The celebration of Constitution Day will be on Friday this week, September 17. On this historic day in 1787, 39 of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention signed their names and put the weight of their reputations and service to their country behind the document. The subsequent ratification process was what really tested and embodied [...]

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This coming weekend, we will observe the ninth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, a devastating day in our nation’s history.   The direct attacks on American targets and the resulting loss of nearly 3,000 lives inspired a renewed sense of patriotic vigilance and focused our attention on family and [...]

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  Divide the class into small groups. Have the groups search all sections of USA TODAY to find an article about recent developments in education. (Each group should have a different article to discuss.)   Have each group spend 5-10 minutes reading the article. Then, list facts they find from the article in the following categories: [...]

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  Engage your class in a discussion activity about the practice of segregation and the idea of borders.  Define “borders” both literally and figuratively, and identify different types of borders (national, geographic, religious, economic, ethnic, educational, etc.) in the large group discussion.  On the board, list examples of those types of “dividing lines.”   Separating [...]

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  Opinions, perceptions and fact:   Using any section of USA TODAY, select an article about a famous, successful or notorious person. Pick a person (such as someone from social media, sports, apparel, movies, food, politics, etc.) that students recognize or will find interesting.   Create a three-column chart on the class board. Label one [...]

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  Spend a couple of minutes reviewing the difference between facts and opinions with your students. Have them evaluate why it is important to know the difference. Then, in pairs, have them read the Letters to the editor in today’s newspaper. The editors receive hundreds of letters per day, so what made this day’s selection [...]

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Facebook has been in the news a lot recently, both because of its privacy policies and because it has now reached over 500 million members and is a worldwide presence. Clearly, most people, including teens, love using this technology to meet social needs. However, how could technology that is essentially built for social networking also [...]

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A major story has hovered on the edge of the news in the past months – the U.S. Census.    The counting of Americans is important for many reasons, since it is the major way we get a picture of the make-up and placement of our population. Major issues are involved, such as building, closing or [...]

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  The novel To Kill a Mockingbird has its 50th anniversary this week and is considered one of the best American novels of the past century. The story of racism and redemption set in the Great Depression of the 1930s was endearing partly because it was told through the innocent eyes of a young girl. [...]

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  The big news in sports last week was the 11 hour, 5 minute Wimbledon match between USA’s John Isner and France’s Nicolas Mahut. In professional tennis, men play the best of five sets (meaning the opponent who wins three sets (of the five) is the winner. In a “set” the players play until a [...]

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