Toolkit

Current Event

Current Events Toolkit

This toolkit provides flexible and adaptable tools and strategies for integrating current events into your teaching.

Published: July 25, 2022

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Toolkit

Language

English — US

Subject

Civics & Citizenship
History
Social Studies

Grade

6–12

Democracy & Civic Engagement

Overview

Our current events toolkit offers tools and strategies to help teachers organize discussions on current events in their classrooms. We recommend that teachers who are just getting started addressing current events with their students—or who are looking to learn new strategies for engaging students in discussions about the news or controversial topics—begin by exploring the resources in the toolkit.

This toolkit is designed to be flexible. You can use all of the resources or choose a selection best suited to your classroom. It includes:

Tools for organizing discussions about current events
Recommended teaching strategies

Inside this Toolkit

Guide

This guide includes tools and strategies for organizing discussions about current events in your classroom.

Photo of students seated in a classroom.

Guide

The ideas and tools in this guide will help you prepare students to engage in reflective conversations on topics that matter, whether you are in a remote, hybrid, or in-person setting.

Mini-Lesson

Journals provide students with space to process their thoughts, feelings, and uncertainties during this difficult time. Use the tips and writing prompts in this resource to help your students establish a practice of journaling.

Teaching Strategy

This strategy uses reflection prompts to help students consider a complex or emotional topic through the lenses of head, heart, and ethics.

Teaching Strategy

Develop a classroom contract to create a community of mutual respect and inclusion.

Two students discussing and looking at a paper

Teaching Strategy

Educators will create a practice of student journaling to help their students critically examine their surroundings and make informed judgments.

Teaching Strategy

Invite students to nonverbally communicate something they have read or watched, using a color, a symbol, and an image.

Teaching Strategy

Help students process their thoughts and emotions on a topic by engaging them in a written conversation with their classmates.

Students adding post-it notes to a white board.

Teaching Strategy

Use this quick way for students to demonstrate their engagement with a text, image, or video by having them identify what they find surprising, interesting, and troubling.

Three students sitting in a classroom with one of the students talking.

Teaching Strategy

Get all students involved by asking them to show their stance on a statement through their positioning around the room.

A students talks with other students in a classroom

Teaching Strategy

This discussion strategy helps students practice being both active speakers and active listeners in a group conversation.

Four students sitting at a table with one student talking and gesturing.

Teaching Strategy

Students have a written conversation with peers and use silence as a tool to explore a topic in depth.

Group of students writing on large piece of chart paper.

Teaching Strategy

Structure an active class discussion in which students express their opinions by standing along a continuum.

Students discussing in pairs facing each other

Teaching Strategy

Students mimic a town hall meeting as they share their perspectives on a topic.

Three students sit together in a classroom

Teaching Strategy

Educators will structure a discussion that uses journaling and group work to strengthen students’ listening skills.

Teaching Strategy

Encourage students to recognize the multiple causal factors behind an event from history, the present, or literature, using the visual of an iceberg.

Teaching Strategy

Teach your students to become critical viewers of film with this four-step procedure.

Teaching Strategy

Guide students’ analysis of a photograph, artwork, or video with this simple critical-viewing strategy.

A white board with photos of different locations from around the world

Teaching Strategy

Help students interpret an image by “framing” smaller portions of the image and analyzing them.

An illustration with portions framed with post-its.

Teaching Strategy

Use this strategy to improve students’ reading skills and help them connect ideas in a text to their own lives, current events, and history.

A close-up of an open book in someone's hands

Teaching Strategy

Deepen students' understanding of a topic by having them connect to their prior knowledge.

Teaching Strategy

This teaching strategy invites students to think about the “tools” they have access to that can help them take care of themselves and their community in the wake of traumatic news.

A student in a grey sweatshirt looks down at a paper with a pencil in hand.

Teaching Strategy

This strategy helps students engage with oral histories in order to deepen their understanding of how past events impacted individuals and communities, and to gain new perspectives on the present.

Facing History & Ourselves is designed for educators who want to help students explore identity, think critically, grow emotionally, act ethically, and participate in civic life. It’s hard work, so we’ve developed some go-to professional learning opportunities to help you along the way.

Professional Learning

Virtual

Listen to #DisruptTexts founder Julia Torres about taking a critical lens to text selection in ELA classrooms.

Three students at table, working on a project

Professional Learning

Virtual

Issues of equity and education have long existed in our country and continue to manifest today. How can writing and the power of one's voice help us respond to these disparities? Listen to writer and educator, Dr. Clint Smith, where we hear his poetry and reflections on working for justice, equity, and civic agency in our schools.

Professional Learning

Virtual

Explore approaches to centering student voice, building authentic relationships and cultivating community with Molly Josephs, the creator of This Teenage Life, a youth-driven, story-sharing podcast that started as a school club.

More Like This View Upcoming Events View On-Demand Events

The resources I’m getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable.

— Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Current Events Toolkit