Focus on the News
Focus on the News is a quiz bowl type game to teach Geography, Politics, Government and World Affairs using current events. At first I was a bit confused as to how I could use this product with one student. My 14 year old reads the newspaper everyday and is interested in all things political. Focus on the News is an exciting addition to our daily newspaper read and discussion. On Monday mornings we receive a weekly list of questions, organized by categories from Focus on the News. Categories include; World, Nation, Government, Science, Sports, Entertainment, History and Roundup. Each category consists of 7 questions of events that happened in the news the prior week. The questions progress from easy to most difficult, with a combination of multiple choice and non-multiple choice questions.
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The quiz bowl type game is set up so that two teams of students compete for the highest score. The students are asked the questions and answer in the tv game style format. Points are awarded to the team that correctly answers the questions. Many instructors and students use this to prepare for state and national competitions. Current Events League (NCEL) and the UIL Current Issues & Events competition are two of these events. The weekly pdf download that is delivered to you via email includes a teacher edition with answers. Initially I could not get my homeschool group together for a lively round of Focus on the News quiz bowl. Instead I printed out the questions, engaged my son and we attempted to answer the questions. When we came across a question we did not know we enjoyed researching and finding the answer. It invariably let to an interesting history, government or geography lesson. Now during the week when we read the paper we pay closer attention to the news and point out interesting events to each other. It is great fun and we look forward to the weekly questions.
Focus on the News includes a current events crossword puzzle, a World and United States Geography worksheet with questions. We opted not to include the crossword puzzle in our studies, but thoroughly enjoy reading the Geography worksheet information. Key points included interesting facts about the area, famous people, and historical events.
We were fortunate to test the quiz bowl style with a small group of homeschool students that met at the park. The students claimed to not be too news savvy so we supplied the teams with maps and current event weekly magazines. This gave them the opportunity to look things up to find answers. There was a lot of excitement when the students answered questions in Our Nation and Entertainment categories. They were all surprised that they knew a lot more news than they expected.
Although, we did not use the product as indicated it is excellent. It was easy to adjust to our situation, which is wonderful bonus. Recommended 4th to 12th grade. I would recommend this product for any aged/grade level students and parents interested in learning more about our world and current events.
You can try a free trail of Focus of the News here:
http://www.focusonthenews.com/freetrialoffer
Homeschool Price: $45 per year
http://www.focusonthenews.com/
Reviewer Biography
Mindy Lively is a homeschool mother of 2 teens, ages 17 & 14. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She enjoys the close family bond that homeschooling has provided. Mindy loves homeschooling because of the advantage of gearing learning opportunities to suit the individual child and promoting a passion for life-long learning.
Disclosure: The product(s) mentioned above were supplied free of charge by the above company in order to conduct an honest review. No other compensation was received for this review. The thoughts, experiences, and opinions included are entirely the reviewer's own and may differ from that of others. The Home Educators Resource Directory is not liable for any issues you may incur from use of said product(s). See full disclosure information. If you have any questions you can contact us.
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End Date: 12/21/2011
