New(s) starter

This is an easy and really effective way to get 6th form students engaging with the news.  A short time before the lesson, copy a number of links from a target language news website into a Google Classroom post.  You need as many links as there are students (or pairs of students) in your class.  Each student then chooses a different link.  They have five minutes to read it and then must summarise in English for the rest of the class.  I have started doing this weekly with my 6th form classes.  It takes hardly any time to set up and it is very worthwhile.  The students see current language usage which is especially important for topics such as Technology.  Our textbook (published 2016) does not mention artificial intelligence, but there are many stories about it in the news.  Seeing which stories make the headlines also gives the students an insight into the culture/priorities of the TL country.