Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Twenty-Five Great Ideas for Teaching Current Events

For Teachers 3rd - 12th
Teaching current events can be an amazingly-rewarding part of your teaching week. This resource presents twenty-five ways to incorporate current events into your curriculum. It offers some outstanding ideas, such as providing your...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Debating Controversial Issues: Integrating Science and Current Events

For Teachers 9th - 12th
In order to give young scientists experience with critical thinking skills, introduce them to a current controversy and prepare them to debate. Choose a topic, such as genetically modified organisms, and assign groups to represent...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Science Current Events

For Teachers 7th
Seventh graders write science current events articles using various media sources.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Country Comparisons in Current Events Class

For Teachers 6th - Higher Ed
Students collect political, socioeconomic, geographical, and other data about 10 countries and record their data in a spreadsheet. The information is used to fuel current events discussions.
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Media Smarts

Bias in News Sources

For Teachers 9th - 12th
As young consumers of media, it is important for high schoolers to explore concepts of bias and prejudice, and how they may be present in media. After discussing ideological messages that media can contain, individuals complete a warm-up...
Lesson Plan
The New York Times

Reader Idea | Thinking Like a Historian About Current World Events

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Check out this fantastic research project where learners work to see the modern world through the eyes of a historian and analyze a contemporary event of their choice. An in-depth reflection on the project is given by the project...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Lesson: Skin Fruit: Propaganda of the Deed

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Art can express acts of injustice and move society to action. Upper graders analyze contemporary art relating to specific moments in history. They discuss propaganda, anarchy, sociology, and violence as activism. After researching and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Current Events

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students research current events and simulate a newscast of a current news story. They watch the evening news and write a summary of a story of interest, conduct Internet research and complete a worksheet on a current event, and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Diversity of Filipinos in the United States

For Teachers 9th - 12th
ELLs are introduced to the experiences of Filipino immigrants to the United States. As a class, they discuss the various waves of immigration to the United States and state the reasons why they would leave the Philippines. They compare...
Lesson Plan
California Department of Education

Plagiarism is Stealing!

For Teachers 9th Standards
Stop, thief! Do your pupils understand the consequences of plagiarism? Lesson three of six in a series of college and career readiness activities demonstrates the dangers of taking credit for someone else's work. Learners engage in...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Oprah Winfrey Opens New School in Africa

For Teachers 2nd - 6th
Students locate Africa and share their knowledge of the continent, then read a news article about Oprah Winfrey building a school in South Africa. In this current events lesson, the teacher introduces the article with a discussion and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Schools look for funding solutions

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students investigate the problem of funding for the school district. They conduct interviews with various school officials to gather both opinions and important information about the issue.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Individuality vs. Conformity

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Spark an animated debate in your class! Young adults consider some of the fads or trends that are prevalent at their school, as well as their own level of participation in them. Just how much of a role does popular culture play in their...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Money in Elections:What is it Doing to America?

For Teachers 8th - 12th
Students investigate the role of money in American elections. In this current events lesson, students read and discuss articles that address money and political campaigns. Students may conduct further research on the topics presented in...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Weekly Current Events Podcasts

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students create a weekly current event podcast. In this podcast lesson plan, students find current events for the week and write out a script to explain this event. They add in music and sound effects and record their final product. 
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

5 Themes Awareness of Current Event Issues

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Students identify the 5 themes of geography as being location, place, human-environmental interaction, movement and region. They explain a current event from the perspective of each theme and their interrelationship..
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

How to Analyze the News

For Teachers 5th - 12th
Teach kids how to watch television, specifically the news, with this creative idea for learners of all ages from the Media Awareness Network. The elementary school plan focuses on presenting news as a story and uses Jon Scieszka's story...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Idea-Noun Definition: Source Searching

For Teachers 11th - 12th
A great idea for showing language arts pupils the universality of themes, even in the real world! Have class members choose an idea-noun (peace, justice, war, love, etc.) at the beginning of the year or semester. They complete weekly...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Writing as a group activity

For Teachers 1st - 5th
  Did you know that 50% of all Americans can trace a relative who traveled through Ellis Island? Relive these journeys with your class and then provide sentence strategy templates for them to use to compose their own informative...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

New Gun Control Politics: A Whimper, Not a Bang

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Using an article from The New York Times, students answer discussion questions about gun control. They are divided into four groups to research different standpoints on gun control, including the Executive Office, Congress, Gun...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Sing if you're glad to be recognised by the law

For Teachers 10th - 12th
Equal rights, state law, and Civil Partnerships is the topic of this class discussion. Upper graders hone their research skills to engage in an intelligent and well-supported discussion on the Civil Partnership Act of 2004. Provided are...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

An Introduction to Law

For Teachers 11th - 12th
With so many different types of law, it can be difficult for learners to discern which is which! Use a newspaper to give tangible examples of various types of law, including criminal, civil, consumer, family, local, state, federal and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Creating Compassionate Communities

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Have you ever lost someone? Middle and high school learners journal about a time they experienced the loss of someone through death, divorce, moving, or another type of change. They share their responses and discuss an article relating...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Trailers Become Schools After Hurricane Katrina

For Teachers 2nd - 6th
Students share their thoughts about natural disasters, then read a news article about how life at an elementary school was changed after Hurricane Katrina. For this current events lesson, the teacher introduces the article with a...