Iceland’s Northern Lights
I chose to discuss the article “Iceland’s Northern Lights” with my classroom because it’s a fun and interesting article that can be tied into a science lesson. While the article does discuss the increase of accidents due to tourist activity and lack of experience driving on the roads in iceland, I think that it still ties in nicely because it a current event being discusses on a large news platform.
The first thing I would do with this article and this lesson would be to hand out a copy to every student face down. I would make the introduction to the article a game. I will put a list of words on the board and the students have thirty seconds to find as many of the words that that they can. This was an idea found from another teacher, that was used to teach current events and it is a great way to introduce an article in a fun and a relevant to student learning way. After doing this introduction I would popcorn read around the room, this way every student gets a chance to read and I can tell this way if all the students are following along.
After reading the article aloud, I would ask the students what they thought was interesting and what they thought that they might want to know more about the Northern Lights. After hearing what the students had to say, I would pull up a youtube video about the lights for the students to actually see what it is all about and have a rounded idea of what they are and what they look like.
Some student problem that could come about when working with this article is students not understanding that the article is a gateway into the Northern Lights and they will become over focused on some of the driving statistics given in the article. A misconception that could show through is students not knowing or understanding were Iceland is and what they weather is like there. Students might not understand what the significance of the northern lights are but that should hopefully be cleared up after teaching more on the topic.
https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/blog/human-interest-news-stories/icelands-northern-lights/
