One of the things I love about teaching science is that it is SO relevant to the lives of my students- even if they don't realize it! There are innumerable ways science affects us all as we go through our daily lives, and most of the time we really don't stop to think about how science is impacting everything we do! My goal is to help students to realize this- of course they aren't going to be thinking about the science around them all the time (or even most of the time!), but hopefully I can help to increase their awareness of how much they are affected by science. I hope that making the connection between the relevance of science to our lives and the topics we discuss in class will increase engagement as we talk about concepts that may not always be easy to grasp. One way I like to try to make this connection is by introducing current events to my students.
Throughout my years of teaching I have changed how I do this. When I first started teaching, I would take the time to go through the newspaper (back then we had a newspaper delivered to our house every day!) each day to find articles that were in some way related to science. At the beginning of every class, I would spend a few minutes sharing some of the articles I found with the students. It seemed that most students enjoyed this, or at least didn't mind how it delayed the classwork of the day for a few minutes! I have gotten away from this for several reasons- we don't get a newspaper anymore, it takes a lot of time to go through the paper EVERY evening to come up with articles to share the next day, and my classroom time is limited with much to do! However, when I do stumble across a science story in my news reading these days (mostly internet-based) that seems particularly interesting or related to topics we are discussing in class, I may share it with my students. So instead of this being an every day activity, it has become more of an every now and then activity.
Another thing I have changed is that I have made students more responsible for bringing current events to our classroom. When I first started teaching, I gave students a one time assignment to find a science current event in a news source and summarize the story. This was usually an assignment for students to complete at the beginning of the school year. Several years ago, I was inspired by other teachers to make this an on-going assignment, due at various times throughout the school year. In other words, students complete many science current event assignments, not just one! I think this is really important, even if the articles students read have nothing to do with our current topics in class. It helps to emphasize the relevance of science, and often students can find something to read about that has a particular interest to them.
One website I have found to be very helpful with this assignment is called
Science News for Students. I share this site with students, and many of them use it for their current event assignments. It is great, because it is constantly updated with new stories, all related somehow to science. The articles are written for students, so they are not too hard (or too easy) for high school students to read and understand. Because they are written for students, they are usually interesting as well, which helps!
The format of the assignment is something I have revised over the years, and continue to revise. The backbone is that I want a good summary paragraph (here is a link for a website that has good tips for writing an article summary that could be shared with students:
How to Write a Summary of an Article) and a paragraph describing the students' thoughts about their articles and the topics. In recent years, I have had a few students share their articles briefly with the class each time we have a current event due. Some students are eager to do this, and some of course are not, but I try to make it low pressure and ask everyone to do this at least once during the school year. Since I am new to blogging, I am considering how my students and I might be able to use this platform to share current events, perhaps taking the pressure off students who aren't comfortable speaking in front of the class.
If you have gotten this far, thanks for sticking with me to read this long post! I have lots more I could say about science current events, but I think I've said enough for one post! If you have done current events with students, I'd love to hear about how you incorporate them into your science classes, or any other thoughts or suggestions you may have.
