Current Event

I did a current event project on New mapping. I never knew about this type of activity for current events until now. When I was in school the way we did current event was we had to find an article every week and write a summary of what the article was about . Then we would hand them to the teacher every Friday and that was it. We never spoke about our articles . We either received a check for doing it or a no check. I also use to get the magazine scholars that we would have to read through them and answer questions after we read the articles. We would go over the correct answers and that would be it.

Now that was some of my school experience, but through this current event we discussed news mapping. We created a PowerPoint. Then decided are theme was going to be ebola. We selected articles and assigned them to the students in our class as homework before we introduced our current event presentation. News mapping is when students read articles on the same theme but from different places around the world or between two different countries. For example we focus on America and Africa. We also gave our students the article. In the classroom the teacher can assign the articles or students can find them on their own but they have to have a common theme. Like I said before our theme was ebola. Then the students read the article and create a summary. For our rubric we had ask our students to write a short summary on what the article was about , then two facts that they learned and their view. The students had to bring the article into class. Then me and heather presented a global map on the board. Teacher can use a real life map if they have on in their class. The each students comes up and taps their summary on their place. They read aloud their summary. Then the next students comes up and does the same thing. The teacher then connects the places on the map. The teacher asks the student how the articles relate to one another. There should be some form of connection. In our presentation the connections where people traveling out of Africa into America and having to be monitor to make sure their were no cases of ebola. Then we discussed with our students how current event all over the world can effect America. How it is important for us to be aware of what happens in other areas.

I enjoyed this current event activity. It was interesting and engaging. It was different form what I did when I was a kid at school. I would differently use this in my classroom in the future. In my classroom there would be time where I would choose the theme and the article but I would definitely also let my students pick a theme as a class. The they would have to find articles in groups that relate to the them they chose. This is a create activity. It gets the students working together and also they learn connection between places. Then by the end of the period or marker they will be a bunch of lines or pins connected to one another with string on the map.