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Unit 7 follow-up reading, English-style critical literacy, homework analysis, and comparison of how public media represents AI and digital power.
Unit 7 Media Literacy • Years 8-11 • Critical reading • Print-ready
AI News Analysis
Use this worksheet to help ākonga move beyond “AI is cool” or “AI is scary” headlines. Students choose one real news story, identify the framing, trace who is centred or excluded, and evaluate the story through fairness, evidence, and te ao Māori values.
Free media-literacy base, premium local adaptation
Use this worksheet as the class analysis frame, then move into Te Wānanga if you want a local-news version, a bilingual scaffold, or an assessed compare-and-contrast response.
- Swap in one local, one national, and one international AI story for comparison.
- Create a younger-reading version with sentence starters and vocabulary help.
- Turn the analysis into a spoken panel, paragraph response, or debate brief.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 35-50 minutes for one story, or longer if students compare two sources.
- Grouping: Start individually, then use pairs or triads for discussion and challenge.
- Prep: Pre-select safe, relevant stories with enough detail for critical analysis, not just hype.
- Differentiation: Support learners can analyse one story deeply; extension learners can compare framing across multiple outlets.
- Teaching move: Keep asking whose perspective is missing, who benefits, and what evidence is actually provided.
Resources already provided
- Story-selection prompts and source options
- Surface, inference, and critical-analysis sections
- Te ao Māori values lens for ethical reading
- Teacher-only curriculum companion
What to print: one copy per student plus one shared news article, video, or transcript. The sheet works best when students can revisit the source more than once.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning how AI news stories are framed and whose perspectives are amplified.
- We are learning how to separate surface facts from deeper implications and missing context.
- We are learning how to evaluate AI reporting using evidence, fairness, and values-based judgement.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can identify what the story says happened and what evidence it gives.
- I can explain who benefits, who may be harmed, and whose voice is missing.
- I can evaluate whether the reporting is balanced, credible, and values-aware.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
This worksheet bridges English critical literacy, digital-technology ethics, and social-studies discussion about power, fairness, and decision-making. It turns AI news into a text students can interrogate rather than simply absorb.
Good AI reporting does more than repeat claims
News stories about AI often present technology as inevitable, magical, or terrifying. Strong analysis slows that down. It asks what the evidence actually shows, what context is missing, and whether people most affected by the technology have had any real voice in the story.
A critical reader asks not only “What happened?” but also “Who is speaking, whose interests are protected, and what futures are being normalised?”
1. Choose and record your source
Recommended story types: Māori-led AI innovation, AI bias or facial recognition, AI in schools, creative AI and copyright, or AI and jobs. Use a story with enough detail to analyse rather than just a short opinion clip.
Headline / story title
Source / platform / date
2. Surface read: what does the story say?
| Question | Notes |
|---|---|
| What happened or is being claimed? | |
| Who is quoted or featured directly? | |
| What evidence, examples, or data are included? |
3. Deeper meanings: what sits underneath?
Who benefits from the way this story is framed?
Who might be harmed, overlooked, or simplified?
What perspective or voice is missing?
What assumptions about AI seem to be taken for granted?
4. Critical evaluation
Is the reporting balanced?
Think about evidence, tone, and whether the story feels like hype, panic, or careful reporting.
What extra information would make the story stronger?
Te ao Māori values lens
Choose one or two values such as manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga, rangatiratanga, whanaungatanga, or tika. Explain how they help you judge the story and the AI issue it describes.
5. Final judgement and action
My final verdict on this story
One better question the audience should now ask
Extension: compare the coverage
- Find a second source covering the same topic. What changes in angle, tone, or missing voices?
- Check whether one source includes more evidence, stronger context, or more scepticism.
- Notice whether Māori, Pasifika, disabled, youth, or worker perspectives are treated differently across the sources.
Teach this tomorrow
Print / share
- This worksheet
- One teacher-selected AI news story with enough depth to revisit
Decide before class
- Whether students all analyse one shared text or bring their own source
- Whether the final response is written, spoken, or discussion-based
Look for by the end
- Students move beyond summary into critique
- Students can name both missing voices and stronger questions
Hononga Marautanga / Curriculum Alignment
This worksheet connects Digital Technologies ethics and the English learning area through critical media literacy. Students practise evaluating information sources, identifying implicit perspective and power, and constructing evidence-based judgements — skills required across the NZ Curriculum. The Social Sciences thread is present in the focus on who holds power in the production of public narratives about AI and who is affected by those narratives in communities across Aotearoa.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
In mātauranga Māori, kōrero (talk, discourse) and whakaaro (thought, intent) are not separate from the person who speaks them. The source and intent of knowledge matters as much as the knowledge itself. This is a powerful critical-reading principle: when students ask "Who is speaking? What do they stand to gain? Whose voice is missing?" they are practising a form of knowledge evaluation that aligns with traditional Māori approaches to assessing the credibility of information. Encouraging students to apply this lens to AI news stories roots a contemporary skill in a long-standing epistemological tradition.
Ngā Rauemi Hono / Related Unit 7 Resources
- AI Bias Detection Lab — structured evidence-based bias testing
- Digital Sovereignty & Data Protection Guide — connect media framing to real digital impacts
- AI Ethics and Bias — conceptual framework
- Guided Inquiry Phase 3 — analysis and evidence scaffold
- Teacher Discussion Guide — facilitation support
Curriculum alignment
- Digital Technologies — Progress Outcome: Students understand how digital systems store, represent, and transmit data and consider the ethical implications of digital technologies on society.
- Digital Technologies — Progress Outcome: Students can identify and describe the key components of digital systems and how they interact.