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Wow! With a hurricane in East and an Earthquake and Tsunami warning in the west as well as the return of SpaceX Dragon from the International Space Station, its great week for Current Events. I taught 2 years of Language Arts and started doing Current Event reports as a way to get students to read more relevant informative texts, when I returned to science, I continued the practice and have found that it is a good way to get students to see how science is a part of their daily lives.

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SciCurrentEvent_Template.doc (0.16 Mb)

Tabitha, What a great way to get students to read about science in the world around them. Your template is very complete and attractive. How often do you have students do this? Once a week, everyday, or what? Thanks for sharing!

Tabitha - Also this past week - Earthquakes in Canada and Costa Rica & the story about seven Geologists in Italy being sent to jail for failure of earthquake predictions and resulting loss of life (this was a very controversial ruling). Thanks for sharing your current event template. It's terrific! I'll probably adapt it for Current Event Reports/Presentations for my high school Biology and Geology courses. Dorothy

I was amazed when my daughter came home this afternoon and informed me that portions of her study area were being evacuated because of the hurricane. We live in Wisconsin - but the storm is expected to produce up to 30 foot waves on Lake Michigan. Nor'easter winds also affect the southern part of the state, as well as the Chicago area. How is the hurricane affecting you, even if you don't live in the direct line of the storm?

I have students do Current Events once a month because they have to do an Oral Presentation as well and class time is limited. But it is a good idea to have different due dates so that you don't end up with a lot of the same article/story. It definitely has been a great conversation starter and/or intro. to a "Teachable moment".

Jennifer, I live in the western part of Missouri and everything is going on here as usual. But there is a lot of talk and concern for those in harms way.

Hi Tabitha! I teach at an alternative education school and I find that including current events is absolutely crucial. We are still experiencing the weather in PA from Hurricane Sandy and what I did for tie in was to show the passage of the weather pattern in the Northeast and specifically in our area. Then we tried to predict what we thought would happen next as a result of the storm. We did "what if's" and guessed what our next day's weather would be like including precip. Every day during home room, we collect the precip and have a pool in which the kids guess what they thought the 24 total precip was. The winner gets a fortune cookie - talk about making predictions! Attached is a program I took from the AMS that helped me a lot as far as weather, climate, and atmospheric sciences. If you are interested, it is a great program! Thanks for the post! JJ

Current events are a wonderful way to keep the students involved in the community and local events. At the Kindergarten level I would choose an event from the local newspaper and share it with the students. They would be able to identify the important information by using the guidelines of who?, what?, when?, where?, and how? We are lucky enough to have the local newspaper delivered to our school every morning for each classroom to have copies of. Currently we will take a look at the elections, discuss the voting process and then refer back to the newpaper as a means of reviewing the results.

This is a great template for me as I guide the conversation and discussion with my students. I teach kindergarten and enjoy using currents events to have rich discussion and make connections. I try to allow them to talk and share their thoughts and perspectives. For example we had a tsunami warning this last week Saturday. I teach at a school that is in an inundation zone. It was interesting to hear their thoughts and feelings about a wave or lots of water that might come. How they had fun and liked tsunamis because they get to go to their cousin's house and play. Thank you for the template.

I find that current events are always a GREAT way to talk about how science is intertwined with other subjects like history and communication skills (language arts). The classic example that you could use in the case of hurricane Sandy is to talk about how environmental disasters impact our laws and what role, if any, the federal government should play in helping local communities cope with the disaster. If you consider the entire country, natural disasters are unfortunately more common than most people would think.

Living in Texas we hear a lot about hydrolic fracking as a way yo recover oil from shale. There is some controversy as to whether or not hydrolic fracking can cause earth quakes. Potential contamination of watersheds is another potential problem. I would like to develop an effective unit for my early college students. So far I have located a great video of the fracking process and would welcome any other resources or ideas http://www.northernoil.com/drilling

A upcoming Nova Program will look at whether or not Sandy was an anomalous super storm or a preview of things to come Was Hurricane Sandy a freak combination of weather systems? Or are hurricanes increasing in intensity due to a warming climate? How did this perfect storm make search and rescue so dangerous? "Inside the Megastorm" takes viewers moment by moment through Hurricane Sandy, its impacts, and the future of storm protection. Through first person accounts http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/inside-the-megastorm.html

Using Current Events to teach science lessons is a great idea! I know how excited my students get when we I bring in a newspaper article or they read about an event in their Scholastic News. When Hurricane Sandy hit, my students generated at least 30 minutes of conversation about what they saw on television and then they had millions of questions to ask me about hurricanes. The same thing happened with the tsunami. Current Events will definitely help the students relate science to their daily lives and show the importance of learning about it.

Current Events are excellent ways of keeping learning relevant. In the recent weeks, we have seen Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Hurricanes. I have used the Earthquake that generated a Tsunami in one of my lessons last week. Although it didn't go great, my students were engaged and they all had personal experiences that they could contribute to the discussion of plate tectonics and how Tsunamis and Earthquakes are related. I've been planning a lesson on the effects of Hurricane Sandy, but haven't been able to organize it into a time frame that would fit my school's schedule.