My Current Events Project

             For my current events project, I worked with my colleague Matt. We chose to base our current events presentation and activity on mass shootings in America. We found an article from the LA Times that puts these mass shootings in order from the most recent dating all the way back to 1984. We created a PowerPoint presentation in which we introduced the topic, and provided additional resources for students to use in their research. As our activity, we provided a variety of online resources to create timelines of some of the major shootings in America. We showed how there are many different types of timelines and linked a bunch of resources to the PowerPoint. 

          Through the process of designing a current events lesson, I saw the importance of implementing current events in the classroom. We decided to use a timeline after reading the article from the Free Technology for Teachers website. The article named timelines as one way to allow students to visually explore the news. I can definitely see myself using current event in my future classroom. Depending one what grade I teach I will have to adjust my lesson. Obviously, I would not use an article on mass shootings in a first grade classroom. I would adjust the articles I use and the activities I implement so that they are appropriate for the grade level. I would definitely use the Newsela website because you can increase and decrease the lexile level to fit the grade level. This will be a great resource to use in my future classroom.