Navigating Scholastic News Online
DEAR TEACHER,
Welcome to Scholastic News Online, the best source on the Web for news, games, and activities for students in grades 1 through 8. We know how difficult it can be to find appropriate, reliable Web sites for your students. That's why we have designed Scholastic News Online to provide content that is accurate, unbiased, appropriate, and up to date. Created by The Most Trusted Name in Learning, Scholastic News Online does not just present the news, but reflects the interests and educational needs of your students. It is an excellent primary resource for teaching current events and informational literacy skills. It's also an exciting online complement to the print editions of Scholastic's award-winning classroom magazines, including Scholastic News, Junior Scholastic, DynaMath, Super Science, Science World, Action, Scope, and Storyworks. So get ready-online fun and learning is just a click away! Here are some of the exciting features you will find:
Classroom Magazine Connections
Subscribers to Scholastic's Classroom Magazines can visit the site for score-yourself quizzes, activities, links, and background information related to stories in the current issue of each magazine. Students can also vote online in the weekly debate, and participate in a blog discussion of the current Sticky Situations for Scholastic News 4 and Scholastic News 5–6. Teachers will find reproducibles and printable Teacher's Editions for each issue online, as well as specially developed lesson plans for how to use blogs in the classroom. Check it out here:
Don't wait until the news gets cold! Today's News will keep you and your students up to date on the latest and breaking news. News stories also include critical-thinking questions to spark classroom discussion about important topics of the day. At the end of each story, your students will have a chance to post comments on a kid-friendly blog.
Some complex current events call for more-in-depth coverage and background. In this section, you will find thorough, kid-friendly explorations of important themes, from Election 2008 to the latest news about outer space. Special
Reports include news stories, background information, interactive games, links to kid-appropriate sites, lesson plans, and ready-to-print worksheets.
Are you and your students always on the go? Many of our news reports are available as podcasts that you can download and enjoy on your iPod or other MP3 player. You can also share them with the whole class on your computer.
Wherever news is happening, Scholastic's Kid Reporters are on the scene. By interviewing newsmakers, investigating breaking stories, and blogging about ongoing news issues, our young reporters show kid power in action. To find out how students can apply to be a member of the Press Corps, check out About the Scholastic Kids Press Corps.
This survey question empowers students by inviting them to weigh in on a new hot topic each week. Students can cast a vote, then see the results broken down by age, gender, and state. They can also join an online discussion about the topic each week.
When kids click on this section, they think they're just having fun. But you know that they are building skills in geography, vocabulary, current events, citizenship, writing, and other curriculum areas! Students can travel the world with Mapman® or rule the White House in our You're the President game. Other popular games include What's Your News IQ?, and Write the Caption.
Our exclusive interviews, movie previews, and other tidbits from pop culture keep kids clicking back for more. Question-and-answer features can help teach budding young journalists how to conduct an interview and how to use that information to write a story.
Meeting the Standards
Scholastic News Online is designed to support the teaching of standards-based skills. Regular use of the site will help teachers develop student skills in several curriculum areas, including social studies, reading, language arts, geography, science, and math. See our Standards Correlation for details.
Reading to Learn
Have students use these graphic organizers to take notes on and evaluate what they read on Scholastic News Online.
K-W-L Chart (PDF): Use this organizer to help students activate prior knowledge about current events.
Idea Web (PDF): Use this template to help students focus on main ideas and important details as they read.
T-Chart (PDF): This organizer is the perfect place for students to make and check predictions about online articles or to record facts and opinions from the news.
Get the Scoop (PDF): Have students explore the "Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? and think about the research process as they read Scholastic News and Scholastic News Online stories.
A Site to See (PDF): Guide students to explore and evaluate Scholastic News Online or any other Web site.
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SUBSCRIBE TO CLASSROOM MAGAZINES
Weekly print magazines build student skills and connect classroom learning to timely current events in an accessible, kid-friendly way. Click here to learn more!
TEACHER TOOLS
Build your own free Class Homepage, and don't miss these Technology Tools, Organizers, and Templates from Scholastic.
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Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR.In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, "Fallen Angels". He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club; and a whole unit of other young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of "winning" ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair. "
Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times.
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