Turn Current Events Into Powerful Lesson Plans

Turn current events into powerful lesson plans. It’s easy to link news to subjects you are working on in class and it’s a great opportunity to link abstract concepts to real life. For instance, the recent extreme cold weather has provoked conversation in the news about the causes of extreme cold and about how such weather conditions influence global warming. As you read or watch the news, bookmark sites or clip articles or make notes from TV reports to use in class.

On the cold weather, news outlets reported on the connection to global warming. Here’s the opening of an article in Salon magazine about the White House and climate change:

“Joining the chorus of voices taking climate deniers to task for suggesting that this week’s unusually cold weather somehow disproves global warming is John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, who released a two-minute video explaining what, exactly, the polar vortex is, and — most crucially — what it has to do with climate change”

Read the rest of the article here. Watch the video by John Holdren here.

An article in The Washington Post describes how the polar vortex works:

As eerie as it sounds, there is no need to dramatize the polar vortex. It is not new. We have faced bitterly cold air before, and we will face it again.

The polar vortex is really just a large air mass that is extremely cold (temperatures fall below -78C, or -108F, during the Northern Hemisphere winter). This concentrated area of cold is encircled by a fast-flowing river of air called the polar night jet. Basically, the jet – with its swiftly moving air current – traps the vortex over and near the poles, north and south.

The article features a great graphic:

The Weather Channel website features an article that explores the debate over where such weather events as the polar vortex are related to global warming:

“In the winter, the 24-hour darkness over the snow and ice-covered polar regions allows a huge dome of cold air to form. This cold air increases the difference in temperature between the pole and the Equator, and leads to an intensification of the strong upper-level winds of the jet stream. The strong jet stream winds act to isolate the polar regions from intrusions of warmer air, creating a ‘polar vortex’ of frigid counter-clockwise swirling air over the Arctic.”

This is just a few of the many articles and resources available on the subject. You may come across articles like these when you read the news, or you can search for them on the Internet when a topic comes up. Using the resources I’ve listed above, you could:

• Create a science lesson on weather using the article and interactive in the Washington Post article. Read the article, then watch the interactive and discuss it.

• For a follow-up lesson, have your child research climate change and write a short report or make an oral presentation. Then show the Weather Channel and the White House videos listed above and discuss how people disagree over the existence and causes of climate change.

• Discuss what role the government has in investigating climate change.

• Have your child present one side of the argument on climate change, then you present the other. Or, make a chart with each argument on either side. Ask your child which argument they think is the strongest argument and why.

• To bring in language arts or rhetoric, discuss the kinds of evidence used by each side. Examine the rhetorical flourishes used by each side. (Rush Limbaugh in the Weather Channel article would be great for this!)

• If your child expresses interest, let them explore further on their own.
  It’s perfectly okay to jumble science, social sciences, government, and language arts. It’s good for a student to see that all knowledge interconnects, plus it helps them store the information in their long-term memory by giving them more references or what I call “hooks”. Educators call this kind of teaching cross-curriculum teaching or teaching across the curriculum. After doing lessons like this several times, you will begin to see your child make these connections themselves.