Free Current Events Worksheets and Printables

Published:
March 18, 2015

Carrie Fernandez

Contributor:
Carrie

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Are you learning about current events with your middle school and high school kids? Grab these free current events worksheets and printables to help your students answer questions about the news around the world today.

Why is teaching current events important?

The main idea of studying current events is to help your students understand just how significant people are in the community around us and how what people do is completely impactful. Children also comprehend how events and issues in the news affect others. Current events also intrigue students about the world around them, as they take their eyes off of themselves and towards others.

Discussing Current Events as a Family

One of my favorite parts of the day is sitting together at dinner and discussing current events as a family. We’ve been truly surprised discovering how much our children are interested in the world around them. We absolutely know that if we do not share current events with them from a Biblical perspective, the world will teach them from a worldly perspective. This has become extremely important to us.

Our children grow and it is crucial that they rest in God’s truth no matter what is going on in the world. It is also beneficial for them to think of the context of world news and local events firstly with a Biblical view.

Where can I find current events for students?

Of course, the internet is FULL of information. It is important that we can guide our kids to search for sources that are appropriate and as unbiased as possible. That is my focus. The news was once just reporting the facts and somehow has shifted some.

Most sources are extremely biased and in my opinion, slightly dangerous because of it. So, here are some news sources that may help with sharing news with kids in a less swayed environment – well in as much as possible anyway.

Free Current Events News Sources for Kids

DOGOnews – This site is an academic kids news source of current events. The articles can be searched by interest level from Grade K-1 all the way to Grade 11-12. The articles can be sorted by grade level or category.

Teen Kids News (TKN) – All of TKN’s reporters are teenagers. The source is geared towards 6th to 12th grade. If your students enjoy visual arts they will really enjoy this teen-focused and eye-catching site. And yes, some kids act as a news reporter for this site.

PBS Newshour – This site offers news articles and videos on various current event topics for 7th to 12th graders. Sort which content they need by subject area or check out lesson plans related to current events and media literacy to spread throughout your academic year.

Youngzine – This is an online news magazine bringing current events to children in a simple AND unbiased way. It has appropriate context and the articles can be sorted by category for students from the 3rd to 12th grade.

BBC’s Newsround – This BBC source provides news articles and programs of course of British, but also international news useful for our students. And here is a WIN, it includes games and quizzes from 2nd grade to 12th grade.

News-O-Matic: Reading for Kids Free App – This is a Daily Newspaper app for kids of the ages 6–14. You will find 100+ news articles each month in varying topics.

Christian Biblical View News Sources

World Kids – This site helps your children (grades 1st to 5th) to read current events in the news critically from the United States and around the globe. They learn to sift through the articles for truth, knowledge and relate it to everyday issues.

The Briefing by Albert Mohler –Albert Mohler has The Briefing, a 20-minute podcast of several news events and with comments from a biblical perspective. It will help your young learners to develop their Christian worldview. This is good for older teens before they become young adults.

God’s World News – This is a subscription magazine, but it is super cool. There are three different publications. For reading level ages 3 – 6 there is God’s Big World, for ages 7 -10 is World Kids Explore, and for ages 11 – 14 is World Teen Discern.

Kids Go Global – This site helps kids explore, act, inspire, and embrace the news in varying subjects like animal rights, food, nations, going green, culture, and more. This is for students in the grade levels elementary, junior, and high school to explore global impacts and issues.

How to Teach Current Events

Now we know where we can find some credible sources, now what? Children can read articles all day, but how do we get the most out of what they are reading. It isn’t enough to give our kids reading assignments of current events.

There are several ways we can get the most out of our current events lessons in homeschool. Check out these different ways to teach current events:

  1. Compare information for news sources. Students can compare articles to analyze which items in news sources are fact and which are opinion, what is similar, and where they differ.
  2. After reading news articles, you can task your students to create possible impacts, after effects, conclusions, or resolutions to the news topic.
  3. Graphing news story data. Have your students explore articles that lend themselves well to graphing information. This provides graphing practice and helps them visualize the information provided.
  4. Think About the Five Ws. The great questions of who, what, where, why, and what of a news article help students highlight the important parts of the news article.
  5. Opinion responses. Task your students to choose an article then write responses from two or more different perspectives. This is a great way for students to focus on their own opinions and put them down on paper.
  6. Charting and reporting the weather. Check out the weather section in your news source and have your student graph weather over a period of time. They then can write an article about the weather during that period, maybe even in different regions.
  7. Task your students to read news articles as part of their daily routine and then summarize the gist of the article. Students can provide a brief summary in 5 sentences or less. Summarizing news articles as daily writing prompts are actually meaningful assignments.
  8. Use article current event locations for a brief geography lesson. Have your students check out the global news and learn more about the area of the article. What country is this city located in, what is the culture there, what are the coordinates, etc.

Any one of these ideas can help you expound on your current event lessons at home as additional resources for learning. Grab the resources below to help as well to improve your students’ personal writing standards with current events.

Free Current Events Worksheets and Printables

Middle School and High School Current Events Worksheet – This worksheet contains questions that can accompany any current events news article. Students select their own article helps students identify the main issues of a news article, the moral question of the article (if present), and to consider any possible bias in the writing of the article.

Current Events Unit Study – Help your students with creating a unit study based on current events. The topics include hygiene, physical, mental, and/or emotional health viruses, effects a crisis has on an economy, and more!

Tough Topics with Kids – Help your children talk to your kids about the news. Grab these ten questions to start conversing about tough topics in the news with your students.

Free Printable Current Events Worksheets – The Curriculum Corner has developed these current events resource worksheets to help go alongside your lessons plans. If your child is in an age group ready for learning about world events or current related issues.

Resources to Teach Events – The internet is filled with free access to digital media with different perspectives. However, these are more educational free online news sources for the young people in your homeschool.

Printable for Researching Current Events – News articles or digital current events articles are plentiful. Now how can our children learn to get the most out of them? Grab this free printable to use when they are trying to research current events.

Our Favorite Current Events Resources:

God’s World News with Free Current Events Journal Page – God’s World News is a resource we use often in our homeschool. In our home, we want to stick to and adhere to a Christian Worldview. Therefore, providing our kids with a news source they can review, read, do research from with our worldview is extremely important. OH! And don’t forget to grab your free journal page in various content areas.

Top Christian Worldview Current Events Resources – We have to keep our young students abreast of real world current events. However, it can be really difficult, especially when we want them to view the happenings of the world from a Christian perspective. Check out these awesome sites that explore topics around the world but still impact our faith and our culture.

Free Current Events Notebook

Instant Download from WriteBonnieRose:  Free Current Events Notebook – Help your high school students think through what they see or hear on the news, dig deeper, and form their own conclusions with this Current Events Notebook. Choose from several current event templates to help your student record everything from basic info to information from multiple sources. 

Current Events Can Be Overwhelming

Remember that all these news stories CAN be information overload. Whether it be a failure in women’s rights, natural disasters, military action / inaction, political unrest, or other newsworthy happenstances, they can weigh heavy even on adults.

Unplugging from Stressful Current Events

It’s important to show your students how to wind down. Use some time to teach your kids about “unplugging.” Understanding that though they may hear so much information via news sources and social media, it is equally as important – if not more- to make sure to put the source aside.

Children can learn early on that although the happenings of the world may be seen overwhelming, they also have to power to turn it all off and just enjoy the current events happening in their own life right at that moment.

Remember to remind your kids about this verse as they see the current events presenting themselves around the world.

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” – Psalm 24:1