Thursday Throwdown & a Freebie!!

This month's Thursday Throwdown features one of my new TpT products. My Thursday Throwdown comes from an idea I had while teaching 6^th grade social studies a few years back. 
 

Every week I would try to include some sort of current events lesson into my planner.  My kiddos love watching Channel One News. Do you remember watching Channel One News??? I know we watched it when I was in high school …and that is coming up on over 10 years ago: EEK! We would watch it every morning before the bell would ring. In those days there were very little graphics and hardly any music. Channel One for today’s generation looks nothing like when I was in school. Not only does it have the great news coverage but it also includes different segments that really catch my student’s attention. The Week in rap is one of my favorites!

Here is this weeks “Week in Rap”

So How do I add in my LA flair now that I no longer teach SS? Every Friday we work on leaving constructive feedback and comments. We live in a digital world and with all of these wonderful  features of social media our students need to know how to leave constructive comments that build on ideas or ask questions and not create hateful comments that leave the writer wishing they never would have brought up their ideas. 

One way to practice adding professional, constructive feedback is through my Twitter Account Activity! 

Here is how it works: 

      1. Start the lesson by handing out twitter activity page and asking that the students create a school appropriate “twitter” account. All they need to do is create a user name- mine was missc123
      2. Then I tell the students that we will be watching an episode of www.channelone.com or http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/ and they will need to summarize one or two things they found interesting.
      3. Once they have finished watching the episode give them time to write their 4-5 sentences. 
      4.  Once completed the fun begins! I normally give a few directions on how to write quality comments. A quality comment is not “ya man I agree” or “that’s cool” In order to leave a quality comment they need to respond and then, when appropriate, ask a follow up question. 

      5. I set the timer for 2 minutes and ask that they not talk but swap papers with someone across the room. They have 2 min. to read the persons thoughts and respond. They need to leave their user name on  the first line -example @missc123

        6.  I normally repeat step 5 a few times so they fill up all the comment spots
        7. Finally I ask that they return the paper back to the original owner and create a few final thoughts reflection.

To close the activity (especially the first time) I ask the students what they learned from the activity!

Almost every time I do this activity they learn these lessons:

1.       Perspective – It’s nice to be able to read what other people ACTUALLY think about the topic not just the “that’s cool” or “wow dude that was interesting” comments that usually come up!

2.       Variety- The next time they do this activity many students say that they pay more attention to the smaller details so that way everyone isn’t writing about the same topic. 

I am posted this lesson to my TpT account as a freebie so download and enjoy! Have a great Thursday!!