Learning from a Distance
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
VOLUME 19 ISSUE 7 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program Learning From a Distance ■ Teachers Notes: Safely Interacting With and Between Students ■ Post Reprint: “Staying creative, staying healthy” ■ Post Reprint: “Coronavirus is a killer. But this artist won’t reduce it to a cartoon villain.” ■ Post Reprint: “The coronavirus is testing us all” ■ Student Activity: What Would You Do? April 17, 2020 NIE.WASHINGTONPOST.COM ©2020 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 19 ISSUE 7 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program IN TRO DUC Tests We Need to Pass TION. With the coronavirus came social distancing — maintaining a six-foot space between people, shuttering businesses that were not deemed essential, wearing masks and closing schools. Teachers, parents and students, using technology and different approaches, have expanded distance learning concepts. We hope Washington Post NIE material support your efforts. Teachers Notes provides additional ideas for using The Post’s news, features, opinion and informational graphics. Some use the reprints and handouts in the three resource guides, others refer to lesson suggestions in the online material and others are self-contained. If you have questions, please contact [email protected]. Michael Cavna in “Staying creative, staying healthy” shares techniques that cartoonists are using during the covid-19 quarantine. He indicates that cartoonists most often do their work in isolation so they have insight to share. Cavna, himself, is a writer, editor and cartoonist. Art Critic Philip Kennicott offers a fascinating look at the virus itself — in the hands of scientists and artists. He begins with the image of a “gray blob with imperfectly MARK PERNICE/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST spherical form and a dark shadow around the characteristically crown-shaped spiky covering” that the electron microscope produces. Your students may have their images and connotations of the virus. Michele L. Norris takes us on another path to consider how we will respond to those around us in these times. Perhaps, getting to know ourselves better, understanding others, working together for community — tests we need to pass. On the cover: JUNGHWA PARK/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST April 17, 2020 ©2020 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 19 ISSUE 7 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program TeachersNOTES Safely Interacting With and Between Students In response to novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and • Let’s Move, May 5, 2010 social distancing, you are teaching your students • “Personal Health Plan,” Sleep, January 15, 2002 through various means away from them. The Washington Post NIE online curriculum guides have • Young Lives at Risk, June 3, 2008 always had you in mind. We provide reprints of selected KidsPost and Post news articles, features, Teachers may ask students to create a personal plan for more healthy living. Review Young Lives at Risk and opinion pieces and guest commentary. We provide the “Personal Health Plan” in Sleep. handouts with discussion questions, research ideas, and a range of suggested activities. Timeline for the Novel Coronavirus Vocabulary Expansion The world timeline from the first reported positive case in Wuhan, China, begins on November 19, 2019. What new words and concepts have entered your When and where was the first positive case for novel students’ lives in the last month(s)? You may ask coronavirus confirmed in the U.S.? Students could be students to keep a list of new words and phrases that asked to make a world (by countries reporting their they read, hear on the news and briefings. If you have first confirmed positive case) or U.S. timeline. The class interaction, students might share their lists and spread from country to country could also be shown discuss the definitions. Do some of the terms have on a world or U.S. map. high connotation values? Timelines vary in how they present information. Health in Post NIE Curriculum Guides Students might compare and contrast the following. The previous Post NIE curriculum guide that best How does the intended platform influence the form relates to the novel coronavirus focus is the June 1, it takes? Which do they prefer for content and 2006, curriculum guide. maintaining interest? • Cute, Dangerous or Both? (bird flu),June 1, 2006 • The New York Times has an online narrative timeline. https://www.nytimes.com/article/ “What Should We Call This? (mumps), Cute, coronavirus-timeline.html Dangerous or Both? June 1, 2006 • NBC News uses a vertical line with narrative, Endemic, Epidemic or Pandemic? June 1, 2006 photographs and graphics https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ Other guides with connections to one’s health coronavirus-timeline-tracking-critical-moments- are these: covid-19-n1154341 • Cover a Health Issue (Think Like a Reporter, measles), Express Your Concerns: Models and • Think Global Health uses day-by-day vertical with Approaches, May 2019 events around the world • Healthy Decisions, May 6, 2008 https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/updated- timeline-coronavirus • Healthy From Top to Toe, November 15, 2011 3 April 17, 2020 ©2020 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 19 ISSUE 7 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program • Axios focuses on Italy — perhaps an example of a Techniques for Reading Passages and timeline for your community Answering Questions https://www.axios.com/italy-coronavirus-timeline- Students may be asked to read “This pathogen isn’t lockdown-deaths-cases-2adb0fc7-6ab5-4b7c-9a55- alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.” bc6897494dc6.html Vocabulary and reading/discussion questions are provided in “The Virus Uses Humans to Survive, Is there a way you could have an online recording Replicate and Spread.” In addition to learning more place for students to add their findings so classmates about how the virus works, students could be asked to can watch the timeline grow? practice one of these techniques: 1. Read through the questions before reading the Another variation on this could be a timeline based passage. This gives a sense of content. They may on your community’s reported confirmed positive and even underscore significant quotations. Checkmark negative cases by days. Death and recovery numbers by interesting points. Annotate in the margin with could also be recorded. Some jurisdictions are also such notes as “similar viruses,” “relate to vaccines?” keeping records by male/female, age, race to study later. and “viability outside human.” 2. Skim through the passage quickly to get the gist Personal Finance of it. Read questions to see if they can answer any As businesses have closed, many parents and students before reading the passage carefully. This technique are not working. Some employers are paying their works well with multiple choice questions. employees, but many cannot afford to do so. Other 3. You might ask students to create multiple choice businesses are considered essential jobs and employees questions for different sections of the article. must work in spite of orders to stay inside. What is Share with other students to answer. For example: happening to your students’ families? Which of these is the reason this virus was named “coronavirus”? Which of these is NOT a way the The federal government is making some funds virus works? available through a $2 trillion rescue bill. Who will benefit? What will be its impact on personal budgets? INDEX TO PREVIOUS TOPICS The September 2019 NIE curriculum guide, Three What is unemployment? More than 17 million Months, 18 Years — Post Resources for You — Americans filed for unemployment benefits over a includes an index to previous topics. Review them. You four-week period in March and early April. Janet L. may find just the right activity and readings for your Yellen, one of the world’s top economists, said U.S. students. For example, Something for Summer, June 8, unemployment rate has jumped to at least 12 or 13 2009, has a variety to meet many interests including: percent already, the worst level of joblessness the “The Thrills of Physics” (theme park rides), “Life on nation has seen since the Great Depression. the Wing” (dragonfly), “Thrown for a Loop” (gyroball), and “Diving Into the Mystic Waters of Memory.” Students may develop a budget using the activities in the curriculum guide, Finance — It’s Personal https://nie.washingtonpost.com/node/441 curriculum If you have photographs of your students working on any guide. What must change based on the last month or of the suggestions in this month’s curriculum guide, send two months? For example, can parents still give an them to [email protected]. Be sure to provide the name of allowance? the school, address and contact information to reach you. 4 April 17, 2020 ©2020 THE WASHINGTON POST VOLUME 19 ISSUE 7 An Integrated Curriculum For The Washington Post Newspaper In Education Program Staying creative, staying healthy Even artists used to working alone are finding it hard to focus. These 5 tips are helping. BY MICHAEL CAVNA • Originally Published April 6, 2020 Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Jeff Kinney has been spending a lot of time sitting in a cemetery. The creator of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book and film franchise is not there to mourn. Rather, he needs a place to think alone when much of his Plainville, Mass., town is closed and his kids are home from school. Some head-clearing time amid the headstones speaks to how artists must be flexible to remain sharp — and how some of us can take tips from such veteran isolators on how to stay creatively engaged at work and in our spare time during a quarantine. We can binge shows, exercise and hold Zoom meetings for only so long before the mind needs something more. Plus, creative activity has been scientifically linked DEAN HASPEL 2020 to improvements in mental health.