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KS3 · Years 7 to 9 · Orbit (Y7 to Y8 register)
Misinformation, deepfakes and AI content
How do I know whether to believe this before I pass it on?
“I can run three checks before I believe or share something.”
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75 minutes · 35 slides · 3 interactive
How the lesson runs
Recall · 11 minTeach · 29 minPractise · 20 minProve · 4 minReflect · 11 min
75 minutes as scripted: starter 11 with the DiGi welcome, teach cycles 29, half time pause 1 with Orbit, spread race 4, paper practice 15, exit checks 4, close 11 with Orbit’s mission and the passport beat. To fit a 55 minute period: run one discussion instead of two, and give paper practice 10 with items five and six as homework.
Objective. Pupils can apply three verification checks to online content and justify a believe, pause, or do not share verdict.
Notice: Content can be manufactured9 MIN
I can spot the signs that something might be fake or engineered.
Check: The three checks14 MIN
I can run the three checks and give my verdict: believe, pause or do not share.
Trace: How a fake travels6 MIN
I can explain why a fake spreads faster than the correction.
What you need. Nothing beyond the board. Every example in the deck is invented, so no real post, account or person is shown.
If you do one thing first
Run one check on something true before you run three on something false. A class taught only to debunk learns to doubt everything, which is the outcome the fakes want.
What they need before this
- A pupil can explain that a picture can be made by a computer, from ks1-03 and ks2-09.
- A pupil can describe how a feed decides what to show them, from ks2-06.
- A pupil has shared or received something forwarded on from someone else.
What they will know by the end
- Content can be manufactured: images, audio and video, not only text.
- Looking real is no longer evidence that something is real.
- The three checks are: who made it, what is the source, and what does it want from me?
- Pause is a verdict, not a failure to reach one.
- A fake travels further than its correction, so the decision that matters is made before you share.
What this lesson earns
The passportPage 3 of 5
Asking questions
KS3 · Orbit’s stamp when the page is full
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lessons on
this page
this page
STAMPWhat this page builds
Safe online0 of 1
Healthy balance0 of 2
AI literate0 of 3
todaySocial ready0 of 3
Counted on this screen only, from the pages your classes have filled here. The passport itself is the child's own, kept at home.
Many of your families keep the Guided Childhood Passport at home: the journey to sixteen, filled one stage at a time and finished by DiGi’s five question check, which a child cannot fail. This lesson has a place on the Asking questions page and builds AI and chatbots, one of the four things the passport records. Teaching it means the class met it: the parent note going home says so and carries the home code that records it on the child’s own passport. The child’s own short check at home is what fills the page.
The passport never records where a page was filled, school or home, and none of this creates pupil data here: this site holds class codes, never pupil accounts.
The three checks
Who made this?What do other places say?How does it want me to feel?
Under a minute, and pause is a perfectly good verdict.
What children usually get wrong
- Videos and voices cannot be faked convincingly (they can, cheaply).
- AI made means false (it is a method, not a verdict, and the lie is the pretending).
- Checking means distrusting everything (the checks end in believe verdicts too).
The words we teach
misinformation. False information passed on by someone who believes it is true. No intent to deceive, and it still does the damage.
disinformation. False information spread on purpose by someone who knows it is false. The lie is the plan.
deepfake. Video or audio generated by AI so that a real person appears to say or do something they never did.
verdict. The decision you reach after checking: believe, pause, or do not share. Pause is a real verdict, not a dodge.
Reaching everyone
Support. Pre sorted verdict cards, running checks as a group with the three questions printed as a bookmark.
Stretch. Who benefits when this spreads? Follow the incentive, then connect to how feeds reward reaction.
SEND and EAL adaptations
Communication and language. The three checks are three questions on three cards. A pupil runs a whole case by laying down the card that decided their verdict: that IS naming the check.
Attention and executive function. The spread race lands in seconds and the debrief is where the learning lives. After the race, hand the most pulled in pupil the brake: they call the pause on the next case before anyone shares.
Sensory and regulation. The spread race animates fast by design. Reduced motion shows the end states instantly, and the paper fallback, a headline card passed hand to hand, makes the same point at human speed.
English as an additional language. Believe, pause and do not share pre teach as traffic lights: green, amber, red. The three checks become who, where else and what feeling, and the feeling question needs no fluency at all.
The video clips, in words
Read these out if a pupil cannot hear the clip, or if the sound in your room is not working. Nothing in the lesson depends on hearing it.
DiGi opens the lesson
“Hello. I am DiGi. I am a machine, and I am quite good at this. Shall we start?”
On screen. DiGi, the golden star, floats into shot at the front of the classroom, glowing softly and bobbing as it talks, then gives a small happy twirl with a trail of sparkles.
Opening the case: real or made?
“Detective question. This photo got two million shares. It is completely fake.”
“Today you learn the three checks that catch it in under a minute. Case open.”
On screen. Orbit, the round blue Planet Friend, wears a gold cape at the front of a secondary classroom. Orbit holds a photo up towards the class, gestures at the whiteboard, then leans in to the camera.
The three checks
“Who made it. What do other places say. And the big one: how is it trying to make me feel? Fakes aim for your feelings, because feelings share fast.”
On screen. Orbit, the round blue Planet Friend, stands beside a whiteboard in a gold cape and counts the three checks off one at a time. A green tick glows on the board behind it as each one lands.
DiGi Junior half time check in
If there is no screen
The full lesson runs from the printed pack: retrieval card, three checks bookmark, six item worksheet, exit card. Beats are described in the teacher script if no screen is available.
What they might ask you
From a pupil, in the room
“Can you really fake a voice that well?”
Yes, and from a surprisingly short clip. This is the bit that has changed fastest. It is why the three checks are about where it came from and what else says it, rather than about how convincing it looks or sounds.
“So if AI made it, it is fake?”
No. AI made is not the same as false, and treating it that way will make you wrong a lot. Plenty of true things are AI assisted now. The checks are about whether the claim holds up, not about what tool touched it.
“Am I supposed to distrust everything?”
That is just as useless as believing everything, and it is exhausting. The checks are for the post that hits you hard and fast, because that is the one built to travel. Most of what you see does not need them.
“I shared something that turned out to be fake. Is that bad?”
It happens to plenty of people, adults included. Say so, and say so where you shared it. A correction from the person who shared it travels further than one from anybody else.
Where the claims come from
A claim with no verified source does not go on a slide. Where we cannot verify a number we teach the mechanism instead, which is stronger anyway.
Deepfakes are named in the statutory guidance for secondary pupils: their prevalence, how they can be used maliciously as well as for entertainment, the harms they can cause and how to identify them.
Department for Education, Relationships Education, RSE and Health Education, July 2025, in force 1 September 2026. Secondary, online safety and awareness, item 7. The full mapping, requirement by requirement, is on the RSHE page.Checked
In a test of 2,000 people in the UK and US, about one in a thousand correctly told every real image and video from every fake, even after being told to look for fakes.
iProov, Deepfake Blindspot study, February 2025. Industry research from a company that sells biometric protection against deepfakes, and not peer reviewed, so treat it as a vivid illustration rather than a precise measurement.Checked
Check two, what do other places say, is lateral reading: leaving the page to see what other sources say about it, which is how professional fact checkers work.
Wineburg and McGrew, Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise, Teachers College Record, 2019. Professional fact checkers reached better supported conclusions in a fraction of the time taken by historians and students, by reading across sites rather than down one.Mechanism, no figure
Before you teach this one
KCSIE 2026 keeps misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories named as content harms. A pupil may disclose distress about something they have seen or shared. Follow your school safeguarding policy and record in your school system. This platform does not record disclosures.
Type your safeguarding lead’s name once on the safeguarding page and it appears here and on the slide that asks for it.
The DSL briefing →Where this sits in the framework
Education for a Connected World. Managing online information
Statutory hooks. KCSIE 2026 content risks; Citizenship media literacy; DfE AI in education; RSHE 2026 (deepfakes statutory at KS3/4 from Sep 2026)
Evidence anchor. KCSIE content risk expansion (2025, retained in KCSIE 2026); Orben 2025 review
The full RSHE mapping →What goes home
Your child learned that photos, videos and voices can now be manufactured convincingly, and practised three checks: who made this and how do they know, what do other places say, and how is it trying to make me feel.
Ask at tea: “Can you teach me the three checks for something that might be fake?”
Free sample · one of 34 modules
This whole lesson is yours to teach. Nothing is locked.
Read the plan, play the slides, use the script. It is the real thing, not a preview. Tell us where to send the printable pack and it opens straight away.
Getting ready
You are getting ready to teach this
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You have read the lessonKnowing the misconceptions before the room says them is the difference between a lesson and a reading.
Read the lesson page →You have looked backThis lesson opens by recalling the last one, so the class is warmer when you begin.
Open the lesson before: Social media, group chats and the workarounds →The pack is printedOne photocopy run and the whole lesson can be taught with no screen at all.
Print the pack →The learning record is printedThe assessment is the conversation about the gap, and it needs the sheet in front of you.
Print the learning record →The board is readyOpen it before they come in, not while thirty children watch you type.
Open it on the board →You taught itRecorded here with the date, for your own record and your subject lead’s.
Teach it →The class filled the passport pageThe page fills at school and at home alike, and this screen keeps its own count.
Yours to tick
These are your word rather than ours. We cannot see them happen, so they do not tick themselves.
Counted on this screen only, in this browser. It names no child and it is never sent anywhere, so a different laptop shows nothing and a shared classroom machine shows the last teacher’s. The run sheet for this one.