DOGOnews and Free Comic Book Day
DOGOnews is a student news site offers features articles for K-8 students. DOGOnews covers current events stories in the areas of science, sports, entertainment, and variety of topics that fall under the banner of social studies. Teachers can find stories by browsing the categories, filtering by grade level, or filtering by grade level. This morning when […]
This AI Tool Generates Reading Comprehension Questions for Any Article
QuestionWell is a new AI tool that will generate reading comprehension and guiding questions for just about any article that you specify. Questions created by QuestionWell can be saved in a document or exported to a handful of popular quiz apps including Kahoot and Quizziz. There are two ways that you can use QuestionWell to […]
Lesson Plans for The State of Union Address
Tomorrow night President Biden will give the annual State of the Union Address. C-SPAN Classroom offers more than one hundred resources for teaching and learning about The State of the Union Address in historical and current contexts. If you don’t have time to review all of the resources that C-SPAN Classroom offers (honestly, who does?), […]
The Differences Between England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth Explained
Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday. The news broke after most on the east coast of the U.S. were out of school for the day. If you find your students asking questions about about her passing, the monarchy, or Great Britain in general, here are some videos that you might find helpful. The Washington Post published […]
Newspaper Map – Find and Read Newspapers Published Around the World
Newspaper Map is a neat tool for locating and reading newspapers from locations all around the world. Newspaper Map claims to have geolocated 10,000 newspapers. To find a newspaper you can browse the map then click on a placemark to open the link within to read a newspaper. You can also locate newspapers by using the […]
Library of Congress Resources About Ukraine
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve received quite a few requests for resources for teaching and learning about the Russia/ Ukraine conflict. In response to those requests I’ve been directing people to Larry Ferlazzo’s frequently updated list of resources. Today, I found one resource that isn’t on Larry’s list, yet. That is the a […]
A Great Way to Explore Newspapers of the World
At the end of August I shared a couple of neat ways to explore newspapers of the world through interactive maps. Over the weekend, thanks to Larry Ferlazzo, I learned about another interactive map of newspapers from around the world. Today’s Front Pages is an interactive display of the front pages of nearly 500 newspapers […]
Three Good Places to Find Current Events Stories for Students
Last week I wrote about using the BBC’s Week in Pictures as a source of current events discussion starters. Following up on that idea, here are some other good places to find current events stories written for kids. For many years CNN Student News was one of my go-to resources when I was teaching current […]
Exploring Newspapers Through Maps
When I included current events as a regular part of my social studies classes I would always show a map of where a story takes place. The following websites can provide students with a geographic connection to current and historical news stories. Newspaper Map is a neat tool for locating and reading newspapers from locations all […]
In Pictures – A Good Resource for Prompting Current Events Lessons
Over the weekend while browsing some news articles on the BBC News I was reminded of a good resource that I used for many years to prompt discussion and small research activities in my current events class. That resource is the BBC’s Week in Pictures which is a section of their more general In Pictures […]
Synth Relaunches With a Renewed Focus on Asynchronous Audio Conversations
This week Synth released an updated user interface and a renewed focus on helping teachers and students engage in asynchronous audio conversations. In this post I’ll provide an overview of what Synth does, what has been updated in its user interface, what’s still the same, and how Synth can be used by teachers. What is […]
Three Good Resources for Teaching Fact vs. Opinion
This afternoon I was talking with a few of my students about TikTok and its new relationship with Oracle. The course of that conversation brought up a lot of “I’ve heard X” and “I’ve read X” statements from my students regarding news about TikTok. As you might imagine would happen with teenagers talking about their […]
Factitious 2020 – Can You Spot Fake News Stories?
In yesterday’s episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff I shared some information about an update to a favorite resource of mine, Factitious. Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19. […]
Three Ways to Explore the News Through Maps
One of the things that I liked about the old version of CNN Student News is that it almost always included a map to show students where a story is taking place in the world. I tried to do the same whenever I taught current events by showing students a map of where a story […]
Do Politics Make Us Irrational? – A TED-Ed Lesson
As the 2020 Presidential primaries and caucuses roll on more there is no avoiding political advertising unless you shut off your television, your radio, and never go on YouTube. Politics stir up all kinds of feelings in us. People who are otherwise very even-keeled sometimes get very passionate and perhaps irrational when it comes to […]
What’s the Difference Between a Caucus and a Primary
When I turned on the news this morning I was greeted with the news that the results of the Iowa caucuses would be delayed. That made me realize that I haven’t posted any resources that can be used to help students understand how a president is chosen in the United States. The first step in […]
Five Good Places to Find Current Events Stories for Kids
For a couple of years I taught an elective that was all about current events. That was one of my favorite social studies teaching assignments because I enjoy listening to what students have to save about the news. CNN Student News was one of my go-to resources when I was teaching that current events course. […]
A Helpful Search Refinement Option for Students Studying Trending Topics
Earlier this month I published Ten Search Strategies Students Should Try. An eleventh strategy that students can try when they are researching current events, trending topics, or any rapidly changing topic is to refine results according to publication date. In the following video I demonstrate how students can refine search results according to publication date.
A Fun Literature Game
A couple of years ago Terri Eichholz wrote a short blog post about an activity that she had found on the New Times Learning Network. I was recently scrolling through some old bookmarks and found Terri’s post again. So I went to see if it’s still available and it is. The activity is called Literature […]
