Help Students to Express Their Reactions to Current Events More Accurately

When students study current events, the norm is to have students summarize the events of a particular newsworthy event. This is a good exercise, but it is also beneficial to have students reflect upon how the events make them and others feel and how it impacts them.
In order to help students reflect beyond happy, sad, angry, I think it is helpful to give them lists of words to express a more accurate feeling or emotion. Here are a few:

• List of Adjectives to Describe Tone and Feelings and Emotions
• Categorized List of Emotion Words

And of course, both of these resources are helping for writing, in general, not just for current events.

Teaching Current Events via Newspapers, Magazines and TV

Teaching Current Events via Newspapers, Magazines and TV

http://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/cevents.html

An old school, but extensive list of links for current events resources.

This is just my abbreviated list of sites we have used for current events:

1. Al Jazeerah (English)
2. ABC News
3. BBC News
4. CNN
5. Fox News
6. MSNBC

Resources to Study and Reflect Upon Current Events

I was on the look out for meaningful current event assignment ideas and here are a few of what I found. I remember the days of current events assignments during my schooling and I always thought they were just busy work.  For older kids, I think it is important not just to summarize but also respond with their thoughts and to see how it could affect them physically, or emotionally.

• Current Events Template (TJ Homeschooling)
• Current Events Assignment Guide from SlideShare
• Current Events Template

For younger kids, the who, what, when, where, why, may be sufficient.

Current Events Form

Help your student(s) organize their current events study with this current events template/form.

We've done current events on and off throughout our homeschooling. The high school homeschool program that my high schoolers are in requires a couple of current event assignments to be submitted throughout the year. But, there were no guidelines given and I wanted to try to make sure that the kids got something out of the assignment rather than just summarizing what was written in the article.

So, I put together a current events form that not only requires them to record key information about the article and summarize it, but it requires them to find out where the events in the article took place and find that place and mark it on a map, and requires them to think about how the events in the article can impact lives, including their own.

The template is just one PDF page, but I made a lined and  unlined version. In addition, there is a DOC version available.

Even if you do not do formal written current assignment events, you can use the template as a prompt for when you and your kids discuss current events.

Download:

PDF (both lined and unlined versions are included)

DOC (both lined and unlined versions are included)