1. Your Music

Music is all around us, and almost everybody likes music. But when it comes to music, everyone's taste is different. The kind of music you like tells something about your interests. And it may also say something about how you look at the world. As a class create a chart of the types of music students like. Break down the class's choices by percent. Then write the beginning of a newspaper story describing your class's musical tastes.

Learning Standards: Responding to a variety of visual, written and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; organizing and presenting information in maps, graphs, charts and timelines; writing fluently for multiple purposes.

2. Find It

Reading is a great way to gather information. And knowing where to find what you need is a key reading skill. Turn to the sports pages of today's newspaper to explore this idea. On a sheet of paper, list as many different parts of the paper as you can where you could read to find out that a player had a great game last night in a sport you like. Draw an illustration of that player doing well.

Learning Standards: Acquiring information from multiple sources and then organizing and analyzing it; using the craft of the illustrator to express ideas artistically.

3. Dangerous Winds

It was five years ago when Hurricane Katrina came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, Louisiana. On August 29, 2005, the strong Category 4 storm had winds of 145 miles per hour along the Gulf Coast. Many people lost their homes and businesses, and more than 1,300 people died. It was later declared the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Look through the newspaper to find a photo or story about a place you love to go, such as the beach, a park, school, the zoo or a museum. Write about what you think would happen if a hurricane or other disaster damaged or completely ruined the place you love. How would you feel?

Learning Standards: Exploring and reflecting on universal themes and substantive issues from oral, visual and written texts; writing fluently for multiple purposes.

4. Just Like the Movies

Fans of the "Star Wars" movies recently went to the Star Wars Celebration V convention in Florida and had a special request for America's NASA space agency. Fans of the popular movies asked NASA representatives to come up with a "hyper-drive" that could transport astronauts through space at light speed. NASA has been studying different and faster ways to get around the Earth's solar system for many years. Find a photo or article in the newspaper that shows or tells about someone trying something new. Write about a time when you tried something new and how it made you feel.

Learning Standards: Writing fluently for multiple purposes to produce compositions, such as personal narratives, persuasive essays, lab reports and poetry; acquiring information from multiple sources.

5. Be Smart, Go to Sleep

The number of hours kids sleep at night may affect how they do in school. At the annual meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in June, many studies were presented that showed that the school performance of children is dropping because they are sleepy. Experts say that technology devices and services such as cell phones, iPods and Facebook are leading kids to stay up later at night. The group suggests that children in grade school should get 10 to 11 hours of sleep every night, and teenagers should get 9 to 10 hours. Look through the newspaper for three items of technology that you like, such as iPods, video games or television. Make a chart showing how many minutes or hours you use them each day for a week. Next, look for three ads or photos that show things you like to do that you could do instead of using technology. Write a paragraph describing how technology can cut into people's time for doing other things they like.

Learning Standards: Responding to a variety of visual, written and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; organizing and presenting information in maps, graphs, charts and timelines.