Curated OER
"Jazz is About Freedom": Billie Holiday's Anti-lynching Song Strange Fruit
Working in small teams, learners analyze a variety of primary source materials related to lynching (news articles, letters written to or written by prominent Americans, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.) in order to assess the effectiveness of...
Curated OER
Getting Fired Up
Students explore first-person accounts of volcanic eruptions throughout time and use second-hand information about volcanoes. They use both types of accounts to write news articles covering the events of a historic volcanic eruption as...
Curated OER
Pronouns
Students play a game. In this pronouns lesson, students watch a video and read a book about pronouns. Students review types of pronouns, fill in missing pronouns in sentences, read a newspaper article and find as many pronouns as...
National Wildlife Federation
I Speak for the Polar Bears!
Climate change and weather extremes impact every species, but this lesson focuses on how these changes effect polar bears. After learning about the animal, scholars create maps of snow-ice coverage and examine the yearly variability and...
Curated OER
Summarizing
Learners analyze and summarize the main aspects of a news story. They find the "Who, What, Where, When and Why in a particular news story.In addition, they answer six questions over a particular story and then write a news story from...
Curated OER
Opinion Articles
Middle schoolers investigate current events. They conduct research on a selected current event, read and analyze opinion pages from different newspapers, and write an article in a newspaper-style column format.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Environmental Scrapbook and Podcast
High schoolers collect newspaper and magazine articles about the environment and construct a scrapbook using construction paper, glue, and scissors. To make it even more environmentally friendly, groups can create an online...
Curated OER
Using a Graphic Organizer to Critically Observe Televised News Broadcasts
Students compare two television news broadcasts. They discuss how to organize information when comparing two objects and read and discuss two books to create a Venn diagram to compare both books. After creating the diagram, they view...
Curated OER
The New Kids on the Blog
Students consider the role of a critic by creating top ten lists for arts-related topics and participate in a simulated blog activity. They write newpaper articles to accompany their top ten lists and submit them for publication.
National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science
Cell Phone Use and Cancer
The cell phone you're using is making you deaf: news at 11:00. Oftentimes, the media uses fear tactics and other techniques to increase its audience base. In an intriguing look at the difference between scientific journals and...
PBS
Facts vs. Opinions vs. Informed Opinions and their Role in Journalism
Do reporters write about what they see, or what they think? Examine the differences between investigative writing and opinion writing with a lesson from PBS. Learners look over different examples of each kind of reporting, and convince...
Advocates for Human Rights
The Rights of Immigrants in the United States
Based on their understanding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of Migrants in the United States, groups adopt a human rights perspective and analyze media reports to evaluate how the US is addressing the...
Stanford University
Pullman Strike
Learners explore the Pullman Strike. In this U.S. history lesson, students view a PowerPoint about the Pullman Strike of 1894. Learners discuss how this strike divided our nation. Students work with a group to analyze a...
Curated OER
Local and National News
Students work together in small groups, negotiate, plan, summarize, analyze, read and understand, speak so others can understand, cooperate with others, and listen critically. Students use local newspapers to draw their conclusions and...
Curated OER
A Choice of Voice
Team work can produce great results. Your class will analyze the design, news content, and demographic profiles of local alternative newsweeklies. They then design and write articles for their own community working together as editorial...
Curated OER
Heeding Advice
Compare and contrast various foreign perspectives on the George W. Bush administration's plans for military action. Middle schoolers read the article "Blair and Chirac Head to U.S. to Talks and a Show of Unity." Then, they analyze...
Curated OER
Untying the Knot
What are the current trends in divorce? What contributes to this? Examine celebrity relationship trends and how they relate to the general public with this discussion activity. Middle schoolers analyze the results of a Census Bureau...
Curated OER
Inventions in Everyday Life
Students identify and solve problems as they modify the design of an everyday household item. They gather and analyze information and work in collaborative teams to create a design plan for a new product.
Curated OER
On-Line Homework Help: An Ethical Dilemma
Students use a visual thesaurus and Vocabgrabber to interpret a news article. In this vocabulary building and comprehension lesson, students analyze quotes from the article. Students use the visual thesaurus and Vocabgrabber to interpret...
Curated OER
The Odyssey of a Coin
Students create a fictitious newspaper article to document the travels of an ancient Greek coin. They evaluate the economic conditions that existed in ancient Greece and analyze the impact Alexander the Great had on the ancient world.
Curated OER
Russian Poisoning
Learners read a newspaper article about Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian KGB officer who was mysteriously poisoned in 2006. They discuss and define vocabulary words, complete comprehension worksheets and analyze the grammar and...
Curated OER
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce
Eleventh graders explore the life of Chief Joseph and Nez Perce. For this US History lesson, 11th graders analyze paintings and photos detailing the flight of Nez Perce. Students create a narrative newspaper article based on...
Curated OER
What Do People Know About Radon?
Students read the fictitious newspaper article entitled, "Levels of Radon in Jersey Town Exceed Limits." This helps them get a basic vocabulary started for the terms and concepts related to radon. In groups, they identify words that they...
Curated OER
Separate But Equal Video
Eighth graders watch the video "Separate But Equal." They choose an incident or event from the video that is interesting or meaningful to them and write an objective news article and an editorial.