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I’m a big believer in using current events in our lessons. Not only for language learning but for “life” learning. For example, the death of Queen Elizabeth II is something we might bring into our classroom, depending on our students, our teaching milieu, of course!
We, teachers, don’t just teach a skill or even content but we also, the transactional nature of teaching makes it about growing inter and intrapersonally within the classroom. And current events are a topic that promotes awareness, citizenship and so many other personal qualities. See these Top 10 Reasons To Use Current Events in the classroom.
Here are a few lesson resources to support using the “news” in class.
Live Cams. Use the live cam to roam the world and discuss what is happening in other places. Or also, use the World Natural Disaster weekly report.
N.Y. Times has a great series of What’s Going On picture prompts. See our own collection in the lesson library.
Get students to track news stories and report in class. Discuss together.
Use a 5W organizer to get students to analyze and dig deeper into a news story and act/be a journalist in English.
Promote media literacy. Have students try to spot fake news stories. Can they?
Get students to design their own newspaper, magazine or online news portal in English.
Start class by listing and reporting on what is “new” in the world.
Some more ideas.
However you do it - use current events in your lessons. It’ll add a little something, a little “je ne sais pas quoi” to your day-to-day teaching.