Do you have a weekly Current Events lesson plan that works?

Question

I'm teaching one MS SS cource this year. My current event strategy was a bit too much for my students and has kind of fallen apart.

If you do weekly current events, what strategy do you do that is simple-but-effective each Friday? I'd like it to involve writing a bit, too, if it's possible.

Thanks!!!!

Ooops... "course" not "cource!" Cannot edit questions.

Answer 1

My daughter's teacher does this. She must find an article that she finds interesting by Thursday of each week. The teacher did make a rule that you can only do a sports article once, because she found that the boys end up only doing sports the whole time.

She does have a few newspapers that she gives out on Thursday for the kids who do not get a paper at home. She allows them to use magazines or the internet as well as the paper.

They have to write about the "who what where when why and how" from each article. They then present it to the class every Friday.

This is the 4th year in a row that I have had a 5th grader and they have all benefited from this. They tell me about local events or happenings that they learned of from their classmates.

Answer 2

The HS SS teacher that I worked with during my student teaching had a good program. Each nine weeks, every student was assigned a day. That day they had to have a short CE from anywhere in the world, answering the who, what, why, when, and where. They had to present to the class, usually about 2-5 minutes, and point out on a world map where it occurred.. As they were presenting, the other students had to keep a CE journal in which they wrote the date, student, and topic. If everyone did a CE, i.e. no one forgot their day, the CE questions were left off of the quiz or exam. If someone forgot, he would randomly choose 2 or 3 dates and ask questions about those CE. Students rarely forgot; he also wrote their names on a calandar.