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9th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 10 of 12

Research & Credibility

Peer review, AI output and synthesis

What your child practices

Students practice effective research questions, peer review, conflicting sources, sampling, lateral reading, checking AI output for invented sources, and citing and synthesizing evidence honestly.

Alaska content standards learning standard: W.9-10.7; W.9-10.8 · research questions, conflicting sources, credibility and citing

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Use peer-reviewed sources when you can, and ask who funded a study.
  2. Read laterally: check what other reliable sources say. AI tools can invent sources and facts.
  3. Correlation is not causation: two things happening together doesn’t prove one causes the other.

Example: Ice cream sales and sunburns both rise in summer. Does ice cream cause sunburns? They happen at the same time. Both are caused by something else: hot, sunny weather. Answer: No: correlation does not prove causation.

Research & Credibility in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 10 of 12 in 9th grade English Language Arts, after Form & Composing and before Proofreading.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    What makes a research question effective?

    • it is as broad as possible
    • it has a yes or no answer
    • it is focused, arguable or open-ended, and answerable with evidence
    • it is about your opinion only

  2. Question 2

    Why is it important to note the date you accessed a website?

    • web content can change after you read it
    • it is required for books
    • it shows your opinion
    • it makes citations longer

  3. Question 3

    Which is the strongest way to use a statistic in an essay?

    • round it up to sound bigger
    • state the number alone
    • put it in the title
    • give the number, its source and why it matters

  4. Question 4

    What is the difference between correlation and causation?

    • they mean the same
    • two things happening together does not prove one causes the other
    • correlation always proves cause
    • causation is a type of chart

  5. Question 5

    What is peer review?

    • a type of citation
    • a book report
    • experts checking research before it is published
    • friends liking a post

  6. Question 6

    An AI chatbot provides a convincing paragraph with a citation to a real journal, but the article doesn't exist. This is called a…

    • paraphrase
    • primary source
    • peer review
    • hallucinated or fabricated citation

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