the media window

According to their site guide “the New York Times Learning Network is a free service for students in grades 3-12, their teachers and parents.”  I decided to take the guided tour of the website, and I am glad that I did because it made me aware of useful features within the website (such as linked vocabulary and geography terms) that I might not have noticed on my own.
Each weekday, in addition to many other cool things, this website highlights a news article from the New York Times and provides a related lesson plan for it. The articles are full text, recent articles and a very nice feature for students and teachers is the “Knowledge Tools” that can be turned on to highlight difficult words and geographical places. By a simple click you can get the definition of a word or see a location on a map. The lesson plans are constructed by educators and they focus on a different subject area each day, so for instance, on Thursday you will find a lesson plan related to technology and/or economics, math, journalism, while Tuesdays are devoted to science and/or health. They are also standards based, and it is easy to link to the standard the lesson relates to. One thing I did notice is that the lessons are actually for grades 6-12, so it would appear that this is definitely a middle school and high school resource as far as lesson plans, although I can see using several of its features in the elementary setting as well. Word of the Day, and  Student Letters to the Editor would work in the upper elementary grades.
One technology related lesson plan that I came across was called Internet Seek and Find which is designed to help teach students better ways to use the Internet search engines. I am always happy to find information and lesson plans related to this topic, as I think that doing searches on the internet is one of the most difficult tasks for students (teachers too!).

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