Carl Azuz introducing the September 21 episode of CNN10's video news podcast.

Teaching Methods and Assessments to Use with CNN10 Current Events

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Teaching current events is an important part of civics education. Students need to know what’s going on around the world to be engaged citizens.

If you want to teach current events in class, CNN10 is a free online resource for doing so. If you’re unfamiliar with CNN10, you can read more about why it’s a great tool to use with your students here.

Five Suggested Methods for Teaching Current Events with CNN10

But if you’ve already checked out CNN10, you know it’s a daily 10 minute video podcast that covers three to four important news stories. At this point, you’re probably wondering how best to incorporate it into your class. On that note, here are five suggestions to get you started.

Once Weekly Current Events and Summaries

Set aside one day a week and devote it to current events. On that day, start by asking students to share any news stories they’ve heard about during the week. Then, watch one to two of the CNN10 videos from the week. I suggest always using Friday’s video, because it includes the cool montage at the end of the episode. For the second one, you might want to skim the topics for the week to see what is most relevant to your students.

Have the students jot down notes while they are watching the video, and after each one take a few minutes to debrief. As a group, identify each story, emphasize the key details, and answer any questions that the students had. If there’s a particularly interesting or relevant story, you can extend this into a brief class discussion, but try to avoid it consuming the entire period.

Once you’ve finished both videos, have the students write one of two things. Either write a paragraph that summarizes the key events of the week, citing at least three news stories as examples. Or write a paragraph that identifies the most important story of the week, summarizes that story, and explains why it is important. They’re slightly different writing skills, so you may choose to assign one or the other to target those skills. You could also leave the choice up to the students.

One final adjustment would be to assign the writing for homework. This would increase the amount of class time available for discussion of the news as a class. You could always play this by ear, assigning the writing for classwork if the discussion peters out and assigning it for homework if there’s enough interest to carry it through the end of the class.

Daily Current Events and Summaries

A second option is to watch each day’s CNN10 video as an introductory activity for the day. It’s short enough that you can settle in, watch the video, and quickly debrief in 15 minutes. Afterwards, you’ll still have time for another main activity in class. This is best suited for block periods, but you can do this with a traditional class as well if you instill the routines in your students and eliminate time wasting.

If you watch these current events on a daily basis, I would suggest that you have the students write a paragraph each day as per the assignment above. However, it’s simplest to have them hold on to those summaries until the end of the week and hand them each Monday. Students who are absent can watch the videos on their own time and make them up. If you miss a day, you can also assign that video for homework. Collecting it weekly also cuts down on the amount of paper you collect and read, as you can quickly check an entire week’s worth of work instead of five pages per student per week.

Flipped Classroom Videos and Weekly Quizzes

A third option is to flip the classroom and assign each day’s video for homework. If you use a learning management system, you can upload the videos there for students to access, or they can go directly to the CNN10 website. Similar to the suggestion above, students can write a daily summary or reflection on what they’ve watched and you can collect that each Monday. The Monday due date gives students the entire weekend to catch up on any videos they missed, and it allows busy students like athletes to make adjustments to accommodate their weeknight schedules.

As an added incentive to make sure that students watch the videos and write thorough summaries, I would give a quick quiz each Monday morning. CNN provides a series of multiple choice questions with each video, so you could borrow some of these and combine them into a quiz. You could also write your own. Either way, let the students use their notebooks on the quiz and ask a few questions about the major details of the news stories. This will ensure that students aren’t just skimming the headline and writing their summary by paraphrasing the summary CNN10 provides.

Monthly or Quarterly Reflections

Once you get students in the habit of regularly consuming the news, you should incorporate regular longterm reflections. On a monthly or quarterly basis, assign students an essay that asks them to reflect on the major themes in the news. For example, some recent recurrent themes are have been the conflict with North Korea, natural disasters, and the debate over the Affordable Care Act. Writing the essay is a good opportunity for students to look back through their writing for the period in question and think about the bigger picture. On a daily basis, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees and focus too much on the individual events and news of the day.

Have Students Produce Their Own CNN Student News

A fun summative project for a semester or for the year would be to have students produce their own CNN Student News show. After a few months, they’ll understand the format and routines of the show. Depending on the technical capabilities of your students and the available technology in your school, you could set higher or lower standards for production value.

If you set the bar high, you could require students to incorporate some actual news footage into their broadcast, share a viral video clip, and close out with a photo montage from the week. You could also require them to film a “CNN Hero” type segment where they interview and feature a student or staff member from the school community.

You could set the bar a bit lower by simply having them write up a script, putting two news anchors behind a desk, and filming it on a cell phone.

Either way, this steps it up a notch from just watching and summarizing the news to making editorial decisions about what to include and what not to cut. As part of the assignment, you should ask students for a written reflection on their production process as a group.

If your kids are into video production, you should also think about using StudentCam in your class. It’s an awesome project that challenges kids to think deeply about the Constitution… and they can win a cash prize for participating.

Have You Used CNN10 In Your Class?

If you’ve never used CNN10, take one of these ideas and try it out. But if you have, why don’t you share your routine in the comments? The five suggestions above are just the beginning. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways that teachers incorporate this into their routine.

Also, don’t forget that using current events is one of the six research based methods for improving civics education. Read more about the other five.

Finally, CNN10 is also a great way to liven things up a bit. Here’s a list of six ways to teach government in a fun way, if you’re looking for more ideas.

9 comments on “Teaching Methods and Assessments to Use with CNN10 Current Events”

    • Michael
    • January 25, 2018
    Reply

    I have used CNN 10 in all of those ways mentioned.

    • Margaret
    • January 10, 2019
    Reply

    I teach 6th grade. While watching the show, students take notes. After the show, they sit in their teams and I ask 10 trivia questions. They compete for points and we keep running tallies as the year progresses. After each unit of study, we award a winner and switch around the teams.

    • Jennifer Samborski
    • May 22, 2019
    Reply

    I teach ancient world history. I have students connect something they have learned in class to stories they see on CNN 10. An example would be to connect a geographic location (the Kushan empire to a story about India) or an important concept (trade and it’s impact on people today as well as people in ancient empires). This helps students to make real world connections that make what we learn in class more relevant for them.

    • Kelli Hook
    • August 28, 2019
    Reply

    Does CNN10 still provide questions? I can’t seem to find them if they do

      • Brian
      • September 4, 2019
      Reply

      They don’t provide daily questions, but they do still provide weekly questions. They’re posted along with the Friday episode. For example, if you look at the August 30 episode, you’ll see the “Weekly News Quiz” with 10 questions (and a printable PDF).

    • Mel
    • January 21, 2020
    Reply

    I’ve also used Google My Maps to create and interactive map. We create a class map that’s been shared to everyone, and at the end of every episode we add the stories to the map with short summaries.

      • Julie Gentzen
      • July 21, 2020
      Reply

      Now that’s an awesome idea!

  1. Reply

    I teach a Special Needs class at Lyons Creek Middle School in Coconut Creek, Florida. We watch CNN10 everyday. I ask my students to give me 1 or 2 details about an event that they remember. They are able to come up with some pretty good feedback. With this pandemic going on in our society, I am still showing them the daily digital videos to keep them up to date during virtual teaching. It is sort of different than being in the classroom. I just want Carl Azuz to know that my students look forwards to watching his 10 minute news show. Would it be possible to mention our school, when we finally return to our real classroom in the fall. I would like for this to be a school wide event and our students would be thrilled. A couple years ago, you mentioned my high school in Smith’s Station Alabama, I was thrilled!
    Thank you, Ms. Lowe, Special Needs teacher

    • Ms. k
    • September 19, 2020
    Reply

    There is a fantastic cnn10 daily quiz resource on teacherspayteachers.com
    I highly recommend!

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