current events journal assignment

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Teach Current Events With These Free Worksheets From The Week Junior

Article summary worksheets and news accuracy tips for grades 3-8! 🗞️

The Week Junior magazine is a kid-friendly, unbiased current events news source. It’s a safe and trusted partner to help you explain to kids what’s happening in the world while providing fun reading content including puzzles, recipes, crafts, and more. 

The benefits of using current events in the classroom are practically endless. News stories help students better understand their communities, new perspectives, and real-world events. Introducing current events in the classroom can promote critical thinking, empathy, reading skills, global awareness, and so much more. Whether you’re assigning weekly current events summaries or conducting a single lesson, our free current events worksheets for grades 3-8 are the perfect companion.

Inside, you’ll find two options for current event summaries. In addition, our savvy news reader tips and activity will guide students through determining if an article is trustworthy. In a world of so many media outlets, news literacy is a crucial skill!

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Current Events Summary Worksheets

WeAreTeachers

• When giving current events assignments, give students the option to use one of two article summary worksheets to get started.
• Choose from a graphic organizer–style worksheet or a traditional fill-in worksheet to evaluate an article.

News Accuracy Worksheets

• Begin a lesson on news literacy. Use the list tips to educate students on determining a news article’s accuracy and credibility.
• Then, have students complete the corresponding worksheet to practice what they learned and evaluate a news article on their own.

The Week Junior , an Unbiased Classroom Current Events Resource

The Week Junior magazine is an awesome way to expose 3rd through 8th grade readers to current events through a kid-friendly, unbiased magazine. There’s something for every student, with sections on sports, culture, movies, crafts, recipes, and so much more! Get a free issue of The Week Junior , and watch kids dive into this interactive reading resource.

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Classroom Q&A

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In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Seven Ways to Bring Current Events Into the Classroom

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The news always seems to be moving a thousand miles an hour, with much of it impacting our students’ lives—either now or in the future.

This two-part series will explore ways we connect those current events to what we’re teaching in the classroom.

Today, Suzie Boss, Kristen Koppers, Sarah Cooper, Mike Kaechele, Jessica Torres, and Renee Hobbs share their ideas. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Suzie and Kristen on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

You might also find addiitonal useful resources at The Best Resources & Ideas For Teaching About Current Events.

Project-Based Learning

Suzie Boss is a PBL (Project-Based Learning) advocate, author, and member of the PBLWorks National Faculty. Her latest books are Project Based Teaching and Reinventing Project-Based Learning, 3 rd Ed :

One of the best ways to amplify the authenticity of school is to connect the curriculum to current events. I call this “ripped-from-the-headlines” teaching. For many students, the invitation to focus on timely topics—from pop culture to political controversies—is a surefire way to increase engagement.

Current events can inform lesson plans in small ways. For example, English teachers can make free-writes more relevant by using hashtags from social media as writing prompts. Elementary teachers might focus morning meetings on events that are in the news—and, likely, on students’ minds. Science teachers might connect a lesson to a health-related headline.

To maximize the learning potential, however, I encourage teachers to look to the headlines as inspiration for more extended, project-based learning. Well-designed projects invite students to go deeper and make their own connections between academics and the world beyond the classroom. In the process, they will likely need to think critically about everything from the reliability and biases of news sources to the echoes of history in events unfolding today.

Let’s consider a few examples.

Chemistry teacher Ray Ahmed leveraged the Flint, Mich., water crisis to launch his students in Brooklyn, N.Y., on an investigation of how to prevent lead from leaching into drinking water. They had to think as chemists to design experiments about corrosive inhibitors, analyze data, propose solutions, and explain their results in a scientific journal article. Although they live hundreds of miles from Flint, Brooklyn students made personal connections to the larger issue of environmental racism, which has affected the quality of life in their own community. (Ahmed was one of the inspiring teachers I interviewed for a recent book, Project Based Teaching: How to Create Rigorous and Engaging Learning Experiences . This video from PBLWorks documents the Water Quality Project from start to finish.)

Immigration issues not only dominate headlines, they also reflect the life experiences of many of our students and their families. Connecting today’s immigration stories with academic content about human migration is a way to bring human geography to life. For example, Texas teacher Ryan Sprott is co-founder of a collaboration between educators and artists called the Borderland Collective , which invites students to take part in storytelling, photography, and art making.

Election cycles offer social studies teachers real-time connections to their content. Projects might culminate in debates, with students basing arguments on evidence; candidate fairs that students host, with a focus on issues they care about; or public-service campaigns to increase turnout of first-time voters.

If you overhear students buzzing about pop culture, listen closely for connections to learning goals. For Delaware English teacher Dara Laws Savage, it was the #oscarssowhite controversy a couple years back—when few actors of color were nominated for Academy Awards—that generated the idea for an annual awards event honoring African American icons. It’s become an annual event during Black History Month. Students develop criteria for excellence in different categories, make nominations, and persuade voters to share their opinions. Listen to an interview about the project here .

If you’re looking for timely connections for your next PBL unit, ask yourself:

• Is there a topic or event that could provide an entry event for your next project?
• Do you see natural connections between the topic and your upcoming content goals?
• Does the topic involve a problem or challenge that your students could attempt to solve or debate through an extended inquiry project?

As you design your next project, take advantage of resources that will help your students think critically about current events. For example, Project Look Sharp is a K-12 resource for building media literacy. Pro/Con challenges readers to consider both sides of controversial issues.

Don’t be surprised if your students wind up making headlines themselves as a result of their projects.

Connecting George Orwell & Harper Lee to current events

Kristen Koppers is a national-board-certified teacher. She earned her bachelor of arts degree in English from Western Michigan University, a master of arts in English and a master of arts in educational administration from Governors State University. She is a public high school public English teacher. Her book Differentiated Instruction in the Teaching Profession was released in July, 2019:

Connecting current events with lessons in the classroom isn’t as difficult as it seems. Practically every lesson that’s taught from kindergarten through high school, and even postsecondary, can connect to a news article worldwide. It’s difficult to get students to watch the news or even listen to it. Because what they see on social media is the extent of their knowledge. Social-media news, at least from what I can see, is not all accurate. How can we as teachers make sure students are aware of credible information to information that is missing important facts?

The problem isn’t that many don’t take the time to read, listen, or even watch current events. The problem is that it’s not researched. As an ELA secondary education teacher, I not only connect current events to almost every lesson but I make it as authentic as possible. When I teach 1984 , by George Orwell, we focus on the aspect of the First Amendment. Even as an English teacher, I bring in the other subjects, such as history, social sciences, math, and even fine arts to connect with my students. For this particular lesson, I mainly focus on history and political science.

In the novel 1984 , privacy both public and private did not exist. Orwell’s slogan: ‘Ignorance is Strength’ is truer than we know. The less one knows the better. Before beginning the novel, I play a small video clip of Orwell, himself, just before he died warning about the future. Since Orwell wrote the novel in 1948, no one believed what he said was true. Many even thought that he was delusional during his last year. (I mean the title of the novel was just switching the last two digits of the year 48 to 84). However, whether it was coincidence or not, the Apple computer came out in 1984. After showing the short video clip of George Orwell’s warning, I showed the original 1984 commercial of the Macintosh computer. This got the students to talk.

I collected various articles beginning in 1984 through 2018. In their groups, the students read over them one by one where they started to make connections between what was similar about how technology evolved. I then pull out my iPhone to open the app “find my iPhone” to locate my husband. Now, normally, I do not have my phone in class. But for this particular lesson, I wanted to show how easily technology has not only evolved but our privacy has diminished.

I locate my husband and start pinging his phone for location. He knows what I’m going to do in class so he calls me (I have him on speaker) and asks me why I’m tracking him. Now before he calls, I tell the students where he is located. When he calls, I ask him his location. The reason he was on speaker was for the students to hear where he was located. Prior to the call, I told my students that he was located off Route 6 next to the gas station. When asked his location, he confirmed it. The phone conversation ends, and the class conversation begins.

This all connects to current events. This activity takes about two days because I want them to go home and think before the next lesson. Many actually went home to research “invasion of privacy” on their school computers. Because, after all, I can track what they research outside of my classroom. When they find this out, they say I violated their First Amendment rights. So, I have them look up First Amendment rights and I asked them what I exactly infringed upon. What they didn’t realize is that it’s the Fourth Amendment rights they were thinking about not the First. They were speechless.

With this one activity, my students are becoming more aware of current events. However, it wasn’t this one lesson that we connected to current events. Every day was a new lesson; whether we were reading the novel or not, I was able to relate to what was happening in the news.

Even studying short stories and past news about events, such as the lynching of Emmett Till, students were appalled at what happened. We studied a brief overview of the Civil Rights Movement and connected it to To Kill A Mockingbird , by Harper Lee. In 2017, evidence came out that the woman, Carolyn Bryant, Till “whistled” at wasn’t telling the truth. This encouraged them to find other articles about those wrongly accused no matter of race, gender, or religion.

It’s not just lessons that we teach based on the curriculum. If we can connect those lessons to skills students need to succeed, then we are doing our job.

Discussing currect events across subject areas

Sarah Cooper teaches 8th grade U.S. history and is dean of studies at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, Calif. She is the author of two books, Creating Citizens (Routledge, 2018) and Making History Mine (Stenhouse, 2009). Sarah speaks at conferences and writes for MiddleWeb’s Future of History blog, and she lives just outside Los Angeles with her husband and two sons:

We can link current events to what we teach in the classroom in at least two ways—through content and through character.

With content, teachers sometimes wonder how they can justify adding current events to their lessons if they’re not teaching contemporary history or politics.

A surefire way to make such connections is through themes, layering relevant pieces over the planks of an existing curriculum.

For instance, a science teacher can bring in articles all year about scientific ethics, and an English teacher can discuss pieces about group identity or the perils and promises of technology. A teacher of ancient world history can talk about the thrills of modern archaeology. World-language teachers can find pieces about contemporary cultures and politics, and arts teachers can check out the arts section of their local newspaper or alternative weekly.

With character, the relevance of current events expands even more. Many classroom teachers, from math to P.E., build norms with their students as school starts. Later in the year, if you see an article or video that reinforces one of these expectations, you can bring it in to discuss.

In my experience, students especially love stories that focus on positive human interactions, to lighten the daily news litany they scroll through online. One excellent resource for such stories is the Huffington Post’s Good News page . Such stories also generally avoid political partisanship, which even veteran social studies teachers can find hard to navigate.

Finally, don’t feel you have to do a lot! Even five minutes each day, or each week, can open up conversations you never would have had otherwise. And, if you bring in articles frequently enough, your students may start sending you what they find, creating a dialogue that can last far beyond a year in your classroom.

Don’t avoid controversial topics

Mike Kaechele is a history teacher in Grand Rapids, Mich., and National Faculty for PBLWorks. He believes in student-centered learning by giving kids authentic opportunities to do real work with local community partners:

Current events are a great way to engage students in the classroom. Project-Based Learning is an excellent structure to introduce current events. One of the key components of PBL is “authenticity,” and current events make content relevant. I use current events as “entry events” to get kids fired up about the launch of a project. My final products often ask kids to apply lessons from history to propose solutions to current issues that they present to community partners.

In social studies, current events can be used as an entry point to have students trace the causes of current problems to their source. The past can give both warnings and solutions to current problems that need to be addressed. I always use current contexts to launch history projects to give students motivation to learn about the past. For example the Driving Question, “Why do terrorists hate the United States?” requires students to do an in-depth study of American foreign policy of the last century to understand why certain countries do not see the United States as the “hero” on the world stage.

Current events engage students by shedding light on the tensions between American ideals and realities. They force students to be critical thinkers, considering multiple perspectives throughout history. Oftentimes, content is centered around sterile textbooks that do not address current realities. Embracing the controversy of current events engages students in critical thinking. For example, current arguments about immigration could lead to an exploration of our complex history of both welcoming some groups of immigrants while simultaneously discriminating against others with quotas and unjust laws. Students should be shown that current events do not happen in a vacuum but often are seated in a long history of controversy in our country.

Ideally. current events lead students to be proactive in coming up with solutions to the complex, connected society that they are inheriting. If we want students to awaken to the importance of our core content, then current events can be the hook for engagement by addressing real-world issues that their generation will be forced to solve. So instead of avoiding controversy, embrace it and teach students to consider all sides of current issues before taking up a strong position.

Articles & Podcasts

Jessica Torres serves as an educational specialist for ESC Region 12 in the heart of Texas. Formerly an assistant principal and Montessori teacher, Mrs. Torres is passionate about developing educators to provide innovative approaches and experiences for all learners as they pursue their unique interests and learning passions:

Our world has become a very small global community. Social media has allowed our news to become instantaneous in our society, allowing us to “know” what is happening before all of the facts have been clarified and the details are drawn out. For anyone living in today’s media-driven world, it is imperative that they be able to decipher between the facts and the rest, including propaganda, bias, disinformation, and click-bait. With this in mind, discussing current events in the classroom has become more than a fleeting idea—it has become an integral part of ensuring that our students are informed and prepared to face tough topics head-on with a background of knowledge and facts to support their opinions. Here are a few ideas and resources that I use to easily weave current events into the classroom each day and help students decipher between the muck and the news.

• Newsela - The article archive provides access to the world’s news in a student-friendly format that allows the teacher to differentiate for Lexile level or reading ability. Teachers can create assignments from the articles on Google Classroom or share them with the whole group. Each article comes with its own comprehension questions and writing prompt that can be used to engage students in conversation. Allowing students time to discuss their thoughts and emotions in a safe space, such as the classroom, encourages them to listen and think about other perspectives.
• Fact vs. Fiction book by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins - Everyone needs help determining what’s real and what’s been spun lately. This book, written by two engaging educators, helps us develop strategies to use with ourselves and our students to safeguard our hearts and minds from inaccurate news and sources. Developing strong critical-thinking skills are the focus of this book, and a variety of resources are provided to help teachers as they share news items in their classrooms.
• Podcasts - Either listening to podcasts or having students create their own podcasts based on what they have learned from news stories can be extremely powerful and clarifying. Many students thoroughly enjoy listening to someone “talk” about the news rather than read about it. For other students, having the opportunity to express their own thoughts or perspective on an event feels personal and encourages ownership. Additionally, podcasts are known to be brief and completely scalable to fit the needs of the classroom.

“The worst ways to bring current events into the classroom”

Renee Hobbs is professor of communication studies and director of the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media. An expert on digital and media literacy, Hobbs is the author of the forthcoming book Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age . Hobbs provides media-literacy curriculum resources for K-12 and college faculty and has offered professional-development programs on four continents:

Let’s start with identifying two of the worst ways to bring current events into the classroom: require students to maintain a current events journal or stage a debate about ongoing news and current events topic. The current events journal is a too-common assignment in middle school and high school where students must write short summaries of news, following a particular format. It’s an assignment that makes paying attention to news and current events a chore, a form of homework, and something to be dreaded. Assignments like this are not likely to inspire students to want to be informed on current events or encourage their intellectual curiosity about the news.

Classroom debate activities are well-meaning efforts intended to promote understanding of controversial public issues. But when students are positioned to take opposing sides and encouraged to gather evidence, argue their side and “win,” this legalistic practice actually leads adolescents in the wrong direction. As an instructional practice, debate can work against the development of genuine understanding and knowledge. Because debates promote competition, it does not model the deliberative and reflective practice of activating intellectual curiosity and modeling humility. When it comes to learning, the goal is not winning—it’s understanding.

Learning Civil Discourse

Instead of debate, students need to practice the art of perspective-taking on news and current events. In a five-minute daily discussion, start with a question to the whole group: “What are all the things you have heard about this topic, regardless of whether you believe them or not?” This invites general sharing and gathering of ideas, and it frees students up to offer ideas without being associated with or having to defend them.

In this kind of activity, students can share information without isolating themselves from their group. Plus, this method does not alienate the students who aren’t familiar with the news event or controversy under discussion. There’s no penalty for not knowing. Students can learn about current events from their peers.

Some teachers maintain a classroom rule for current events discussions: “You only have a right to an opinion if you have evidence or experience to back it up. If you don’t, then ask questions and listen and learn.” When students hear this, they feel a sense of relief. Students can show that they are participating by asking questions and taking notes. High school social studies teacher Emily Glankler explains it this way: “I’m trying to address a social problem we have in society today. Part of the problem is that people think they are entitled to an opinion on everything.” The everyday ritual of talking about current events for five minutes a day all year long models the practice of becoming a lifelong learner and an engaged citizen.

(This is the first post in a two-part series. You can see Part 2 here. )

The question of the week is:

What are the best ways to connect current events to what we’re teaching in the classroom?

Thanks to Suzie, Kristen, Sarah, Mike, Jessica, and Renee for their contributions.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader.

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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How to Write a Current Events Summary

Last Updated: February 12, 2023 Fact Checked

Choosing a News Article

Preparing to write, summary section, reflection section, final touches.

This article was co-authored by Richard Perkins . Richard Perkins is a Writing Coach, Academic English Coordinator, and the Founder of PLC Learning Center. With over 24 years of education experience, he gives teachers tools to teach writing to students and works with elementary to university level students to become proficient, confident writers. Richard is a fellow at the National Writing Project. As a teacher leader and consultant at California State University Long Beach's Global Education Project, Mr. Perkins creates and presents teacher workshops that integrate the U.N.'s 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the K-12 curriculum. He holds a BA in Communications and TV from The University of Southern California and an MEd from California State University Dominguez Hills. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 262,339 times.

A current events summary is a short description of an event that has recently happened or is going to happen. Current events summaries are often assigned by junior and senior high school educators for the purpose of teaching research, writing, and editing skills. The following steps will help you create a current events summary that is accurate, informative, and readable.

• Some possible news sources might include your local newspaper or larger newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and others.
• Check with your teacher for suggestions. He may have specific news sources to use.

• Most major newspapers have sections on their websites dedicated to certain topics. For example, the Washington Post has a section dedicated to “Tech.”
• Search online for an article on one of these topics. For example, try searching “healthcare news” to find new information.

• An article that is one to two paragraphs long is probably not going to be lengthy enough.

• Look up any words you don’t know.
• Take notes on the article or highlight passages that you think are important.

• The headline typically indicates the article’s main idea, but the article will likely include more information that is relevant to your summary.
• Choose five main points from the article that you think are important.
• Find some keywords to get the main idea across to the people. [1] X Research source

• Who: This is the person or group involved in the story. For a story on a recent arson case, you might say, “The people involved are four teenage boys who were charged with arson, a police investigation team, and the community that lost its historic baseball stadium.”
• What: This is the event or the action discussed in the story. In an arson case, it might be: “The oldest wooden baseball stadium in the country burned to the ground.”
• When: This is the date and time when the event took place: “The stadium burned down at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, June 29.”
• Where: This is where the event took place: “The baseball stadium was in the middle of the city, surrounded by residences.”
• Why: This is the cause or reason for the event: “The summer has been unusually dry and hot. The stadium had been sitting empty for five years and was not patrolled by security.”
• How: This point explains the ways in which the events took place and the connections between them: “The teenagers walked into the stadium and began playing with lighters and loose debris. Once the fire was set, they ran off.”

• Think about the story’s connection to your community, the nation, or the world, for example.

• When you recounted the article to someone else, you highlighted the most important parts of the article. These things will go in your outline. Now your job is to put them in an order that makes sense.

• Depending on your assignment, this might be three or four sentences, or it might be seven to nine sentences. Check your assignment for your length requirement.

• Even though the reflection is short (usually just a paragraph), you should still aim to make an argument , at least to some degree. Determine the main point that you want to make and think about how you will support that main point.

• Some teachers don’t allow the use of “I” (first person) in these reflections. Check with your teacher to determine if you can write in first person or not.

• Don’t just string together random thoughts about why the news story is important.

• Take a look at your verbs. If you use boring or the same verbs, your audience will get bored. See if you can make efficient choices of great action verbs.
• If you are handwriting your summary, you may need to write it out again as a clean copy after you’ve corrected any errors. For this reason, it may be preferable to type out the summary. Some teachers may require a typed paper.

• If you have a grading rubric for the assignment, review this before turning in the assignment. Make sure you have met all the requirements to ensure a good grade.

• Lee, Morgan. “California Regulators Approve Higher Electricity Rates for Most Residents.” The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 3 July 2015. Web. 4 July 2015.

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• Every teacher’s assignment is going to be a little bit different. Make sure you follow your assignment exactly. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/how-to-write-summary-example
• ↑ https://k12.thoughtfullearning.com/minilesson/asking-and-answering-5-ws-and-h-questions
• ↑ http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/5w1h.html
• ↑ www.acisd.org/getFile.cfm?serverFileName=3D7039FC7A-D973-59AD-3C95BCBCFDC1039D.pdf
• ↑ http://alt-resource.teams.leedsmet.ac.uk/how-to-write-a-reflection
• ↑ https://owlcation.com/academia/How-to-Write-a-Summary

About This Article

A current events summary is a short review of a recent news story. To write your own, start by finding an interesting story from a reputable source, like a popular newspaper or news website. Read the full article and look up any words or phrases you don’t understand. Then, read the article again and take note of the most important facts, like who was involved, where and when the story took place, why it happened, and how it happened. Use these notes to write your summary. In your first sentence or 2, give a brief summary of what happened. Then, write a few more sentences to give your readers the extra details they need to know. For more tips from our Education co-author, including how to write a reflection on your current events summary, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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SOC101: Principles of Sociology

• Current Events Assignment

Step 1: Choose a Current Event Article

Browse through these news sites to choose an article: 

• NPR (National Public Radio)
• New York Times
• Washington Post
• Wall Street Journal
• Reuters News Service
• The Week Magazine

For More Help on Conducting Research

• Do a search then limit to e-books, articles (limit to scholarly if wanted), or videos. 
• Click  Advanced Search  to overlap another subject. 
• To borrow a print book, contact a librarian ([email protected]) to arrange to pick it up. 
• Depending on your subject and research needs, you can also search individual databases below.   
• How Do I... Offers video tutorials for various library databases.
• Starting Your Research
• Ask a Librarian! Reference librarians are available to help you with your research, by chat, email, text or Zoom.

Step 2: Choose a Journal Article

A. Search for the accepted sociology journals listed to the right below. 

• "Annual Review of Sociology" OR "American Sociological Review" OR "American Journal of Sociology" OR "Sociological Methodology" OR "Sociological Theory" OR "Sociology of Education" OR "Social Networks" OR "Gender & Society" OR "Journal of Marriage and Family" OR "Population and Development Review" OR "Social Forces" OR "European Sociological Review"
• Add a subject on the second line.
• Limit to the last 10 years.  
• Click the Search Criteria to add a second or third subject.
• This search is limited to last 10 years (2012-2023). 
• Library databases search for sociology journal titles

B. To find more, click the JSTOR link below and follow these tips:

• Click  Advanced Search .
• Enter a subject.
• Choose these limits:   - Click  Articles   -  Limit the search to the   last 10 years -  Under Return results for , click Sociology (145 titles) then   Search. 
• Make sure to choose top sociology journals! See the list to the right. 

C. For more, search these databases: 

• Gale Academic OneFile
• ProQuest Central
• ScienceDirect
• Google Scholar Go to Settings > Library Links > add SUNY Adirondack to the search. Use Advanced Search. more... less... Indexes selected scholarly journals; open access as well as articles in SUNY Adirondack subscription databases. Search with non-technical keywords, but it's harder to narrow the search to the most relevant articles.

Step 3: Create a Slide Show

For assistance in making a Prezi, PowerPoint or Google Slides show, contact Educational Technology staff: visit the Help Desk, call  (518) 743-2226 or email [email protected] . 

• SUNY Adirondack Technology

Recommended Sociology Journals

Look for articles from these journals when you search the databases: 

• Annual Review of Sociology
• American Sociological Review
• American Journal of Sociology 
• Sociological Methodology
• Sociological Theory  
• Sociology of Education  
• Social Networks  
• Gender & Society 
• Journal of Marriage and Family 
• Population and Development Review 
• Social Forces  
• European Sociological Review 
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Faculty Development Center

Learning with current events.

How do you respond when students disrupt your carefully planned learning opportunity with emerging news? Student responses to current events can create tension in the classroom, or  hot moments , and you may experience anxiety or stress in these situations. Teaching and learning research suggests that advance preparation can help faculty to transform these types of disruptions into moments of deep learning. See The Diverse Classroom to prepare for difficult conversations by becoming familiar with best practices in the welcoming classroom.

Below we offer a sample scenario to help you prepare to respond effectively to students who seek help in unpacking news stories. For help with more heated situations, see  Handling Hot Moments .

Sample Scenario

• Take a moment to gather your thoughts. If possible, count to ten and breathe deeply. Use that brief silence to assess the situation and prepare to respond.
• Acknowledge the student who raised the issue. “_________ (student name) , you’ve introduced ________________, a current event that raises challenging and controversial questions.”
• Observe that people in (and out of) the classroom may have a range of viewpoints on the issues related to this event. “Our class readings and discussions have helped us to see that there are multiple viewpoints related to this topic, and your classmates’ views may differ from yours.”
• Assess your students’ interest in pursuing the topic. “What do the rest of you think? Would it be useful to pursue this topic in more detail? Would it help us to achieve the learning goals for this course?”
• Assess your own readiness to discuss the issue right now. If you’d like to continue the discussion right now, try to connect it to your course goals. If students need time to prepare, ask them to freewrite for 5-10 minutes on the topic, or give them time to review a related reading that can build common ground. “Okay, let’s explore this idea. How does it connect to the concepts we’ve been learning? Do you need a few minutes to reflect before we continue?”
• If you want more time to prepare, schedule the discussion for another time. If possible, link it to an upcoming lesson or reading. “Since so many of you are interested in exploring this further, let’s plan to discuss it next week. The readings for Tuesday will give you some additional insights for our discussion.”

Current Events Assignment Ideas

Link below to resources that could help you brainstorm ideas for integrating current events into your learning opportunities:

• Tips for Difficult Classroom Discussions about Politics by Laura Hussey, November 5, 2020.
• Facing History offers a series of lessons called Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age .
• Towson University lists 25 ways to use current events.
• PBS presents lessons and videos to help student explore current events.
• For an assignment in geoscience, see Camann, E. J. (2016, November 16). Current events presentation activity for introductory geoscience classes. Retrieved from http://serc.carleton.edu/geo2yc/activities/46197.html .
• For a sample biology assignment using current events, see Miller, A. (2011). The use of current events as assessment tools. The Journal of Microbiology Education 12 (1): 59–60. doi:10.1128/jmbe.v12i1.263 f Retrieved from  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577201/
• Huston, T., & M. DiPietro. (2007). In the eye of the storm: Students’ perceptions of helpful faculty actions following a collective tragedy. In To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development  25:207–224. Available from http://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/In_the_Eye.pdf . Huston and DiPietro use a survey to measure students’ perceptions of faculty in-class responses after September 11th; the results suggest that students found a range of responses very helpful.
• Portland State University Office of Academic Innovation .   (2017). Supporting students through political discussions .
• University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). (2016). Teaching and learning in a tense election season. Retrieved from http://www.crlt.umich.edu/node/92763 .
• University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). (2016). Returning to the classroom after the election. Retrieved from http://www.crlt.umich.edu/node/93815 .

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• v.12(1); 2011

The Use of Current Events as Assessment Tools

Introduction.

An important student learning outcome for students in biology courses is the ability to apply the information attained to “real life” situations. Newspaper articles covering course-related material provide an avenue for students to see how the material discussed in the course relates to life outside of the course. Assessment of students’ understanding of the articles provides an opportunity to measure how well students are able to apply information to situations outside of traditional coursework.

Newspapers have been described in the literature as tools to facilitate active learning in the science classroom. An article by Bondos and Phillips ( 2 ) describes using newspaper articles as the basis for a non-majors biology course. An article by Mysliwiec, Shibley, and Dunbar ( 4 ) describes incorporating newspaper articles in the science course to encourage active learning and to help students understand the role of science in their lives. As a result of their study, students reported that the assignments helped illustrate that “biology actually has something to do with our lives” and “it was interesting to read articles that we had just learned about in class.”

Current events can be used in a variety of ways to assess students’ application abilities. I use current events as assessment tools in several of my courses, including an allied health microbiology course and a non-majors genetics course. These tools can be adapted to fit any level of student or biology discipline.

Current events can be used as in-class active learning activities. I often give students short articles either at the start of class to help reinforce previous material or at the end of class to reinforce the current topics. The students read the article independently, but I give them the opportunity to work with a partner and discuss the questions. Articles in local papers are nice to use because the students typically feel comfortable and not intimidated by the content. It is also valuable to use articles with mistakes. Having the students identify the mistakes not only shows me that the students are learning important concepts, but it also alerts the students to the importance of critically evaluating what they read.

Another use of current events is as an independent assignment. Independent current events assignments serve as an excellent tool for encouraging students to pay attention to science in the news. An assignment that I use in both my microbiology and non-majors genetics classes requires students to find their own current event article that relates to some aspect of the course. The students must summarize the article, discuss how it relates to the course, and analyze the article for accuracy and relevance. This assignment gives students the opportunity to use what they have learned in the classroom, and gives me the opportunity to assess how well they are applying their knowledge. It also provides me with a great source of articles for use in future classes.

Current events can also be used as a means to measure improvement in students’ ability to understand current events. I always tell my students that I hope that after taking one of my courses, they can better understand the news. In an effort to see if that improvement was actually happening, I conducted a classroom research project during the winter and spring quarters of 2009 ( 3 ). The purpose of the project was to evaluate whether students improved in their ability to understand a subject-related newspaper article by the end of the course compared to their ability at the beginning. Additionally, I used a survey to collect data on the students’ perceptions of the use of current events in the classroom. This study involved approximately 57 students enrolled in an allied health microbiology class. The study included administering a pre- (first week of class) and post- (last week of class) current event news article assessment. In both cases, the students were given the same news article to read during class and then given a worksheet including both factual and application style questions related to the information in the article. The students were allowed to keep the article, but I did not return the pre-assessment questions. This prevented students from being able to “study” the answers before the post-assessment. The assessment article chosen related to many important course concepts including pathogens, virulence, and antibiotic use/misuse ( 1 ). Comparison of the pre- and post-assessment scores on both the factual and application style questions provided valuable insight into how well students increased their knowledge of the subject, as well as how they improved in their ability to apply that knowledge.

Analysis of the classroom data showed that the average correct responses on the factual questions improved from 41% on the pre-assessment to 77% on the post assessment (see Fig. 1 ). Average correct responses on the application questions improved from 14% to 63%. The improvement in scores from pre- to post-assessment was significant ( p < 0.001). There was a significant interaction effect in that student performance on application questions improved more than performance on factual questions ( p = 0.002). These data show that students are not only acquiring more microbiology knowledge, but they are also improving on their ability to apply that knowledge to a variety of contexts. Analysis of student responses to survey questions and open-ended comments showed that students valued current event assignments. Some of the student comments included: “I like tying course material to events outside of class …” and “I enjoyed the news articles, they helped me understand the information we learned in class a lot more. I liked applying what I learned to real life situations.” The results of the survey questions also showed that the students found the current events valuable. The average of students’ responses was 4.7 out of 5 with 5 being “strongly agree” when students were asked whether or not they felt that the current events helped them apply course material to “real world” situations.

Results for pre- and post-assessments. Sample factual question: “How is Clostridium difficile transmitted?” Sample application question: “Why would antibiotic therapy make a patient more susceptible to a Clostridium difficile infection?”

The results of my study are consistent with what has been reported in the literature. Current events can be used in numerous ways to help students connect classroom topics to real life situations. They are readily available and can be adapted to any class or student level. In addition, students see them as valuable.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the students in Microbiology in winter and spring quarters of 2009, and Robin Lightner for assistance with data analysis. This study was approved by the University of Cincinnati Institutional Review Board — Social and Behavioral Sciences as exempt. There was no supporting source for this project. The author and the affiliated institution did not receive payment or services from a third party for any aspect of this work. The author has no financial relationships or any other relationships/conditions/circumstances that present a potential conflict of interest.