Current Events with a difference...

During our Manaiakalani shared staff meeting a few weeks ago I listened to a number of teachers sharing the ways they cover current events in their classrooms. This sparked my curiosity as my current approach has been to encourage my learners to explore the provocation by unpacking the content, looking at the information from both perspectives before forming an opinion based on fact. What I am aware of though, is when you complete this type of task you walk away and often never refer to it again. 

Teacher inquiry challenges you to look closely at your own practice. If what you are doing is 'missing the mark' or has become 'stale' then you need to get creative and find ways to adapt what you are doing to help your learners make stronger connections to the learning. I still wanted my learners to be able to talk about what was happening in the world, both nationally and internationally so I merged a few ideas I saw others doing and came up with a new approach.

I needed to make sure everyone understood the difference between national and international news so we began by unpacking these words. We then revisited author's purpose to consolidate that understanding before looking at the different reasons why a news editor would decide to run or print a story. These included timeliness, magnitude, oddity and emotive to name a few. (Idea sourced from here) This was a fantastic opportunity to gift and explore new vocabulary.

 

I then asked my learners to find a partner and set them the challenge of finding an example of each of these types of stories using national news that they read, watched or listened to. Once they had found an example they would need to talk about their reasons they felt it was best suited to the chosen category, then plot where it took place on a google map. The only written component of this task was to include the title of the news item or article and the exact location it took place in the map pin. 

This was a huge success and was something that could be achieved by all my learners, regardless of ability level. We stopped periodically throughout the lesson to share our news items and justify why these were chosen. I found that throughout these lessons I was continually modelling and reinforcing the use of the vocabulary in context.  

All completed tasks were posted on our blogs. Here is one example of the learning from Mele and Marieta. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Mele and Marieta's blogs.

We repeated the challenge the following week with international current events. What impressed me was the retention of vocabulary and level of understanding behind the reasons news items are run and printed. Here is Alex, Jack, Joseph, Julian and Aung Naing's international current events map. These boys joined forces and had rich and deep conversations as they tried to persuade each other to come to a shared reasoning for their selections. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Alex's blog.

Throughout this learning opportunity all my learners were on task and actively engaged. They were all eager to share their examples, with responses evolving to include a short summary of the content. I'm so glad that I took the time to adapt and change the way we explore current events in LS2!