On Thin Ice | Time for Kids
The article I chose is from Time for Kids, which is a spin off of the New York Times for children, and it discusses Polar Bears and them becoming extinct due to loss of ice in the artic. I chose this platform because it has some great features for teachers and students. For teachers the articles are broken down into grade levels so all you have to do is pick your grade, and go through the articles presented. For students, every article has words highlighted that students might have trouble with at that level. When you click on the highlighted word it brings up a definition, making this a great article to use on the smart board or iPads so students have access to those features.
The first thing I would do with this article is pull it up on the smartboard, and read it as a class, and use the vocabulary features. Reading the article on the smart board allows us to access those features and further students understanding.
This article is at a second grade level, so I suspect that some students may have some misunderstandings or misconceptions. Some students may believe that the ice caps are melting simply becuase it is just getting warmer, but there is more behind the ice caps melting. Some students may not understand the connection between the melting of the ice caps and the effect it has on the polar bears.
An alternative platform that I would use to teach this lesson would be finding a book that is related to the topic of this article. This would be another great way, especially for this grade level, to bring more information to the table and make more informational connections for students. This is also another great way to show students the logic of research. For example: we found this article in the news about a current event, and then we discussed it, and then we found more books that connect to it and provide us with more information and building our knowledge. I would use this concept of learning over and over in my classroom because it is a great gateway into bigger research projects.
