For as long as I have been teaching, I have been sending out daily e-mails to my co-workers about a great article I read or story I heard on NPR that had something to do with what they are teaching to their students.
The first time I experienced the power of how a news story could change the dynamics of a class was while I was students teaching in Oregon. I had developed a three week unit on Ancient China examining oracle bones, long held as the oldest evidence of character writing known to archeologists.
While the details of whole thing escape me years later, the connection was an article in a newspaper that changed and recast the dates of the information in the textbooks. Students saw that history was not fixed and ancient but that it was an active process, one they could be a part of discovering.
Everyday, I will be providing a link, or several links, to stories that will connect your students to what you are studying in class, or perhaps take their studies in a new direction. If you find a link that has helped you, share it with me.
I will be tagging all posts so that in time, we have a collection of stories and sites that span across the curriculum.
About Me
- Jim Morrison
- I am a middle school teacher with about a 10 years of experience in the classroom teaching Language Arts, History, and Humanities. I believe that by providing them with real connections between the curriculum and the world around us, students experience more ownership and authenticity in their learning. The answers to the perennial questions about why history, or any subject, is important can be found in the headlines, galleries, and voices that will be featured on this page.
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You have been in the conversation for some time. I'm glad you have a home to call your own now.
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