Social Studies
Current events. Below is just the table of contents and some information about the units available through Word Generation by SERP. You must make an account to access these materials, but they have full teacher's editions and student editions of each unit in both color and grayscale. Basically in each unit, you have students read about an issue and learn the vocabulary associated with the issue. The units usually involve some sort of discussion component and writing component as well.
Somebody Wanted But So . . . This is a great little strategy to use to get students to summarize big events in history. Students simply pick a historical figure and/or group of people they are learning about. They then tell what that person or group wanted, what happened despite those desires and what the result was. Depending on the topic and how controversial it is, you could turn the activity into a little debate where students have to defend their summary and why it's accurate. Here's just one example regarding the Vietnam War: The U.S. wanted to stop the spread of Communism in Asia by getting supporting the ARVN in the Vietnam War but the VC started to organize, receive proper training and get supplies through Cambodia and neighboring countries so the VC eventually won the war and Vietnam is now a communist state.
Text coding. When giving students an article about a current event, have students mark the text with symbols as they read. Before reading, create the code for the symbols or come up with the symbols as a whole class, but make sure students all use the same symbols to represent the same things. You will want to have a symbol, such as a check mark, represent a statement that confirms a student's thoughts (they agree with it); a symbol, such as an X, represent something that contradicts a student's thoughts (they disagree with it); a symbol, such as a question mark, represent something that raises a question for them (I recommend they write the question in the margins so they don't forget what it was); a symbol, such as a box, represent something that confuses them or is a completely foreign idea to them; a symbol, such as an asterisk, represent something that they believe is important; and a symbol, such as an exclamation point, represent something that they find really interesting or is new to them. After they code the text, you can have them compare and discuss their symbols in pairs, small groups and/or as a whole class. You could extend the activity by having students find more support for what they agree or disagree with in the article, research answers to their questions, and/or find clarification on the confusing information by finding alternate sources of information.
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