Jason and I are in Bellevue, Washington this week learning with Microsoft Innovative Educators. Becky Keene @beckykeene showed us TTribune, a great daily magazine by the Smithsonian showing current events rewritten for k-12 students.

tweentribune screenshotWhat is TTribune:

TeenTribune, TweenTribune, TTEspañol and TTJunior is a free online educational service offered by the Smithsonian for use by K-12 grade Teachers and students. TTribune consists of daily news sites for kids, tweens, and teens, and includes text, photos, graphics, and audio and/or video materials prepared by the Smithsonian and others about current events, history, art, culture and science. TTribune also includes lessons, instructional and assessment tools, and opportunities for the registered users to communicate with other participants. TTribune is a moderated comment sharing community where registered Teachers can assign educational content (like news stories) to students and the students using a screen name have the ability to create comments which, if approved by their Teacher, are then published either to the other students within the Teacher’s TTribune classroom page, or publicly on TTribune.

TweenTribune pulls its content from reputable news sites and then tailors those articles for the K-4, 5-8, 9-12 grade levels. A Lexile score is given to each article.  The site also gives one click access to articles written at a certain Lexile. As an example the current article: “Youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner stresses education” has an entry at the Lexile of 830, 930, 1050, and 1410. This is a great way to bring current events at an age appropriate and reading level into your classroom.

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