South Dakota ELA 6.W.8.a

ELA6th GradeWriting

The Standard

Assess the credibility of each source.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students check each source they might use, not just the first search result. They look for the author, date, evidence, and purpose before deciding how much to trust it.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can point to clues on a page that support or weaken its claims. They can explain when a claim needs to be checked against another source.
Common Misconceptions: Students may assume the first search result or any site ending in .org is reliable. They may mistake a confident opinion for evidence or overlook an old publication date.
How to Assess It: Give students two source descriptions: a 2025 university fact sheet with a named author and cited studies, and an undated anonymous blog post with no sources. Ask them to rate each source's credibility and name two clues for each rating.

Lesson moves

Give pairs a printed sunscreen fact sheet and a sunscreen ad, then have them circle the author, date, evidence, and purpose on each.
Ask students to write whether they would use an anonymous blog post about school lunches in a report and what they would check first.
Run Source Sort with four short source cards showing different authors, dates, and evidence; students rate each card and defend their ratings.
Give students a mock viral weather post and a printed National Weather Service forecast; ask which they would share and why.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 6.W.8.a, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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