Summer Memories, Road Trips, Spending Money and More

Welcome to our first edition of Accessible Activities, a new feature to support teachers for the 2021-22 school year.

Each Wednesday we’ll round up five student activities that draw on highly visual and more accessible reporting across Times sections and that offer additional scaffolding that invites learners of all kinds to grapple with what might be unfamiliar language or concepts. Some of these will be features that teachers across levels already love — like our What’s Going On in This Picture? exercise — and some will be new.

Note: To learn more about this new weekly feature, read our introductory post. Please share your thoughts in the comments section or by emailing us at [email protected].

1. Share a summer memory.

In this Picture Prompt, we invite students to tell us about one wonderful moment, big or small, from the summer of 2021. They can share their writing in our public comments section, discuss with their classmates or journal in a notebook.

2. Learn about a reporter who spent a year traveling around the country.

This Lesson of the Day features a short slide show (with under 250 words) about a New York Times reporter who converted a minivan into his home during the pandemic and then visited 39 states. We provide a warm-up activity, 10 vocabulary words, questions for writing and discussion and a going-further activity in which students imagine their own road trip.

3. Think about how you spend your money.

In this Student Opinion, students read an illustrated article in which 11 teenagers talk about the role that money plays in their lives. Then, they reflect on their own experiences with, and relationship to, money. They can share their responses with peers or in the comments section.

4. Look closely at a Times photograph.

Each week we remove the caption from an image published elsewhere in The New York Times and then ask students: What’s Going On in This Picture? They can share their observations in the comments section and then check back on Thursday afternoon when we reveal the photo’s back story.

5. Watch a short film about a pear tree that lived through 9/11.

Via this six-minute film, students can reflect on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks through the story of a single tree that was wounded that day. Then, they can respond to our Film Club discussion questions in writing or in class discussion.