Should voting in the United States be compulsory? In 2004, fewer than 60 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the American national elections. After reviewing arguments for and against compulsory voting, your young citizens will...

Finding and/or designing a menu of equally weighted synthesizing projects to end a unit can be a challenge. Simplify the task with this menu of individual and group projects meant to accompany a study of The Crucible. Presentations,...

Conversations around the fire, smoke signals, drums. Books, letters, newspapers. Telegraph, radio, television. Telephones, cell phones, the Internet, Twitter, Pinterest. These developments in communication devices, which we take for...

The 11 lessons in this educators' guide focus on using newspapers to develop critical reading skills in the content areas.

Encourage your young citizens to make a difference. Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America as a starting point, class members watch documentaries, investigate issues, and then write letters to...

Can investigative journalism become too sensationalistic and accusatory, or is it vital for the survival of a democracy? Middle schoolers analyze primary source documents from early 20th-century newspapers as well as Theodore...

An essential skill for 21st-century learners is to know how to find reliable sources of information. Two activities help high schoolers learn how to determine the reliability of health-related news from websites, TV, magazines, or...

Newspapers, television, social media ... how do people get their news? Using the informative resource, scholars locate and verify credible sources of information. Working in small groups, they discuss strategies for evaluating the...

Make a structure too sturdy to fail. Scholars first watch a video and consider the reasons for the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse. They take part in two engineering challenges, one using newspapers and the other using spaghetti sticks...

How do authors play to people's moods? After briefly reviewing mood using a Conditional and Subjunctive Mood handout, learners practice identifying conditional and subjunctive sentences in the Montgomery Bus Boycott speech before reading...

A great year-round activity that shows young mathematicians how the math skills they are learning are actually used in the real world. This exercise also helps learners begin to distinguish the difference between weather and climate. As...

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

Hot off the press: a mini-unit for class members to create their own newspaper. Complete with graphic organizers, extension activities, and helpful learning targets that teach parts of a newspaper, the resource contains everything needed...

Are the anti-smoking ads put out by the federal government effective? This question is posed to your critical thinkers. They'll read excerpts from a New York Times article and then compose thoughtful blog responses to four related...

Extra! Extra! Read all about past and present energy use in a classroom-made historical newspaper. Useful as a cross-curricular assignment between science, history, and language arts, the project is sure to get young journalists...

Honor women in journalism with an online exhibit called Women with a Deadline. Class members demonstrate their understanding of the topic in a final assessment by writing a newspaper article on the information they learned in...

Reporting the news is easy, right? Think again! Show young scholars the difficult choices journalists make every day through a lesson plan that includes reading, writing, and discussion elements. Individuals compare the language and...

What actually happens at a press conference? Make sense of the mayhem with a mock press conference activity designed to promote media literacy. Individuals participate as either members of the press or the governor's office to examine...

Middle Schoolers produce a class newspaper about the American cowboy and the times in which he lived with illustrations, feature stories and advertisements typical of the times. This is an ambitious, yet worthwhile project for youngsters...

Eighth graders research, write, edit and publish a class newspaper focusing on topics related to first aid. They research how to care for injuries and write informative articles for the paper. Students compile the articles to produce a...

From the New York Times Learning Network series, this worksheet poses 10 questions on an article entitled, "Leaving His Footprint on the City" about a man planning to walk every street in all five New York boroughs. The prompts...

This New York Times "Learning Network" exercise on reading informational text poses 6 questions about a high-interest article on teen fashion. The article meant to be review with is resource, "More than meets the iPhone Lens", is rather...

Readers reflect on enjoyable stories they know, brainstorm criteria that make a story "good," analyze a New York Times article about innovative children's performances, re-envision classics on their own, and peer edit drafts. Use this as...