Engage students with news, events and anniversaries for the week of Jan. 5-9, 2015
Language Arts
Language Arts
1. Get Organized! Around the beginning of each year, there are often articles about organizing your life. Alert students to be on the lookout for those stories. They can use the tips to make their room more tidy, to do their homework more efficiently and to make their days more productive. At the end of the month, have them report to the class on the specific things that they have done and the progress they made.
Indiana Academic Standard: Read a variety of nonfiction within a range of complexity appropriate for grade
2. Have students choose a favorite local store that advertises in the newspaper. They should create a display ad that they think would bring more customers their age into the store. Have them write a letter to the local store manager and enclose a copy of their ad.
Indiana Academic Standard: Write routinely over a variety of time frames for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences; apply reading standards to support analysis, reflection, and research
3. One of the most important writers of the 20th century was Zara Neale Hurston, who was born January 7, 1891. Besides authoring four books, she was instrumental in collecting regional black folklore. She wrote, "Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food." Editorials are a section of the newspaper where people comment on the news from their own angle. Challenge students to choose a story and to write it from a different angle or point of view.
Indiana Academic Standard: Introduce a topic; organize ideas, concepts, and information, using strategies such as definition and classification
4. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense was published on January 10, 1776. Have students collect articles that show ordinary and famous people using “common sense” and present to the class via a visual display.
As an interesting follow-up, introduce students to this Paine quote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Do they think that is true today? Can they find news stories to support that opinion?
Indiana Academic Standard: Develop the topic with relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples from various sources and texts
Math
1. Have students choose any three-digit and any two-digit numbers from the newspaper and do the following: Find the product of the two numbers. Find the sum of the two numbers. Find the difference between the two numbers. Find the quotient of the two numbers to the nearest hundredth. Then, find the sum of all the answers above.
Indiana Academic Standard: Multiply multi-digit whole numbers fluently using a standard algorithmic approach.
2. Have students choose a page in the newspaper and underline words and phrases that refer to time such as: annual, bicentennial, 90-day warranty, next week, etc.
Indiana Academic Standard: Solve real-world problems
Science Literacy
1. Sir Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643. Students should know that he is famous for his work during the scientific revolution. Among other discoveries are his thoughts on motion and gravity. Your students may be familiar with the popular lore about Newton noticing that an apple always falls down from a tree; it doesn’t float up. He determined that gravity was the force of attraction between two objects and that the force of the larger object is a stronger pull than the pull of the smaller object. Since Earth is larger than any other object on the planet, it pulls everything else down toward it. Have students look carefully through the Sports section to find examples of how gravity impacts on sports. Have them list the examples that they find.
Indiana Academic Standard: Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what a text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text
2. George Washington Carver died on January 5, 1943. He was an agricultural scientist, author, inventor and teacher. He had been born into slavery in about 1864. He escaped and was brought back, but when slavery was ended, he went on to achieve greatness as the head of the Agriculture Department of Tuskegee University. He showed farmers how to grow peanuts and other crops so that they could plant different crops in different years. When peanuts grow, they grab all the nitrogen from the soil. Carver taught farmers to take turns planting peanuts and planting other crops that put nutrients back into the soil. He was an environmentalist, perhaps one of the first. After introducing him to your students, have them find an environmental story in the news and summarize it.
Indiana Academic Standard: Determine how a central idea of a text is conveyed through particular details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Social Studies
1. Explain to students that civics is the study of the rights, duties and responsibilities of citizens. Those include paying taxes, voting, jury duty, obeying laws, registering for the military (for men in the U.S.) and more. It’s important for students to understand civics and to be informed about their rights and responsibilities in order to make good decisions. After introducing the concept of civics, send students into the newspaper to find stories that are related to the concept. Then, they can take a fun civics quiz at this site.
Indiana Academic Standard: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources
For more ideas about teaching civics, click here.
2. On January 6, 1942, a Pan American Airways plane landed in New York completing the first around-the-world trip by a commercial aircraft. What modes of transportation can your students find in today’s news? Which is the fastest? Cheapest? Most environmentally friendly?
Indiana Academic Standard: Integrate visual information (e.g., charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts
3. Introduce students to suffragist Alice Paul, who was born on January 11, 1885. She fought tirelessly for women’s rights. Among other things, she led a march of 8,000 women through Washington, D.C. the day before President Wilson was inaugurated. She continued to work despite being incarcerated in jail and in a mental hospital. She went on a hunger strike, too. Eventually, her work paid off and women were granted the right to vote with the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920. That didn’t mean the end of her work. She then attended law school and continued to work for the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment through the end of her life. In 2008, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, posthumously. Can your students find a story in today’s news that they believe Ms. Paul would find particularly compelling? They should write about the story they chose and why it would have meaning for someone like her.
Indiana Academic Standard: Write informative texts, including analyses of historical events
4. Can students find news stories that are holdovers from 2014? They can look back and forward and predict which stories in today’s news will have the longest run.
Indiana Academic Standard: Gather relevant information from multiple sources, using search terms effectively
Write the News Lesson
Topic: Writing an Editorial
A new year is always a good time to look ahead with a positive attitude. America has been dealing with some challenging issues recently. Some people are hopeful that 2015 will be a better year than 2014.
Imagine that you are the editor of your local newspaper. It is your assignment to write an editorial giving your opinion about 2015. An editorial is different from a news story in that it contains the writer’s personal opinion. Writing an editorial can be fun if you keep a few things in mind.
• Write clearly and get right to the point.
• Back up your opinion with facts. Skim the newspaper for stories to prove your theory that 2015 will be worse or better than 2014. Do this before you begin writing. It may help you form a valid opinion.
• Express emotion but don’t go overboard.
Write the opening sentence for your editorial. In it, you will state your theory about the coming year. The remainder of your editorial will support or prove your theory. When you are finished, underline two facts and circle two opinions.