Welcome to your first lesson. Today you'll look at something you already do every day: read the news on your phone, tablet or laptop.

Here's a question to start you thinking. Picture the homepage of a news site you usually visit. If you scrolled to the very top right now, would every item on that page be a news story? Or would some of it be opinion, some paid advertising, and some social media posts dressed up to look like news?

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to tell them apart with confidence, and you'll have audited a real Irish news front page yourself.

Modern news websites mix lots of different things on a single page. Knowing the labels makes it easier to read carefully. Here are four terms you'll meet in every news site you visit.

Two extra words worth knowing while we're here:

• Dateline: the place and date a story was filed from (for example, 'Dublin, Tuesday'). Useful for spotting old stories being reshared as if new.
• Correction: a public note added when a story got something wrong. Good news outlets correct openly. It's a sign of trust, not a sign of weakness.

Now you'll do the practical work. First, you'll watch a short walk-through of an example front page so you can see how to spot each type of content. Then you'll audit a real Irish news front page that you choose yourself.

You can pause at any time and come back. There are no right or wrong answers, just careful looking.

Take a quiet moment with these questions. You don't need to type anything. Just sit with each one for a few seconds.

If you want to push a little further, here are two short challenges. Both are optional, and you can try them in your own time after the lesson.

1. The byline check. Pick one news story from your audit. Find the reporter's name. On most sites, the reporter's name is a link that opens their profile page. Have a look at two or three other stories they have written. What kind of stories does this reporter usually cover? This is one of the simplest ways to build trust in a source over time.
2. The corrections page. Most reputable news sites have a corrections or clarifications page, often linked at the very bottom. See if you can find it on the site you audited. A clear, public corrections page is a quiet sign of a trustworthy outlet. No corrections page at all is worth noting.

You don't need to do both. Pick whichever you find more interesting.