“The World” – Senior Current Issues, SSR and Memiary

Every Tuesday and Thursday for the remainder of the school year during first hour Senior Current Issues we will use the Chrome books for SSR. We will run an online stopwatch down from 15:00 following the Pledge.

You are to use the Chrome books to read about Current Issues of the World. You may choose whatever topic you wish to. You may go to American news, English news, German or Finnish or Danish news. You may use headphones and tune into National Public Radio or Democracy Now; it’s all your call. I want you on task. My hope is that you focus on pertinent global issues; however, I am not going to become the Chrome book police.

After you are done reading, please go to the website Memiary. Register for an account…and every day we do SSR at the end of the session fill the following for your five blank spaces…

Title and source of the news story or stories that you read.
A reflection that you had concerning your reading.
A reflection that you had concerning your reading.
A reflection that you had concerning your reading.
Write a rhetorical question about the topic.

By repeating the above ritual every Tuesday and Thursday, (and an occasional Monday, Wednesday, or Friday) and keeping a record of it throughout the year, you’ll be able to go back and see what was happening in the world that piqued your interest in your final year of high school. That’s actually kind of cool.

Finally, we will add one more component to this exercise…let’s call it Conversations. This will consist of three 5:00 conversations about recently read topics. We’ll start by taking volunteers; as the year progresses we’ll draw three names. You’ll have five minutes on the clock to talk about your article. You may stay at your seat. Twenty point assignment. And take a couple of questions. Between the readings and the conversations…we will cover a lot of the world in your senior year.

While it is your choice of websites to access, those linked below are some that I find quite useful…