Your support can help our students connect to the world around them through individual subscriptions to The Week Junior. By introducing a steady flow of current events into our classroom, our kids will be better informed and better prepared for the bigger conversations we hope to have around rights, responsibility and community.

The Week Junior will provide a factual anchor with which kids can ground themselves. I often hear kids repeating things they overheard on the news or saw on YouTube. Unfortunately, like in the game "telephone", facts are quick to get misrepresented, and soon kids are unintentionally spreading misinformation. Having access to an accurate, reliable news source will help keep the facts straight.

5th graders consume news and information all of the time, and misinformation is on the rise. We feel it is crucial that our students have consistent access to accurate and engaging news sources so that they can be part of a better-informed citizenry. Over the years, we have tried to connect our students to current events through resources like  Time for Kids  and  Newsela  with varying degrees of success. But it wasn't until one of my own children started getting  The Week Junior  in the mail that I realized the power hiding in a well-done weekly news magazine. Having read dozens of issues over the past year, I know that  The Week Junior  will be an amazing addition to our 5th grade classrooms. The goal of this project is to provide each one of our 5th graders with their own, personal subscription to  The Week Junior.

Another benefit of bringing this magazine into our classroom is that it provides a great model for their own writing. Later in the year, we plan to introduce a journalism unit. Having already spent months consuming journalistic content, students will have a great understanding of the different types of journalism and stylistic techniques used by journalists. Having this background will give the kids a solid foundation from which to work and the modeling and (hopefully) motivation to create their own published magazines.

Finally, there is an obvious impact on our students' reading skills. The majority of our students associate reading with novels and our classroom libraries are heavily skewed toward fiction reading. Yet as they get older, there is a major shift toward nonfiction reading. Knowing this, we always try to incorporate some nonfiction here and there, but providing high-interest, up-to-date nonfiction is challenging. One thing that is great about  The Week Junior  is that each issue has something for everyone. Every issue includes articles about current events, science, sports, cooking, community service, books, puzzles and more. Even if the cover article does not grab them, there will be something inside to hook our kids and help them hone their nonfiction reading skills. 

We are very excited to bring this resource into our classrooms. When we consider the impact on our students' literacy skills, as well the potential to make them better-informed members of the community. Your help in making this project a reality is greatly appreciated.