What Impact Does Daily Current Events Instruction Have on Middle Grades Students

What Impact Does Daily Current Events Instruction Have on Middle Grades Students?

“I think current events to me is in a way addictive! I think it is because every day I look forward to doing current events. It is fun to just learn about things that are going on in the world.” --Miranda, age 12

Throughout the course of the 2005-2006 school year, we have been conducting a daily 30-minute whole class current event lesson with their students using a laptop computer connected to a data projector. Current events are taken from the BBC website, and cover topics related to the sixth grade social studies curriculum (a study of Europe and South America). We also emphasize the skills necessary to attack nonfiction text during these mini-lessons.

Electronic sources of background and enrichment material are frequently accessed through school subscriptions to United Streaming and Brainpop. Finally, students regularly participate in electronic conversations about current events topics in digital forums on classroom websites hosted by Blackboard. To date, there have been over 35,000 hits on these electronic forums in our classrooms during the 2005-2006 school year.

Findings:

Daily online current event lessons are greatly enjoyed by middle grades students: When asked to respond to the statement, “Current events is one of my favorite parts of Language Arts and Social Studies class,” 96% of our students responded positively. Almost 40% of our students “Strongly agreed.” What’s more, almost 74% of our students responded positively to the statement, “Current events is one of my favorite parts of any of my core classes.

Comments from students include:

“I love current events every day in social studies class. They kind of offer a new adventure to explore every day. I am constantly learning about world leaders, countries, capitals and all other sorts of things.”
“It gives me something to look forward to in the beginning of the day. I look forward to it because when we do current events, we get to talk about important and interesting things happening in the world.”
“Current events and political cartoons are definitely the best part of the day!”

Daily current event lessons have exposed students to new sources of online information that they pursue independently and new opportunities to explore together: When asked to respond to the statement, “I often explore current events at home after school,” 74% of our students responded positively. Our two primary current event websites, the BBC and the CBBC have been accessed over 1,000 times from our classroom websites. Students regularly visit these sites and post follow-up articles to the current events that we have been studying in class on our website’s discussion boards. Over 200 individual posts have been made to these forums that have been read nearly 5,000 times and been accessed by 90% of our students!

Comments from students include:

“I have learned several new web sites, places, people and landforms thanks to our current events.”
“I really learned a lot about the world from current events. Some things I learned are the BBC and CBBC websites, which has exposed me to new and interesting ideas and friendly people.”
“I read the back of the News and Observer every day now (or at least the days the newspaper dude comes.) I have been going home and wasting ALL my computer time on political cartoons and trying to make inferences.”

Daily current event lessons and electronic conversations have given students a new sense of confidence with classroom content: Perhaps one of our most interesting findings is that our students report a new sense of confidence as a result of classroom current event lessons. 96% responded positively to the statement, “I am proud of what I know about current events,” and nearly 83% responded positively to the statement, “I often know more about world events than other members of my family.” Finally, 73% responded positively to the statement, “I am more confident when reading nonfiction text than I was at the beginning of the year.”

Comments from students include:

“I feel that reading current events has improved my reading and writing skills.”
“I enjoy doing current events mostly because it helps us gain self confidence in reading out loud and it also builds ourvocabulary. It has helped me speaking in front of crowds. NowI am no longer afraid to speak out and let myideas be heard.
“I just love coming home and asking if my sisters know about this or if they know who this person is. It makes me feel smarter and more confident in all that I do.”
“Current events give me a great chance to go home and show my mom that I know just as much as her! I feel very proud of knowing about the world and current events.”
“I have really learned a lot about the world from current events. I am also relied on by my friends for specific info on different subjects.”

Daily current event lessons are connecting parents and students: What we are proudest of is that our current event lessons are providing parents and students with meaningful opportunities to interact at home. 88% of our students reported that current event conversations happen with regularity in their households.

Comments from students include:

“At home, my parents always talk about the news and I didn’t know what they were talking about. However, now that I know what they are saying, I can join in.”
“Yes I think we should keep doing current events. I learned a lot about Europe. I also thought that current events got my parents involved…they always ask me what it was each day.”
“I love current events…I love coming home and talking about them to my mom. She never knows what I’m talking about. It’s funny. Me and my dad always debate about the current events because he knows what I am talking about.”