Have you heard about The New York Times’ Summer Reading Challenge?
While promoting reading of the Times, this challenge also encourages reading of more non-fiction and current events of the students’ choice and more discussion of the content. This year, the Times will repeatedly ask students to post their thoughts (400 words or less) in response to the question “What interested you most in the Times this week?” They can comment upon an article, photo, podcast, graphic, etc. and the page for this week is here.
The Times cites rationale for this project in an earlier posting: In “The Crush of Summer Homework,” last August, particularly the comments by University of Michigan Professor of Education Elizabeth Birr Moje.
This seems like an excellent way to encourage students to think about a wide variety of issues and should give them a much-needed broader perspective prior to choosing topics to explore for class projects. I see potential application for our American Studies classes, IGGS, Senior Writers' Seminar, Global Voices, English Language Learners ....
1 comment:
Ms. S! We're really thrilled that you've posted this, and are going to tweet it to encourage other teachers and librarians to do the same. We're hopeful that kids from all over the place will write in with honest and funny and thoughtful comments, and promotion like this will definitely help!
--Katherine Schulten, NYT Learning Network Editor
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