Lesson plan; Summer reading contest

The New York Times lesson plans

Every year since 2010, The Learning Network has invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists. So far, more than 80,000 have done so.

Lesson plan

If you are looking for ways to offer students more “voice and choice,” we hope our open-ended contest can help. Every week, we ask participants to choose something in The Times that has piqued their interest, and then tell us why. At the end of the week, judges from the Times newsroom pick their favorite responses, and we publish them. It’s that simple.

Though our goals include some that appear on many educators’ lists — helping students become more aware of the world and their place in it; learning how to navigate sophisticated nonfiction; and practicing writing for an audience — we also hope that students will realize that reading the newspaper can be fun. As you’ll see in the guidelines below, students can choose anything that was published on NYTimes.com in 2022. The subject matter isn’t important; we just care about why they chose it.

Here’s what you need to know:

I would love to hear from you