any current events teachers here?

amother

Mustard

Wed, Aug 26 2015, 12:41 am

I teach it and share the passion...

I also teach history, which I introduce as a story viewed through five overlapping "lenses". (Politics, economics, society, technology, and geography.) I do the same for current events, and I use different issues or events to explore each lens, and then to discuss how they overlap with or affect other areas. Of course this is after a mini-lesson with some cartoons and discussions about "the news" and the media.

The conclusion of this lesson is that we are living through the events that will become the history of tomorrow. .. and learning to recognize patterns and make connections between past and present.

Op, what have you done in the past? I love hearing ideas from veteran teachers.

ETA: Reading it now it comes across so technical... BH it's really not when I actually present it in class. I am very passionate about current events and my students and I have an animated discussion about it before I launch into what I outlined above. I find it helps give structure to a sometimes chaotic subject. I also use lots of visuals.

HappytoHS

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 4:16 am

amother wrote:

I homeschool a large family with a wide age range. Your approach to history and current events sounds fantastic. I would also love it if you could share more info and materials either here or in a pm.

little_mage

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 6:27 am

You don't say what age range this is, and I'm not a teacher, but when I was in middle school, one of my teachers used to tape the radio news every morning. We'd then listen to it in class and she had a basic sheet that we'd have to get the basics of the stories down on. It was the five minute news roundup that one of the radio stations did on the hour, so there were usually three or four little stories, plus the S&P 500. My high school Spanish teacher would also tape the Spanish video news in the morning for us to watch in class, but that could get a little graphic. It was the same kind of thing though. In both cases, though, we went through the recorded piece more then once.

amother

Aqua

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 11:39 am

little_mage wrote:

It has been a looooooong time since I've heard any news roundup on the radio that would be appropriate to play in a frum school Sad

mha3484

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 4:54 pm

I took an advanced current events class in High school that was fantastic. Each of us had an area of the world that we were responsible for. I had Africa. We had to read and prepare a certain amount of articles a week to discuss with the class. We also had a research project where we focused more deeply on the same region.
The class was a senior elective so it was mostly discussion style. It started such good habits in terms of reading the newspaper and being informed about what goes on in the world.

youngishbear

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 5:51 pm

mha3484 wrote:

This sounds amazing.

So does the radio roundup idea.

OP, in some chareidi schools (definitely many chassidish ones) radio and independent internet research would not be approved by the administration.

DrMom

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 1:30 am

MagentaYenta wrote:

It would certainly be a good starting point for a discussion on how the students could learn to defend their POVs or legitimately analyze news content for bias while covering current events.

Sure, but these outlets should not be their only source of information. It would be interesting to contrast their coverage with a more neutral source. However, that involves exposing them to other news outlets.

The topic of media bias would actually would make an excellent current events project.

MagentaYenta

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 11:33 am

DrMom wrote:

I don't think I ever stated that these outlets should be the soul source of info.

I taught media bias to 8th grade social studies students in an integrated curriculum many years ago when Nixon was running for his second term. It was also an opportune time to teach propaganda a bit prior to that segment.

groisamomma

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 7:22 pm

DrMom wrote:

Speaking of current events and media bias, our school uses an excellent resource for daily news which gives us many opportunities for discussion. It is primarily geared toward middle and high school students. A lot of the content may not be appropriate for your students but you might gain something from it.
www.cnn.com/studentnews

MagentaYenta

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 8:06 pm

groisamomma wrote:

Our local newspaper publishes two school editions daily to be distributed to children's classrooms. Each child gets a daily paper. The elementary is age appropriate same with middle schools. HS is close to the regular edition that comes out. None have photos (due to expense). And yea kids get religious exemptions from the mandatory newspaper reading for religious reasons. Around here it's fundamentalist xtians who do not want their kids to read the daily.

amother

Mustard

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 8:17 pm

thinkermother wrote:

this is in a chassidish school so internet, radio or even newspapers are definitely out of the question except for the censored ones I bring in. I would love to know what to focus on and which themes to bring to the lesson like economics, natural disasters...

I don't know how to post my papers.

For the first lesson (after the intro I mentioned upthread) I focused on the refugee crisis. I used photos to zoom in on the humanitarian aspect (no, I did not use the photo of the drowned little boy, but others that were less heart-rending but still illustrative of their plight).

I also used this article to teach the skill of reading charts, and why they are useful in understanding news stories:

http://www.theguardian.com/wor.....o-bad

Notice the use of three charts to illustrate, highlight, and clarify the writer's data for maximum impact.

For next time (barring unforeseen events, as it is the nature of news to surprise us) I plan to cover the stock market "correction" over the summer and the economic situation in China. I still need to do some research on the subject and decide on the angle and skill I want to cover.

A good generic skill to use with any story is the 5W question summary. Who, What, When, Why, How to guage comprehension and ability to extract important information from text.

Another skill I've done in the past is Interpretting political cartoons. We do a quick starter activity identifying symbols (dove, Uncle Sam, the donkey and elephant, bullseye/target, peace symbol, etc) and then we move onto larger ideas like the use of metaphors in cartoons.

I use relevant cartoons to show how drawing something larger, smaller, exaggerated, facial expressions, gestures, labels, titles - all help us understand the cartoon and deduce the artist's view on the subject.

I have an activity dedicated to understanding headlines (which are often grammatically mangled for the sake of brevity) and interpretting them.

Then we also learn to form and defend opinions. To identify bias, prejudice, and spin. To look for patterns and brainstorm solutions to political or social problems.

It is a lot more work than students think when they hear I will be teaching "the news". But it's also a lot of fun with tons of debating and discussion.

thinkermother

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 9:38 pm

wow! I am truly impressed with the amount of preparation you put into such an "easy" subject as news! I was scouring the web for appropriate cartoons and it is so time consuming to sort through the junk and to find one that portrays my angle. do you have a specific site you glean from?
also do you create your sheets yourself or are you part of a teacher share site?
I love the idea of an intro lesson to cartoons. would never have thought of that and it is so important.