The curriculum
Strong foundations that stop before today
- Does well
- The core concepts, history and skills you teach so well.
- Leaves out
- Current events. Textbooks and standards are written years before today’s news and rarely reach it.
By teachers, for teachers
Teach the news with the context already built in.
You’re the expert in your curriculum. Keeping up with the news and building lessons around it is a second full-time job. We’re teachers too, so we made the current events resource we always wanted, to take your teaching to a whole new level.
We’re on your side
We know how much is already on your plate
Teaching current events is hard
Stories move fast, sources need checking, and contested topics need care. Doing it well takes hours most teachers simply don’t have.
You already know your content
You know your curriculum and your students better than anyone. We’re not here to change how you teach. We’re here to give it a head start.
So we do the prep
Background, sources, questions and activities, ready to drop into the unit you’re already teaching.
Why Classroom Currents
Built for the gap between the textbook and the headline
Your curriculum covers the foundations. The news covers today. Your students need both, and connecting them takes time you don’t have.
Classroom Currents
We connect the two, so you don’t have to
- We build the background your students are missing: the history, geography and key terms.
- We gather real sources and more than one perspective, so students analyze instead of just absorbing.
- We tie every story to what you’re already teaching.
News sites
Today’s events, written for readers who know the backstory
- Does well
- Covers what is happening right now.
- Leaves out
- Context. Articles assume readers already know the history, places and people involved, so students get lost in the first paragraph.
That middle ground is the part we take off your plate, so your time goes to what you do best: teaching.
Inside every lesson
Everything you need, ready to teach
- 01
Context
The history, geography and people behind the story, written for students.
- 02
Key terms
The vocabulary students need, defined before they need it.
- 03
Sources
Primary sources and reporting from more than one perspective.
- 04
Analysis
Questions, discussion and writing that ask students to think, not just recall.
- 05
Connection
Tied to what you’re already teaching in geography, government and history.
Current events
Topics ready for your classroom
The war in Ukraine
Historical context, primary sources from world leaders, and a magazine issue on the war four years later.
See lessons →NATO expansion
Why Finland and Sweden ended decades of military non-alignment, told through video, reporting and leaders’ own words.
See lessons →9/11 and the War on Terror
Twenty years of consequences: Afghanistan, drone warfare, Guantanamo Bay and the War on Terror.
See lessons →Migration and development
The Belarus migrant crisis and the EU’s response, plus how we measure development with social indicators and the HDI.
See lessons →Coming soon: U.S. midterms, Israel and Palestine, Serbia’s elections, Brazil’s elections and Model UN simulations.
From our classrooms to yours
Lessons made by teachers who’ve been there
Full lessons, with slides, readings, primary sources and writing tasks, are in our Teachers Pay Teachers store, The Global Context.