I completely acknowledge that my train of thought on the subject of relating lessons to media which is omnipresent in the students' lives is not new and it certainly did not originate with me. In my class today, my mentor put together a lesson using articles on video games, Big Hero 6 and the viral blue/black, white/gold dress pic. These are topics and items that are of incredible interest to these kids and they proved that by working intently, writing responses to articles about them all period.

It isn't that the students are being tricked into learning by working on assignments concerning things which entertain them. They know it's a school lesson. They know that they are learning and what they are learning. It's just that that much easier because the information is interesting to them, or rather the information is glazed in a topic or series of topics that interest them. Making connections from writing and reponding to articles, using RATE, citing textual evidence, etc. to topics like Big Hero 6 and the dress pic allows them to retain the information in their long-term memory as they are not likely to forget something so pervasive and interesting any time soon.