When I graduate from college, I am going to be a young teacher. That has its advantages, and one of them is being able to enlighten my future students with interesting activities to keep them engaged. Instead of learning history through a textbook why not learn history through current events. Of course there has to be a mix of both, but we can keep it at a happy medium.
Ive learned that teaching current event articles, doesn't have to be the typical sitting and reading from a newspaper clipping or printed out news article. It can be about letting students search for themselves and find something that THEY find interesting. The use of current events can be used in many ways, of course you can provide your students with an article pertaining to what you're teaching, but you can make it fun. For example, as teachers we can place articles around our global map in our classroom, assign an article to each student and have them connect their news article to the place it occurred on the map with string and tape. Students will be able to see how news articles occur all over the globe. Or you can even incorporate different subject matter into your current even project. This idea comes from a website that was provided to us from Dr. Smirnova,"News Scavenger Hunts: Provide students with a list of things to find on the front page of today's newspaper. Students might hunt in the paper for math-related words and terms (a percent, a measurement of distance, a cost, an address, and a fraction) or grammar-related terms (a present-tense verb, a past-tense verb, a proper noun, an abbreviation, a colon, and a list separated by commas). Or students might scavenge the main sports page for a list of sports-related terms. Or you might let students work in small groups to hunt for as many nouns (or proper nouns, or verbs) as they can find in a story or on the front page. The group that finds the most is the winner!" By doing this in your classroom, you are allowing students to go further than social studies and allow them to see how each subject works within each other to teach.
The current event I presented to my collages allowed students to search for themselves for different current events. I broke my class up into four groups, National, World, State, and Educational. Each group of students had to search for a current event that pertained to the list above. I thought this was such a great idea, instead of just reading an article you are given now the class had to do something they haven't been introduced to before. I got the idea from Dr. Smirnova and I quickly listened to the suggestions she had given me on how to go about this. I posted the assignment on our form and assigned the groups before hand so they would come to class Friday prepared to discuss the article they have chosen. However, I knew it would be difficult if my students did not prepare for the class ahead of time, so incase that happened we allowed some time IN class to prepare for the discussion (always have a backup plan).
When it was time to present the current even project on friday I was eager to see what my classmates chose... but no one was prepared. I allowed them 5 minutes to get their articles together and quickly read what they were about. After we got the ball moving I was impressed with how everyone jumped in to participate. Everyone seemed to like the idea of finding their own article and they were able to learn what was happening, in the world, in the state, locally, and in education all within the same time period. The feedback we received from our classmates was great, and I enjoyed that they enjoyed the activity so much.
In the form post, I suggested some websites that would be useful. Those websites were geared towards 6th graders, so I would do this same activity in my 6th grade classroom. But, if I were doing a current event activity in a first grade classroom I would use articles from children magazines, like TIMES. I would separate the class into groups and give them different articles just like 6th grade, the first graders would still discuss the same questions and find their own opinions about the articles but it is done in an appropriate way for a first grade class. By using the TIMES magazines, it also provides students with questions that they need to focus on in the article, it helps them to follow directions and read to find the answer to questions.
In my classroom I think I will try to do current events every week. I will try to allow my students to use any source they choose as long as it is something to do with education or the world around us. Facebook has become huge for sharing articles and interesting topics, if they find something on Facebook I want them to know that it is something happening in the world and can be used as a current event. Instead of holding my students back from the technology sources they have access to, it is important for them to know how to use them in the correct way and for useful things. The difference between having the freedom in a 6th grade classroom as opposed to a 1st grade classroom, is that 6th graders are able to distinguish the difference between what is a legitimate news article, and what might be a fake story. So, 1st graders have to be more monitored when it comes to searching news articles on the web. I personally would prefer to stick to paper articles for 1st graders because I know it is the raw current event news that first graders can understand.
Current events can be taught in all different age groups, it is a fun way to teach social studies and make sure that your students are well aware of what is going on within the world around them. If we teach them to be informed early on in their lives, they are more likely to stay informed. It is important for children to understand and be aware of their world because they are going to be running it one day!
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