You Danger

I have recently discovered Scholastic Scope Magazine and LOVE using it to teach lessons in my language arts class!  While you are encouraged to purchase subscriptions for each student, Scholastic's website allows you to view issues and project the pdf in class.  (If your school has EBSCO access, you can also find printable versions there)  As an added bonus, they provide curriculum that accompanies each article that address junior high TEKS.

I recently used the above article for a persuasive writing lesson in my class that the students loved.  The article is about how kids risk their lives to video tape crazy stunts to post on youtube and poses a question about youtube's responsibility.

I started the lesson with a video clip from youtube that the kids found hilarious = the perfect hook:



Then we read the article as a class.  At the end of the article students are asked to choose a side on whether youtube should ban stunt videos and support their opinions with textual evidence.

 

As an extension Scholastic provides a step-by-step guide that walks students through writing an argument essay.  I didn't use these, but there is also a transition guide and an argument essay checklist.

The rest of the magazine is fabulous as well, so you will probably see more blogs in the future about other cool stuff I find in there.

~Mrs. Scott