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This module's focus on History and Social Sciences had many significant components. I created a padlet organizing my thought processes and practices I gained from this module.

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Art is

This series follows educators in the elementary school setting teaching the fundamentals of art, the visual arts and performing arts. Viewers of all ages are encouraged to participate in the step-by-step process and discover the artist, dancer or musician that lives within us all.

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This series follows educators in the elementary school setting teaching the fundamentals of art, the visual arts and performing arts. Viewers of all ages are encouraged to participate in the step-by-step process and discover the artist, dancer or musician that lives within us all.

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Cause and Effect | Reading Strategies | EasyTeaching

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What Does It Mean to Be Global? | Globe Trottin' Kids | Global education activities, Teaching culture, Multicultural activities

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Jun 5, 2019 - Through simple text and beautiful illustrations, young learners will discover that being global means being a citizen of the world.

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23 Close Reading Anchor Charts That Will Help Your Students Dig Deep | Reading anchor charts, Close reading anchor chart, Reading classroom

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Jan 16, 2020 - These close reading anchor charts will help your students understand the concept of close reading and apply it as they analyze texts.

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How can we make sure that students are informed about what's going on around the world? That they are armed with the tools to be able to distinguish between opinion and fact; between evidence-based statements and empty rhetoric; between sensationalism and solid journalism? Just like most other things in life, the best way to do all that is through practice.

In honor of National News Engagement Day, here are 50 ideas to help teachers bring current events into the classroom, grouped below by category:

Some ideas work best as regular routines, others as one-shot activities. Many might be easier to use together with the new K-12 New York Times school subscription, but all of them could be implemented using the free links to Times articles on The Learning Network - or with any other trusted news source.

In our comments section, we hope you'll share how you teach current events.

1. Read the Paper and Find What Interests You: If we could recommend just one thing teenagers should do with the news, it's this. Just read and discover what you care about. Every summer we try to promote this with our Summer Reading Contest, and we hope teachers are continuing this student-centered approach now that school has started.

You might invite your students to pick one article each week and write about why they chose it, perhaps using student winners from our summer contest as models. Our Reading Log (PDF) might also help.

Then, set aside time for students to share their picks with a partner, or even with a wider audience through social media.

2. Share Your Opinion: Each school day we publish a new Student Opinion question about an article in The Times. Students can participate in our moderated discussions online, or you can borrow from hundreds of published questions for class discussions or personal writing from 2016, 2015, 2014 and beyond.

3. Read About News-Making Teenagers: Every month we publish a collection of all the recent Times articles and multimedia that feature teenagers. Students can use this list to identify someone they admire, learn how other teenagers are taking action or make connections to issues in their own school and community.

4. Find 'News You Can Use': Use The Times, or any other news source, to find things like movie or video game reviews, recipes, sports scores, health information, and how-to's on subjects from social media to personal finance that can help improve your life.

5. Ask and Answer Questions: Each day we choose an important or interesting Times story and pose the basic news questions - Who, What, Where, When, Why and How - in our News Q's feature. Students can first answer the "right there" questions that test reading comprehension, then move on to the deeper critical thinking questions, then write their own "News Q's" about articles they select.

7. Compare News Sources: Different papers, magazines and websites treat the news differently. You might have students compare lead stories or, via the Newseum's daily gallery, front pages. Or, you might just pick one article about a divisive topic (politics, war, social issues) and see how different news sources have handled the subject.
Speaking and Listening
11. Brainstorm Solutions to the World's Problems: Why not put students in the role of policymakers? They can look closely at an issue covered in The Times and brainstorm possible solutions together, using our Problem-Solution handout (PDF) to take notes. Then they can work together to draft a policy proposal, perhaps one that suggests a local solution to the problem, and present it to the class or to the school board or city council.

12. Create a News-Inspired Theatrical Performance: Whether a simple monologue or a full Reader's Theater event, our series, Drama Strategies to Use With Any Day's Times, can help you use simple theater exercises to spur discussion and thinking about current events.

14. Organize a Teach-In, Gallery Walk or Social Action on a Topic: Our country and world face complex issues - war, drug abuse, climate change, poverty - to name a few. Students working in groups can follow a topic in The Times, and then organize a classroom or whole school "teach-in" to inform their peers about topics in the news and decide how to take action. Alternatively, they can create a classroom gallery of photographs, maps, infographics, articles, editorial cartoons, essays, videos and whatever else they can find to immerse others in the topic. Ask yourself and your classmates, what can people our age do to effect change around this issue?
Games and Quizzes
17. Battle Others in Bingo: Encourage students to get to know the newspaper - digital or print - by playing one of our many versions of bingo: Page One Bingo, Science, Health and Technology Bingo, World History Bingo or Geography Bingo (PDF).

18. Do a Scavenger Hunt: Send your students searching for answers to our New York Times Scavenger Hunt (PDF) as a way to become more familiar with how a newspaper covers the day's news.

20. Hunt for the Three Branches of Government in the Paper: What articles can you find in a week's worth of papers about the different branches of the United States government? Record what you find with our Branching Out handout (PDF).
Photographs, Illustrations, Videos and Infographics
21. Analyze Photographs to Build Visual Literacy Skills: On Mondays we ask students to look closely at an image using the three-question facilitation method created by our partners at Visual Thinking Strategies: What's going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find? Students can participate in the activity by commenting in our weekly "What's Going On In This Picture?" moderated conversation.

Alternatively, you might prefer to select your own news photos. Slideshows, such as the regular "Pictures of the Day" feature, are always a great place to find compelling images related to current events.

22. Interpret Editorial Cartoons and "Op-Art": Patrick Chappatte publishes editorial cartoons on topics ranging from ISIS to the Ukraine. You can use the Visual Thinking Strategies facilitation method to ask open-ended questions, letting students make meaning out of the cartoons. Or, have students analyze some of the "Op-Art" on the Opinion pages of The Times. How do these images make an argument? Students can also try their hand at drawing their own editorial cartoons, and then enter them into our annual editorial cartoon contest.

25. Illustrate the News: Students can draw an illustration that captures some aspect of an article. Using our handout "The One-Pager" (PDF), students accompany their illustration with a quote from the article as well as a question for the journalist or someone mentioned in the article.

26. Write a Postcard: Or, maybe having students create a mock postcard to or from a subject in a Times article would work better for your class.

27. Say What's Unsaid: Another option is assigning students to add speech and thought bubbles (PDF) to a Times photograph to communicate something they learned by reading an article.
Creative Writing and Design
29. Write a Rap or Song: Each December, we ask students to compose a rap about important and memorable events from the past year. Get inspired by the winners from our 2015 contest, and start polishing your rhymes for this year.

30. Make a Timeline: Students can design their own timelines, using photographs, captions and selected quotes, to understand and keep track of complex current events topics. Times models can help since the paper regularly publishes timelines on all kinds of topics, whether Mariano Rivera's career, the evolution of Facebook or the Ferguson protests

32. Explore a Particular Community: Find reporting on a community of which you're a member - whether an ethnic, religious, professional, school or artistic group, or any other - and analyze how it has been reported on. Then use these ideas for finding ways you can help express what, in your experience, makes this group unique. What do you think people need to know about this community and how can you communicate that?

34. Make a News Broadcast: Students can turn an article they read in The Times into an evening news broadcast, with an anchor, on-the-ground reporter and interview subjects.
Making Connections
36. Connect the Past to Today: Help students tie what they're studying in history class to what's going on in the world today. We regularly do this in both our Text to Text feature as well as our social-studies-focused lesson plans. You might also consider following @nytarchives on Twitter and our own "Throwback Thursday" posts to see echoes of the past in today's headlines - or, visit Times Machine on your own to view by date or through search terms 129 years of Times journalism as it originally appeared.

38. Think Like a Historian: What events make the history books? How and from whose point of view are they told? Have students research a current events topic, and then write a paper arguing whether this topic will make "history" and how it will be remembered.

39. Connect The Times to Your Own Life: Have students make connections between the articles they read in The New York Times and their own life, other texts and the world around them using our Connecting The New York Times to Your World (PDF) handout.

40. Consider Censorship Through Any Day's Front Page: What if we didn't have freedom of the press? Ask students to take the front page of any New York Times and put an X over the stories that might be censored if our government controlled the press. You might use our Censoring the Press (PDF) handout to help.

41. Take Informed Action: When students become more informed about the world, they can get inspired to become civically active and engaged in their communities. Have students brainstorm issues that matter to them, either at the local, national or global level, and then design a plan of action for how they can begin to make the change they hope to see in the world.
Building Skills
42. Determine Reliability of Sources: How do we distinguish good journalism from propaganda or just shoddy reporting? Students can use simple mnemonics, like those developed at the Center for News Literacy, to evaluate the reliability of an article and the sources it relies on. For example, apply the acronym "IMVAIN" (PDF) to an article to surface whether sources (and the information they provide) are Independent, Multiple, Verifiable, Authoritative, Informed and Named. This and many other strategies can be found in our lesson on "fake news vs. real news.

47. Read Closely: By using a double-entry journal (PDF), students can become better readers of informational text by noting comments, questions and observations alongside lines or details they select from a text.

48. Support Opinions With Facts: Whether students are writing their own persuasive arguments, or reading those written by other people, they need to understand how authors support opinions with facts. Students can practice by reading Times Opinion pieces and identifying how authors construct arguments using opinions supported by facts (PDF). Then they can develop their own evidence-based counterpoints.
And Finally...
Let us know in the comment section below how you teach current events in your class, or which ideas from the above list inspired you.

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How can we make sure that students are informed about what's going on around the world? That they are armed with the tools to be able to distinguish between opinion and fact; between evidence-based statements and empty rhetoric; between sensationalism and solid journalism?

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Promoting Visual Arts and Performing Arts

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Promoting Visual Arts and Performing Arts

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In this new Private i History Detectives unit, Elementary students analyze primary sources to discover how Constitutional Amendments attempted to address slavery's wrongs, how the courts challenged unfair laws, and how individuals and groups fought for civil rights.

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In this new Private i History Detectives unit, Elementary students analyze primary sources to discover how Constitutional Amendments attempted to address slavery's wrongs, how the courts challenged unfair laws, and how individuals and groups fought for civil rights.

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How can teachers create curriculum and instruction to help all
students become inspired, active, engaged, and civic-minded
world citizens?