Current Issues
Classroom activities to engage students in learning about and discussing issues in the news
Quick quizzes and facts about water use, climate change, and controversy surrounding California's record drought.
In this short activity, pegged to a planned nationwide strike by low-wage workers on April 15, students discuss the growing movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
In this lesson students discuss reactions to the police killing of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, in North Charleston, South Carolina. Students consider quotes and discuss two short videos.
Students analyze and discuss photos to learn about the impact of climate change, resilience, and the climate justice movement.
Students consider three numbers: the Obama administration's newly announced target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions; the target scientists advise; and the zero target called for by many conservatives.
In this brief lesson, students consider competing rights, including the right not to be discriminated against vs. the right of religious freedom.
Students learn about the cyclone that devastated the Pacific nation of Vanuatu on March 14, 2015, and how it relates to climate change, then send a message to Vanuatu's UN representative.
Through reading, discussion, and small group activities, students learn about three relatively unknown women in the civil rights movement: Diane Nash, Virginia Durr, and Claudette Colvin.
Students consider nonviolence and violence by discussing the reactions of activists, the police, and others to the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, MO, on March 12, 2015.
Francis Perkins would not agree to become FDR's secretary of labor until he met nine bold demands.