Modules
Grade 4
🔍Is It True?
Lateral Reading in Practice
Practice lateral reading — the technique professional fact-checkers use to verify sources.
10 min 3 quiz questions Grade 4
How Fact-Checkers Read
Professional fact-checkers do not spend a lot of time reading deeply into one source. Instead, they quickly open multiple tabs and check what other sources say about the original source. This is called lateral reading.
Lateral Reading vs. Vertical Reading
- Vertical reading: Reading deeply into one source to evaluate it (less effective)
- Lateral reading: Quickly checking what other sources say about the source (more effective)
Lateral Reading:Evaluating a source by checking what other credible sources say about it, rather than reading deeply into the source itself.
How to Do Lateral Reading
- Open a new tab
- Search the name of the website or organization
- See what credible sources say about it
- Check if it has a history of accuracy or bias
- Return to the original source with this context
Try It
If you find an article on "HealthyLivingToday.com," instead of reading the article deeply, open a new tab and search "HealthyLivingToday.com reliability" or "who runs HealthyLivingToday.com." What do you find?
Ready to test your knowledge?
3 questions · Grade 4 level