Are Your Students Aware of Current Events?

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

I love finding websites that have so much to them that they feel like they should be 2 or 3 website suggestions!  Recently I “re-stumbled” on a site that’s exactly that.  (I actually used this a while back and forgot about it!)  This week’s site is: Time for Kids.

Time for Kids has so much to it.  There are 8 tabs along the top, and each one could almost be it’s own separate website suggestion!  I’ll keep it to a minimum and just outline my favorite parts of this site, but seriously, take a few minutes and scope it out, there are so many ways to use this in social studies, reading, writing etc.

1.  Kid Reporters – There are tons and tons of articles written BY kids, FOR kids.  All of the Kid reporters are under the age of 12, and write great articles that are on just the right level for kids.  It’s a super easy way to incorporate current events, while providing your students with good writing role models.  If you have any super star writers in your class - there’s also a contest each year to find new Kid Reporters.

2.  Photos & Videos – There are up to date photos and videos of events currently in the news (the Olympics and the Presidential Election are currently high on the list).  These are a great way to inform students about current events, or even get them writing about it.  Put up the pictures and the headlines, and let them write the story!

3.  Homework Helper – This area gives kids access to flash cards, grammar tips and other helpful hints they can use in or out of class.  This section would be great to give to parents at the beginning of the year, as a way for parents to help students at home.

4.  Around the World – This is my FAVORITE section of this site for many reasons.  It includes links to places all around the world and gives videos and important information about each place.  It would be great for research reports and digging deeper into Geography.

5.  A Day in the Life - The best part of the Around the World section, is called A Day in the Life.  If you choose a country from the Around the World section, there is a menu that allows you to choose different options about that country, one being A Day in the Life.  When you choose this option, you are given a sneak peek into a day in the life of a child in that country.  What a wonderful way for students to look at the world – through the eyes of another kid their age!  I completely plan to use this section this year as my class explores what is the SAME about people all around the world.

6.  Mini Sites – In this section, there are links to different topics, which may interest your students, including: Harry Potter News, Holidays Around the World, Hispanic Heritage Month and a Summer Movie Guide.  This is a great way to include student’s real interests into your language arts program, as they read news articles about topics of interest.