1. St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day will be celebrated across the nation on Wednesday, March 17. St. Patrick's Day is a time when people honor the European country of Ireland, Irish people and Irish-Americans. Many people who aren't even Irish get into the spirit by wearing green. In honor of the Irish, cut out pictures of green things in this week's newspaper and paste them into an art collage. Display your artwork in the classroom. Give your art a creative title.

Learning Standard: Classifying common objects and substances according to observable attributes such as color, size, shape, smell, hardness or texture; representing creatively.

2. New Words

Chances are that when you read the newspaper, you'll bump into a few words that are unfamiliar to you. Pick a number from 1 to 20. Start at the back of the paper and count pages until you reach your number. Find a word on that page (or on a page near it) that is new to you. Look your word up in the dictionary and explain what it means in a sentence. Share your word with the class.

Learning Standard: Reading with developing fluency a variety of texts, including periodicals and reference materials.

3. Woman Making History

Just as the nation started celebrating Women's History Month, Kathryn Bigelow made history of her own in the world of movies. At the Academy Awards ceremony last week, Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar as Best Director of a full length feature movie. Bigelow was honored for directing "The Hurt Locker," a movie that tells the story of soldiers who disarm and get rid of bombs in the Iraq war. "The Hurt Locker" also won the Best Picture Oscar and awards in four other categories. As a class talk about all the different ways women are successful. Then find a successful woman in the stories and photos of the newspaper. Write a paragraph describing why she is a success and how you think she became successful.

Learning Standards: Identifying and explaining how individuals demonstrate good character and personal virtue; writing fluently for multiple purposes.

4. Coming to America

Every year thousands of people come to the United States from other countries to start new lives. Some come to get away from war, some to escape hunger, some to get better jobs. But few come for the reason a family from the European country of Germany came. The Romeike family came because parents Uwe and Hannelore wanted to teach their children at home, and home-schooling is illegal in Germany. The Romeikes wanted to teach their children themselves because they did not like what their children were being taught in public schools. They decided to leave Germany after they had been fined more than $10,000 by the government and police had come to their home to force their children to go to school outside the home. With the help of a U.S. home schooling group, they won the right from American officials to settle in the state of Tennessee. As a class talk about how important education is to success. Then draw a comic strip for the newspaper showing you or your friends being successful at something in school.

Learning Standards: Responding to a variety of texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; reading and writing fluently, speaking confidently, listening and interacting appropriately, viewing critically and representing creatively.

5. March Madness

The "March Madness" of the NCAA college basketball tournament starts this weekend. Look through the sports section in today's newspaper and create two math problems based on the statistics you find about the Men's Division I tournament and two from statistics in the Women's Division I tournament. Solve your problems on a separate sheet of paper. Then exchange problems with a classmate and complete each other's problems.

Learning Standard: Formulating questions and problems and gathering and interpreting data to answer those questions.