Finding trustoworthy middle school friendly news and current events sources has never been more important.
In today’s fast-paced world where news is constantly at our fingertips, the news cycle can feel intimidating to everyone. As a Social Studies teacher, there is more pressure than ever to ensure students are media literate, particularly with the multitude of well… questionable places they may get their news. These 5 websites are a great place to get kids started down the road of civics, current events, and media literacy in and outside of the classroom!
If you have your students writing feature articles using news sources as mentor texts, check out this blogpost.
Newsela
Newsela is a great way to give students a breakdown of stories in the news cycle and is ideal for current events assignments. It curates news stories and other content. You can use Newsela to enhance literacy skills, facilitate discussions, and engage students with relevant topics. The platform also offers assessments and resources to track student progress. A great feature of Newsela is that it allows you to change the lexile score on articles allowing you to differentiate it for students of all needs!
Time For Kids
This spin off of the popular time magazine is another great resource for kids in breaking down current events. The articles cover a wide range of topics including a section devoted solely to the 2024 election, and is able to be broken down by age level to further support your students! This resource also has age appropriate opinion based question for anyone who wants to do a discussion or socratic seminar based lesson!
Dogonews
If you are looking for a website that covers a wide range of topics in a kid friendly format, Dogonews has a multitude of topics to pique your students’ interest. From articles about the past, scientific curiosities and civics based current events, this website provides articles for students of all different interests!
PBS Newshour Classroom
This resource not only provides accessible and up to date articles for your students to enjoy, but also provides some great resources for teachers as well. From lesson plans for different ways to get your students engaged in current events, to examples of classroom voices around the nation on various topics, PBS Newshour will be a hit for both you and your students! This resource also provides articles on an array of topics including ELA, Civics, and STEM among other topics
CNN10
Unlike these other resources, CNN 10 provides students news in a resource in a medium they may be more familiar with, video content! CNN10 is a 10 minute video breaking down this weeks global and national news. This format may be more accessible for students who have a more visual learning style, and the recommended age for this source is 13 and up.
