Historical News! Easy History Activity for 4-8th Grade
The world and it’s history is vast, layered, complex and deep. We cannot possibly cover it all, but I want to expose my kids to as much of it’s richness as I can. This one page, open ended Historical News printable can be used in multiple ways to support history units along with reading, writing and researching skill building.
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Timeline Tuesdays
Morning invitations are a daily occurrence in our house (you can read more about Morning Invitations here) and they vary greatly, but on Tuesdays we usually have Timeline Tuesdays. I love this book TIMELINES OF EVERYTHING and we have slowly worked our way through the different spreads during the middle school years. Each spread is laid out beautifully in a timeline that reflects the topic. It gives a summary of a huge range of topics from the history of music to how we tell time to specific people and moments in history.
On Timeline Tuesdays my kids are often just invited to add something to their timelines (they each have one of these simple but sturdy timeline books) and it’s up to them to decide what is important from that day’s spread to add to their timeline book.
Some weeks however they have a Historical News page to fill in.
Historical News!
I use this printable I created for them alongside a timeline page of a specific event or alongside a stack of books about a moment in history we are currently studying.
For example, they recently did one about Westward Expansion. I laid out 5 books that dealt with some aspect of Westward Expansion and they chose one aspect to focus on for their mock newspaper. In this case, they are also being asked to write an actual newspaper article on this topic, but some weeks it is just used as an exercise in reading informational text, pulling out important details, and summarizing a main idea into a headline.
You could easily do this activity without the printable, feel free to write out directions or draw up your own! If you want to use mine, to speed up the process or to have as a handy work sample or portfolio item, it is available on TeachersPayTeachers.
More About the Printable
This printable asks students to read or research about an event in history, create a headline and record 3 important details. They are invited to draw a picture to go along with their headline. At the bottom they are asked to add a little context by including something else happening in the United States and in the World at the same time.
Homeschool parents and teachers can assign kids a specific event or list of events to choose from or leave the assignment more open ended. This page can be used as is or as a planning page for a longer writing assignment.
