How to Inform Students of Current Events (part 1)

CNN Student News

I watched a slightly older news broadcast (from October 7) and actually found it quite interesting!... and I know my grade 5 and 6 students would have been hooked with the flooding story at the beginning.  Plus weather is in the grade 5 science curriculum!

Before you show your students one of these broadcasts there is a "warning" to the side that says they are intended for middle and high school students and that you should preview the broadcast before showing it.  

I think I would preview a couple from the previous week on the weekend and use those the following week... so they may not be watching them on the exact date that they aired but they would still likely be "current events"

How would I use this?

I could guide my students to this site for when they are the News Reporter for our TUSC meetings.

I could use it a couple times a week either at the start of the day, end of the day, or after a recess break when they need to wind down.

I could also use this as one of the centers during our guided writing groups... I would just have to find a way for them to not play it too loud or to hook up multiple sets of headphones to one computer.

I also found this google document.  I thought it had a lot going on by dividing up all the potential segments the news broadcast might have

so I made a little more simple and saved it like this...

CNN Student News recording sheet

I made it so that I have this doubled on the page... I would need to decide if at the beginning of the year I would give them a bunch of student news recording sheets to just keep in their binders or I would keep them, cut them in half, hand them out, and they would hand them back in for me to go over... I'm leaning more towards the 2nd option.

I guess the way I altered it is more specific for what I would use it for... I think I would use this as a way for students to show me that they are able to take in information and summarize and reflect on it.

I couldn't see this taking more then 15 minutes for a student to complete if they are focusing on the task (I guess there are always a few that aren't).

Later on I quickly skimmed through some of the older broadcasts and found ones on space (grade 6 science curriculum), elections (grade 6 social studies curriculum - it's just too bad it is American), and animals (maybe not directly related to the curriculum but we could come up with something!).

If you want the recording sheet I would be more than happy to send it to you (or you can make your own as mine took all of 2 minutes to make)

Would you use CNN Student News in your classroom?

PS. later on I tried to find a Canadian version of this and wasn't exactly successful... but I did come up with something!  Check back next week for what I found!