As a Social Studies teacher, I constantly find myself torn between teaching content which will be on the standardized test (ahhh a teacher’s favorite topic) and discussing current events with my students. There are tons of great topics we could discuss that would be relevant to our curriculum, and would be extremely interesting to my students. However, I just don’t feel like there is enough time in the day (or school year since we’ve had TWENTY snow days this year!) to discuss all of the important happenings.
My classes, like many of your students, have been showing great interest in the turmoil in Ukraine, as well as the missing plane, and so many other contemporary topics. In order to encourage my students to stay updated on these important events, I decided to utilize the Learning Management System our class already uses…Edmodo.
While many of my students were very interested in the issues plaguing Ukraine, very few of them were well informed on the subject. I’m sure this is a problem many readers can sympathize. So, in order to provide my students with valuable background information about the topic, I created a folder on Edmodo for the students, and included three basic articles relating to the topic:
- As many as 100 killed in new Ukraine clashes – USA Today
- Ukraine’s Forces Escalate Attacks Against Protestors – New York Times
- 20 questions – CNN
What did I accomplish by this activity? Students that were extremely interested in the topic were able to gain more information and discuss their opinions about the issue with classmates, as well as students who are not in their class period.
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