You’ve all heard it. Teachers who have taught the same stuff, from the same lesson plans, in the same file cabinet forever. They usually say something along the lines of, “This worked for me when I was in school, so it will work for my students too.” Meanwhile, some of us are saying… “Wow… just wow.”
Now, before you go getting all worked up and tweeting at me with lovely messages, hear me out. I get it. Some things are just great pieces of literature. They deserve to be read. Social studies teachers love, as they should, their primary source documents. I completely get the fact that there is a good bit of quality stuff that is old.
My issue, however, is the fact that some teachers ONLY teach the old stuff. It is bad enough that so many are deathly afraid of touching technology. Heaven forbid you ask them to use technology to get current texts for their students to read and discuss…. but that is what must happen.
Kids don’t deserve to be forced to sit and endure life of a hundred years ago all day. We don’t live in a time capsule, so they shouldn’t either. If you want to keep kids engaged, hit them with some current events that are… wait for it… actually current. Read them, discuss them, debate them… enjoy them.
Now, here comes the hard part. Where do you get these wonderful resources? That my friend, is where life gets good. There are tons of great resources out there to freshen up your content. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
First and foremost: Newsela. Newsela is by far the favorite in my toolbox. You get a constant feed of articles to read in a huge variety of subject areas. Science, Social Studies, Technology, etc… it’s all there, and it’s got it all. There are some other great features about Newsela as well. You even get a free 30 trial of the PRO features. To check out some of those, see my other posts about it. HERE
Science folks… want even more science? Check out this little gem, Science News for Students. This one has a great collection of student friendly articles that are current. It doesn’t have the flexible reading levels of Newsela, but it does give you a readability level for each article. You can sort by topic as well.
For the ELA world. Let’s be real. Classic literature reigns supreme when it comes to text complexity. It is enduring, and has stood the test of time. So, if you want to freshen up the content, but don’t want to give up the great classics, what do you do? This one isn’t nearly as difficult as you may think. You pair things up. Paired readings are the way to go. You can find modern non-fiction articles that relate to some of the more classical titles. This takes a little more work on the teacher’s part, but it is well worth it. Are you reading Night by Elie Weisel? There is a ton of quality non-fiction material to pair with. Keep in mind, it is your responsibility to check for appropriateness for your audience. An example of this would be the recent shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. Certainly not something suitable for all audiences, but can be a powerful discussion.
Another example for pairing up great literature would be A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord. Pair this one up with a modern salvage operation of an old ship. This provides a great opportunity to discuss how technology has changed as well.
So, now you ask, where do you get some of these classic pieces? There are a couple of options here, such as Gutenberg.org or commonlit.org. Both of these are great resources to get quality literature… for free. Commonlit even has some great tools to assign literature to students and get some great data out of it. You can read more about those great tools HERE and HERE.
One last little tidbit to toss out. In case you have not noticed, YouTube is the rabbit hole everyone falls down every now and again. There are some great tools on YouTube such as Minute Book Reports (kid friendly) and Thug Notes (NOT kid friendly). Both of these are great opportunities for to learn about literature. Just be careful, like I said, Thug Notes has plenty of profanity. You can also have kids create something similar as an assignment… well, maybe not the Thug Notes one. 🙂
The key here is to keep things evolving as you plan your lessons. Freshen up the lessons, add those things kids really want to know more about. Keep it fresh, and the kids will love you for it.