Current Events and Newsela

Recently I completed a current events project with Kelli. I found it difficult to find recent articles that were interesting but could also relate to the unit plan I created for the 4th grade students at BDMS. After hearing Lindsay and Nicole speak about women today and how it relates to women from the American Revolution, I got the idea to do my project on children and education. Once I got this idea in my head, I went to the Newsela website and started searching for articles that talked about children or education. I find this website to be very useful to explore and read about current events. One of the Five Principles of Teaching include relating matter to real-life events. By doing the current events project, the students are able to relate what is happening today in the world, either in the United States or other countries.

In my future classroom, I would adapt this project to any grade level. I would look on Newsela and find articles that relate to the topic we are doing whether it is geography, economics, or some other social studies lesson. Newsela has a wide variety of articles to chose from that can be easily related. The best feature about Newsela is how you can change the lexile levels so make it grade appropriate. This is also beneficial because you can change the lexile level if you have a reader who is at a lower level or a reader who is at a higher level. Another great feature of Newsela is there is a built in quiz and short answer response that you can have the students complete as a quick assessment.

My current events project was based on children and education. Each article was about how people are being educated or how they are not being educated. I related this to the American Revolution by posing the question about how the students feel children during the American Revolution were taught or if they weren't taught at all. This sparks an interesting discussion and also brings up the question of whether or not everyone is entitled to an education and if each country requires children to be educated.