Tuesday, November 19, 2013

What's going on in the world?


I think current events is very important when it comes to Social Studies. It is important for students to know what is going on in the world. When I was in the fourth grade, we did current events every Friday. This was a great thing to do because it got my class more interested in what was going on in the news. Our teacher would give us bonus points if we wrote a paragraph on something that was going on in the news. This served as a motivation for researching what was going on. Another current event experience I had in the classroom was from History.com. Every day they post a video called “This day in history.” The video shows what has happened on the particular day throughout history. This is a great way to introduce current events to students and get them interested in what is going on in the world. This video would be more appropriate to use with a higher grade such as fifth or sixth grade. Another way to use this website would be to have the students do a project on what happened historically on their birthday. This is a great way for students to learn more about history and it is something they can relate to. I think this would be a great project for students to do to get them more interested in the subject. 
 For a younger grade such as first or second a good way to get students involved with current events would be to use the newspaper for reading. Something I got from the current events in the elementary classroom was that a teacher could use the cover of newspaper to have students look for words. When the students learn about nouns, the teacher could have the students look through the front page of the paper and highlight all of the nouns they can find. This would get the students more aware of newspapers and what are found in the papers.

There is a difference between what can be done with the different grades with current events. Since it is hard to control what the students see in the newspaper.  As a teacher I would use a website for the students to learn about the current events such as Time for Kids. This website puts up kid friendly articles and even articles written by kids. I think this website would be a great way to get kids familiar with technology and current events. One the website there is also a part that shows the teacher how to use current events in the classroom using common core standards.  This is very helpful for teachers. It shows graphic organizers and other helpful tools that will ensure the teacher is meeting the common core standards.
Check out my links and tell me what you think! 

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