This past year my school district purchased several iPad and MacBook carts for our school and really pushed technology in the classroom. I wanted to create a way for students to complete current events products using this new technology that went beyond simply searching for an article and printing it off. What I found was a great website called Smore where you can create a variety of online flyers.
Since we were doing current events, I had students create a news bulletin flyer so they could essentially create their own newspaper. I chose to complete this project during our Middle East unit since there is constantly breaking news coming out of that area, and I found that several students didn’t truly understand what was happening, or were only going off of what they had heard people say about the events in the Middle East.
I had students work in groups of three and each had to pretend that they were a news reporter stationed in either Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan. Each student then spent time researching what was happening in the country they picked by reading news articles and summarizing the key information.
The great part about this project was it was also a great way to get students writing. A lot of our students struggled with summarizing and putting information into their own words in their English class, so I took this opportunity for them to practice the skill in my class.
