Current Events are a nice way to integrate Social Studies, Reading, and Writing. Additionally, they are a wonderful way to keep your students connected to the community and world around them.
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This resource addresses the following Common Core State Standards:
Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 2: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 6: Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of the text.
This product includes:
What’s the Scoop? Directions, Rubric, and Checklist?
This page gives the student directions for their assignment and then offers a checklist/rubric. In this way, students know exactly what is expected of them and how they will get their grade. This is also helpful for the teacher when grading the assignment.
What’s the Scoop?
This part of the assignment requires students to find a newspaper article and then answer Who, What, When, Were, and Why questions based on the article.
The Author’s Craft
This portion of the assignment requires students to think about the author’s perspective, angle, and word choice in the text/about the topic. Students will identify the author’s tone (positive, negative, neutral) and then give examples of the author’s word choice. Students will also identify two new words, give the sentence from the article that used the word, meaning of the word, and create a new sentence using the word.
Sum it Up!
Students will use the article as well as the answers to the previous questions to write a summary of their article.