Share My Lesson's free weekly news quiz for educators: eight questions on the week's news, each linked to a story you can teach.
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Why a news quiz for teachers
The week's news arrives in fragments between classes, and the stories worth teaching are easy to lose in the pile. The quiz is a fast way to find out what you caught and what you didn't, with the catch-up built in: each explanation says what the story asks students to consider and links to the full item with its warm-up questions, essential questions and media literacy prompt. The news stories are written by Share My Lesson staff and partners such as PBS News Hour Classroom and Close Up, and everything here is free, written and vetted by educators, and backed by the American Federation of Teachers. Teachers take the quiz on Friday afternoon or Sunday night, then pull one story into Monday's class. If you want to run it with students, it works as a ten-minute bell-ringer for grades 6-12; that is a bonus, not the point.
What you'll find in this collection
- A new eight-question quiz every week, with the answers explained and linked to their sources. Past weeks stay up, so you can go back to a week you missed or find a quiz on a topic your class is studying.
- The news stories behind the questions: Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson items written by Share My Lesson staff and partners including PBS News Hour Classroom and Close Up, each with a short summary, warm-up questions, essential questions and a media literacy prompt.
- The Share My Lesson blogs behind the rest of the questions: educator-written pieces from the same week on teaching the news, civics, voting and media literacy, each with the free resources it points to.
- Civics and elections quizzes for the midterm season, including Midterms 101 on how Congress is elected and the Split-Ticket Lab, an interactive on what vote totals can and cannot show.
- Media literacy resources for the teachers who want to turn a quiz question into a lesson on checking a headline against the evidence.
Current events lesson plans, one story at a time
The quiz is the doorway, and the news stories are the lesson. Each Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson item is built to teach in one class period: a video or article, warm-up questions that check comprehension, essential questions that ask students to reason, and a media literacy prompt that asks how the story was reported. Most include a short extension activity. Together they give a social studies, civics or ELA teacher a steady supply of current events lesson plans without a weekend of prep.
If you are teaching the 2026 election, the 2026 Election Lesson Plans and Teaching Resources collection covers voting, Congress and civic participation for every grade. For the skills behind the quiz, see the Voting Rights Lesson Plans for K-12 collection and SML's media literacy resources. The full run of news stories is at Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson, updated several times a week.
Take this week's quiz, share your score with your department, and come back next Friday.
FAQ: the weekly news quiz
What is the Share My Lesson weekly news quiz?
It is a free eight-question quiz for educators on the week's news, published every Friday on Share My Lesson. Five or six questions come from the week's news stories and two or three from Share My Lesson blogs. Each answer is explained and linked to the story or blog it came from, and each news story, written by Share My Lesson staff or a partner such as PBS News Hour Classroom or Close Up, comes with discussion questions and classroom resources.
Is the news quiz for teachers or for students?
It is written for teachers: a three-minute catch-up on the week so you know which stories are worth class time. It also works with students in grades 6-12, because the questions are factual rather than opinion-based, but it is not a graded assessment and was not designed as one. If you use it in class, treat it as a conversation starter and lean on the linked stories' discussion questions.
How long does the quiz take, and do I need an account?
About three minutes. The quiz runs in the page itself, needs no sign-in and collects no personal information; nothing you answer is stored or tied to you. A free Share My Lesson account is needed only to download the lesson materials linked from the stories, as with everything on the site.
Does the weekly news quiz collect any data about me?
No. It does not ask for a name, email or login, and it does not record your answers. Like every Share My Lesson page, the site counts anonymous page views and, for the quiz, anonymous totals of how many people start and finish it, so the team can tell whether it is useful. Nothing about an individual is kept.
Where do the quiz questions come from?
Every question is drawn from a news story published that week in Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson, Share My Lesson's current events series, or from a Share My Lesson blog. The questions use only facts stated in those items, and the explanation under each answer links to the exact story so you can check it yourself.
Is the news quiz nonpartisan?
Yes. Questions ask for a number, a place, a person or what a story asks students to consider, never for a political opinion. The news stories are written by Share My Lesson staff and by nonpartisan civic education partners such as PBS News Hour Classroom and Close Up, and each one includes a media literacy prompt that asks how the story was reported.
Can I take previous weeks' quizzes?
Yes. Each week's quiz has its own page in this collection, named by date, so you can catch up on a week you missed or find a quiz on a topic you are about to teach. The news stories linked from older quizzes stay up as well.
How do I turn a quiz question into a lesson?
Click the link under any answer. It opens the news story the question came from, which includes a short summary, warm-up questions that check comprehension, essential questions that ask students to reason, and a media literacy prompt about how the story was reported. Most teachers can run one story in a single class period with no extra prep.
