Teacher members of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) describe the study of current events as essential or very important to the social studies curriculum. Most teachers indicated using current events to provide contemporary examples of abstract historical, social, economic, and political concepts or to illustrate the continuity of social issues over time and across cultures. A number of teachers indicated that current events help to teach inquiry as a process. This paper describes ways that teachers can use the study of current events in the classroom, such as individual student reports, cooperative group reporter strategy, and long-term in-depth study of a single event. The document enumerates readily available media instructional resources for current events, such as C-SPAN, "Time" and "Newsweek," local newspapers, and television networks Web sites. It cites categories for assessing and evaluating student works with current events. (BT)