NovaNEWS is an international current events forum that gives students the opportunity to discuss a variety of issues on a supervised bulletin board. This collaborative learning environment enhances students' critical reading and thinking skills by encouraging them to analyze, discuss, and debate recent events in the world of politics, national and foreign affairs, economics, the environment, and even entertainment. It also improves the students' ability to express themselves through the written word by prompting them to write responses to a variety of thought-provoking questions.

Each of the articles selected for NovaNEWS is followed by a series of questions designed to promote critical thinking about challenging issues of the day.

This month's edition is titled "Rising Oil Prices." It includes articles that address the key issues surrounding the recent surge in the cost of oil products. Students learn about important issues that focus on energy consumption and some of the options that are being explored to reduce energy costs. Students explore these key issues and then draw their own conclusions.

The article "Obama Urges Boost in Energy Production" explores President Obama's recent call on companies to increase domestic oil production. The article focuses on how people have reacted to President Obama's request, as well as the possible short-term benefits of increasing oil production. The article also describes how President Obama is trying to refocus the debate over U.S. energy policies by concentrating on long-term solutions.

The article "Gulf Drilling Delays Fail to Stem U.S. Oil Flow" investigates the effects of the six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The article discusses the process of starting new drilling projects in the Gulf and how new techniques are being implemented to increase onshore oil production.

And finally, the article "Task Force to Probe Oil Price Manipulation" discusses the recent creation of a task force to investigate rising oil prices. The article explains how the task force will be investigating profiteering and fraud which could be causing the swing in prices in the energy market.

NovaNEWS resides as a lesson in every social studies alignment, as well as in the Additional Areas folder under Student Forums in the All Curricula location. NovaNEWS can be assigned alone or as part of a course. As with NovaKEYS, you might want to make NovaNEWS an initial assignment for your students. Once NovaNEWS is assigned, it is always available to students.