1. Weird Football

The NFL has been around for nearly 90 years, but this month's game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Diego Chargers was like none that had ever taken place. The final score in the November 16 contest was 11-10 in favor of the Steelers -- the first time that score had been recorded in 12,837 NFL games. Pittsburgh got its 11 points on three three-point field goals and a two-point safety, while San Diego scored on a touchdown, an extra point and a field goal. Unusual events and achievements often make news in sports. Scan the sports section of the newspaper and pick the event or achievement you think is the most unusual of the day. Write a paragraph explaining what made the event unusual and how fans reacted to it. Learning Standards: Writing fluently for multiple purposes; generating questions about issues that affect students or topics about which they are curious.

2. Space Station News

Piece by piece, the international space station is getting bigger and bigger. This week the crew of the American space shuttle Endeavour is helping the three-person crew of the space station install a new batch of equipment that will make the station larger and more comfortable to live in. Among the things Endeavour delivered to the station 220 miles above the Earth are 15,000 pounds of equipment that will allow the station to expand from three to six crew members next year, a new toilet and a high-tech gizmo that can turn the sweat of astronauts into drinkable water. As a class, find stories about space missions in the newspaper or on the Internet. Talk about the reasons the United States and other nations explore space. Then draw a comic strip for the newspaper showing a breakthrough you think will occur in space in the next 10 years. Learning Standards: Generating questions about issues that affect students or topics about which they are curious; understanding the nature of scientific inquiry; using the craft of the illustrator to convey ideas artistically.

3. Teen Girl Makes History

Women and girls now do things in sports that they never got the chance to do in the past, when many sports were restricted to men. Now a 16-year-old girl in the Asian country of Japan has made baseball history. Eri Yoshida has been selected as the first woman ever to get the chance to play alongside men in Japanese professional baseball. Yoshida, who is five feet tall and weighs 114 pounds, is a pitcher who throws a hard-to-hit sidearm knuckleball. She was drafted for a new independent league that will begin play in April. A knuckleball is thrown with only the fingernails touching the ball and moves in unpredictable ways. With a partner, look through the sports section of today's newspaper to find a story about another woman or girl making news. Write a short paragraph explaining what the woman/girl has done to make news and read your paragraph out loud to the class.

Learning Standard: Responding to visual, written and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; writing fluently for multiple purposes.

4. A Four-Star Milestone

Ann Dunwoody has been in the U.S. Army for 33 years, and now she has earned a place in military history. This month she became the first woman in the U.S. military to become a four-star general. Women now make up about 14 percent of the active-duty Army, and there are 21 generals. Most are one-star brigadier generals, and Dunwoody is one of just four to have risen to higher rank. As a class, talk about the opportunities women have in careers today that they may not have had in the past. Then find a story in the newspaper about a woman succeeding in the military, in business or in another field. Write a sentence or paragraph describing what this woman has achieved. Then write another sentence or paragraph describing any obstacles you think she may have had to overcome to succeed.

Learning Standards: Engaging peers in constructive conversation about issues or topics of interest; identifying and explaining how individuals in history demonstrate good character and personal virtue.

5. Coins, Beautiful Coins

For fun, many people like to use metal detectors to find things that might be buried at beaches or in the dirt of parks and playgrounds. In the European country of the Netherlands, a man playing with a metal detector as a hobby found a small treasure of gold and silver coins. Exploring a cornfield, Paul Curfs found 39 gold and 70 silver coins made more than 2,000 years ago when the Roman general Julius Caesar was at war with local Celtic tribes. As a class, discuss how life can be changed by inventions like metal detectors, which send out special signals to find objects. Then find items in ads of the newspaper that give people new ways to do things. Pick one you think has changed life a lot for you and your family. Then design a poster showing how you think this item might change in the future.

Learning Standard: Showing how common themes of science, mathematics and technology apply in real world contexts; reading and writing fluently, speaking confidently, listening and interacting appropriately, viewing critically and representing creatively.