1. Zack and Tawana, Super Heroes

One of the most popular parts of the newspaper is the comics page. In comics, artists comment on current events, explain important issues or just make us laugh. Check out today's comics in the newspaper. What things are the comics characters talking about? Discuss the comics as a class. Then draw a comic strip of your own, featuring yourself as a super hero.

Learning Standard: Developing literacy by using text to enhance students' daily lives. Examples include reading with a parent, discussing a favorite text, writing to a friend or relative about an experience or creating a visual representation of an important idea.

2. Mint

The head of the government mint that manufactures money in the South American country of Chile was fired after the mint put into circulation more than one million coins that misspelled "Chile." That's a pretty big mistake. Can you find anything like that in the newspaper? In groups, hunt for typos or other mistakes in the newspaper this week. What about in online news sources? See which group can find the most. List the mistakes and correct them in a chart.

Learning Standards: Using reading for multiple purposes, such as enjoyment, clarifying information and learning complex procedures; organizing data using tables, charts, graphs, spreadsheets and data bases.

3. Canada

The 2010 Winter Olympics are continuing this week in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver was just named the most live-able city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which rated cities on 30 factors, including culture, environment, education, safety and health care. Pick five cities mentioned in the newspaper and come up with 10 different factors on which to compare them. Use the newspaper and online resources to research the cities and create a chart comparing them. Based on your chart, decide which of the five cities you'd most like to live in. Write a paragraph explaining why.

Learning Standards: Using traditional and electronic means to organize social science information to make maps, graphs, charts and tables; locating and describing the diverse places, cultures, and communities of major world regions.

4. Boy King

The ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen ("King Tut") became the leader of his northern African kingdom when he was only nine years old. He ruled for less than 10 years before dying. Archaeologists and historians have long speculated about what caused his death, and some people have even suggested he was murdered. Now a new, technologically advanced study of his mummy's DNA indicates that he died from complications of a broken leg and from the disease malaria. If you became the leader of the United States today, how would you rule? Pick an issue making news, and think about how, as head of the country, you would resolve it. Write a letter to President Obama explaining what you came up with.

Learning Standard: Stating an issue clearly as a question of public policy, tracing the origins of the issue, analyzing various perspectives people bring to the issue and evaluating possible ways to resolve the issue.

5. Flying

Movie director Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat. Southwest said that Smith was a safety risk because he couldn't put down his seat's armrest. Smith had originally purchased two seats for himself on a Southwest flight, but when he decided to switch to an earlier flight only one seat was available. In groups, use the newspaper, books and online sources to create a pamphlet about ways being overweight can be unhealthy and negatively affect a person's life.

Learning Standard: Focusing on meaning and communication while listening, speaking, viewing, reading and writing in personal, social, occupational and civic contexts.