BP2_CNNStudentNews

I am a secondary English teacher who has been charged with addressing the social studies and current events strains of our state standards, sans textbooks. As you might imagine, as a trained English teacher, I do not have all of the information necessary to effectively teach my students readily available in my "pretty little head,"<used here as an expression not an arrogance.:-)> thus have searched for tools to assist me. This search has yielded several helpful Web 2.0 resources, however I wanted to share one with you that quickly become a part of my daily routine: CNN Student News (http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/).

We start the day by watching the CNN Student News video, which is created specifically for a school age audience. This video does a good job reporting the headlines of the day, but also strives to balance these stories with educational and empowering content.

After the newscast, my students and I have a discussion about the day's events, followed by an enrichment activity which typically is either taking the CNN Student News prepared "newsquiz" or a specific journaling assignment that is borne from the provided newsquiz.

Aside from the features that I have mentioned, this tool also has other advantages for students. There is a career connections link, downloadable resources, and links to go to for more in-depth discovery, just to name a few. The newscast also pulls from the linked blog responses for daily "shotouts" and other incorporation of comments into the video production. My students like to compete to see whose response is able to get mentioned on air. Another benefit I have discovered for my students, all of whom have similar cultural, economic, and geographic identities, is that they are able to read the responses posted by students from places they have never heard of before and are thus exposed to perspectives they have never considered.

This tool not only teaches my students about the world around them, but helps to develop critical thinking skills that will prove invaluable to them throughout their lives. I highly recommend it.

Until next time...be well.