal language. 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

Distinguish human vs. machine voice

"I can" Statement

I can tell the difference between a person talking and a computer talking.

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 makes me more sure it's true.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies two distinct sources for a single fact and articulates that 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 Checking, authorship, and noticing suggestions ▾

Information / Authority

Ask: "Can we check this?" — verified vs. unverified

"I can" Statement

I can ask "can we check this?" and show one way to find out if something is true.

Performance Indicator

When presented with a claim, student asks the verification question unprompted or responds positively when asked, and can demonstrate at least one concrete checking strategy.

Sample Task

Share a claim from a fictional "someone said." Ask: should we check this? How? Students demonstrate a checking strategy. Look for the habit of questioning before accepting — not the sophistication of the method.

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 system suggestions

"I can" Statement

I can notice when a computer is suggesting something and choose to follow my own idea instead.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies an automated suggestion in a digital context and demonstrates or articulates the choice to follow or not follow it, expressing that the choice belongs to them.

Sample Task

During a search activity, autocomplete suggestions appear. Ask: what is the computer suggesting? Do you want to follow its suggestion or use your own idea? Which did you choose, and why? Look for agency in the decision.

Grade 3 Text features, purpose, and simple prompting ▾

Information / Authority

Use text features to verify

"I can" Statement

I can use text features — like the author's name, when it was written, and where the information came from — to help decide if a source is trustworthy.

Performance Indicator

Student identifies at least two relevant text features and uses them to make a credibility judgment about a source, explaining the connection between feature and trustworthiness.

Sample Task

Give two texts on the same topic — one with author name, date, and citations; one without. Ask: which would you trust more? Use specific text 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 gets its information from training data — not from looking things up like a library — and explain why that means AI can be wrong.

Performance Indicator

Student correctly describes the basic mechanism of AI knowledge (trained on text data, not real-time lookup) and explains why this means AI outputs need to be verified.

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 library vs. training-data distinction.

Grade 5 About pages, missing perspectives, and AI errors ▾

Information / Authority

Check "About" pages

"I can" Statement

I can find and read an "About" page and use what I learn to evaluate whether a website has a reason to present information in a particular way.

Performance Indicator

Student locates the "About" page of a website, correctly identifies the publisher and mission, and makes a credibility assessment based on what they found — connecting publisher identity to potential perspective.

Sample Task

Provide a URL with a not-immediately-obvious publisher. Students find and read the "About" page, then answer: who runs this? What is their goal? Does this change how you would use their information? Look for the About-to-credibility connection.

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, amplification 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

Understand amplification and distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation

"I can" Statement

I can correctly classify an information example as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation, 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?

Powerful Partnerships

Two Kinds of Context. One Coherent System.

Classroom teachers and Teacher Librarians working together move this framework from isolated lessons into a coherent K–12 system. Partnered, the teacher librarian becomes a force multiplier for both student and teacher, reaching what neither could reach carrying this alone. The sum of this partnership is greater than its parts.

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 that partnership, 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.

Content Context + Connected Context = Powerful Transferable Skills

Section 06 — Standards Alignment

Curriculum Integration

Every I.A.M. 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.A.M. 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	Human vs. machine voice	RI.K.1 · SL.K.3Embedded
1	Find two sources	Ads vs. stories	Notice machine suggestions	RI.1.1 · RI.1.9Embedded
2	Can we check this?	Who made this?	System suggestions	RI.2.1Replaces fact/opinion lesson
3	Use text 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	Check About pages	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	Amplification/misinfo types	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

Section 07 — Equity & Access

Equity & Access

California CDE Model AI Policy §9 explicitly requires that access and instruction be equitably provided. This appendix gives every teacher the scaffolding guidance to make I.A.M. 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.A.M. 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. The Relevance strand makes cultural connections 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

The Relevance strand as the equity engine

The Equity Approach

The "why does this matter to me?" question is the most direct response to LTEL disengagement available in the curriculum literature. Use student-generated questions as the actual starting point for inquiry. When students ask the questions that matter 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 can be adapted as measurable IEP goal language. The Scholar Snapshot 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

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?

"The reader is being read."

Every time a student opens a feed, runs a search, or asks an AI a question, systems are reading them back. Tracking attention. Shaping what comes next. Deciding what they see and what they do not. The information environment is not neutral. It is active, personalized, and designed to engage. Students who do not understand this are not navigating. They are being navigated.

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 early 2026, 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.

California became the fourth state to mandate K–12 media literacy instruction with Governor Newsom's signing of AB 873 in October 2023. The law is notable as the most comprehensive to date, with a major allocation of resources and an emphasis on curriculum and professional training in the state with the largest K–12 population.

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 legislative actions complete the picture. AB 2876 requires the Instructional Quality Commission to consider AI literacy content in curriculum frameworks. The CDE Model AI Policy names four specific instructional strategies and the AI4K12 Five Big Ideas as required curriculum content. I AM is the only integrated K–12 framework currently available that implements all of these simultaneously.

I AM implements what AB 873 calls for — with a grade-specific progression that is ready now.

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.

What New Jersey mandated, I AM delivers — with grade-specific essentials, 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.

Two thirds of digital content creators do not systematically fact-check information before sharing. Eighty percent of young people use AI tools multiple times daily for education. 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.

A student with Care, Curiosity, and Connection can navigate anything. That is what this framework is for. That is Why I AM.

The Complete Framework

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.

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 attribution is respect — not a requirement.

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 and respect the spirit of copyright and fair use — giving credit, seeking permission where needed, and recognizing 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.

Focus Areas Selected

✓ Accuracy ✓ Attribution ✓ Transparency ✓ Perspective

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."

Research & Foundations

Research, Foundations, and Contributions

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) on lateral reading provides direct grounding for several of I AM's grade-level essentials. Their work demonstrates that lateral reading outperforms traditional within-source evaluation, a finding that shaped the framework's approach to verification at the middle school level.

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, 2023) provide the foundational K–12 information literacy framework for California schools and are explicitly referenced in AB 873 as a required component of future curriculum integration. 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 (2021) 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, identifies prompt literacy as a critical emerging competency for middle school AI education. This research grounds I AM's Grade 7 essential on constructing deliberate prompts and evaluating whether outputs reflect the user's intent.

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 finding that eighty percent of young people use AI tools multiple times daily for education underscores 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, 2023) were co-authored by Glen Warren and are explicitly referenced by name in AB 873 as a required component of future ELA and ELD framework integration. 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.

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.

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.

Lateral Reading Research

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

Demonstrates that lateral reading strategies outperform within-site credibility evaluation in controlled studies, grounding Grade 6 as the entry point for lateral reading instruction.

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

Identifies prompt literacy as a critical emerging competency within middle school AI literacy development, grounding the Grade 7 prompting essential.

NAMLE Core Principles

National Association for Media Literacy Education, 2021

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, 2023)

The foundational California framework for K–12 information literacy. Explicitly referenced in California AB 873 as a required component of future ELA/ELD framework integration.

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.

Section 09 — 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 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 three 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.

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.

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.

Transparent. Human-centered. Responsible.

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.

What Is I AM?

What I AM Is

AI Literacy Efforts

Enhanced Lessons with Ease

The Heart of I AM

Care.

Curiosity.

Connection.

Connected World Responsibilities.

Why Three Sets of Three.

Why This Matters

The System, Not Just the Text

Making Invisible Systems Visible

Curiosity

Three Layers. Nine Elements. One Progression.

Care. Curiosity. Connection.

Essential Learnings

Grade Band Engagements

Connected World Responsibilities

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

Distinguish human vs. machine voice

Find two sources for one fact

Identify ads vs. stories

Notice when a suggestion came from a machine

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Ask: "Can we check this?" — verified vs. unverified

Ask: "Who made this?"

Notice system suggestions

Alternative Teaching Move — Mixed Access

Use text features to verify

Ask: "Why was this made?"

Experiment with simple prompts

Identify who published this and their purpose

Identify persuasion

Ask where AI gets information

Check "About" pages

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

Understand amplification and 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

Assessment Guidance

What This Section Provides

How to Use It

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

Identify a logo or brand

Distinguish human vs. machine voice

Find two sources for one fact

Identify ads vs. stories

Notice when a suggestion came from a machine

Ask: "Can we check this?" — verified vs. unverified

Ask: "Who made this?"

Notice system suggestions