QUESTION: Current Events as Weekly Homework Assignment?

[J K Van Nort]

I'm curious as to how other teachers approach current events in their social studies class. I have incorporated several skills that current event reading can develop: critical thinking skills like propaganda identification, inference, & loaded language; study skills like summarizing, delineation, & quoting; current & previous unit relativity; and focused topics of the week.

I have found that the study skills of summarizing and delineation help students to develop those skills rather than just cut/paste or rewriting the whole article. Summary is usually contained in one paragraph, and delineation is in one sentence.

I start the critical thinking skills with inference, build to loaded language, and then with identified propaganda techniques.

The most difficult of my approaches have been trying to get previous and current unit relations with current events. Some easy ones to always let the students make connections are the Constitution, the American Dream, and civil rights.

[Mike Gange]

JK, Mike here. In my Social Studies classes, I have frequently concentrated on using local, national and international stories. I choose them more by abilities than alphabetically, (smart kids first, so the others will see how easy this is). I give each kid a specific date they have to report on the news, and post the list in the classroom. They get ten points if they can tell me three stories -- local, national, international -- and answer "so what" for any one of them. So what does this mean to US? Why is this story worth noting.

I get the newspaper in my class daily. You should see them reading the paper regularly. Takes ten minutes at the beginning of class. Lasts all term, or most of it, and teaches them lessons for a lifetime.

[Michele Vogt-Schuller]

I love using current events in the classroom and have done so for several years. What's interesting is that students start noticing news cycles; there seems to be a timeline/loop for a certain story to hold the news - from a couple of weeks to maybe six weeks, and then something else comes along and bumps it out of the spotlight. It could be an actual story (such as the gulf oil spill) or a someone fabricated one (child safety, maybe based on one sensational event and then continued to create a culture of fear/concern).

As students get older/more sophisticated with news, I start targeting the stories to reflect the unit (such as the American Dream!) or international events. I also require them to use more sophisticated news stories - maybe from The Economist, Harpers or NPR (depending on the unit).

[Michael Moore]

J.K.
Depending on where you are, some newspapers have outstanding Newspapers in Education programs. The Savannah Morning News is one such. Their office creates lots of links and comprehension guides, vocabulary lists and so on. They also give you free class sets of papers delivered to the school and access to the paper online. These days the online version invites comments on the stories which provide students an opportunity to write for a real audience. I haven't looked for a while but at one time Newsweek also had a very strong program.

MMoore

[Frank W. Baker]

I'd like to suggest the daily CNN Student News broadcast. It uses youth hosts and the resources of CNN. Transcripts are available online. You can use as much, or as little as you like. Professional produced. It is FREE to record nightly from cable/satellite. Details here.

[J K Van Nort]

Thanks Frank, that will be an excellent site for the new school year.