Using Newspapers in the Classroom

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Using Newspapers in the Classroom

• A newspaper is not just for reporting news its
  for getting people so mad they will do something
  about it.
• --Mark Twain

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Why use newspapers?

• Easily adaptable for all ability levels
• Ideal for individualized instruction
• Use for all curriculum areas and grade levels
• Contain practical vocabulary
• Can be marked, pasted, colored, and cut
• Real-world textincreases relevancy

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Why use newspapers?

• They can be used for individual or cooperative
  ideas
• Give your students a current source of
  information
• Cost-effective
• Readily obtainable
• To promote a habit of reading
• They are interesting and motivating for students

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Standards

• 4.12.1,4.12.2-analyze text features
• 4.12.3 locate, organize, interpret, synthesize
  information
• 4.12.4 critique power, logic, reasonableness of
  argument
• 5.12.4 write summaries or abstracts
• 8.12.1summarize and evaluate communications
• 2.12.3 plan ,monitor and assess comprehension
  strategies

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Newspaper Activities

• My life in Headlines
• Wacky headlines
• Who am I?
• Fact and opinion in the news
• Scavenger Hunt
• Teaching with the classifieds
• More activities than I can tell you about

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My life in headlinesa great beginning of the
year activity

• Before the lesson, make up a collage which gives
  personal information about yourself using only
  newspaper headlinescomplete headlines, phrases
  and individual words.
• You should feel comfortable about explaining
  anything in your collage to your students. In
  addition, you will need a stack of old
  newspapers , construction paper, scissors and
  glue.

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My life in headlines--2

• Show your students your headline collage and
  explain how the words and phrases relate to you
  personally. Encourage your students to discover
  information about your life by asking you
  questions about anything they do not understand.
• With glue, paper, and newspaper headlines, your
  students will make similar collages containing
  information about themselves.
• While your students are working on the collages,
  circulate about the room dealing with any
  vocabulary and language problems.
• I find that I get the most productivity out of
  this activity if I limit the amount of time that
  I allow for collage production.

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My life in headlines--3

• When the time for collage completion is over, ask
  students to turn to a partner and explain their
  collages. Allow two minutes for each student to
  share, and then ask them to find a new partner.
• Continue the sharing for a few turns and then ask
  the students to display them on the classroom
  walls.
• This is a non-threatening way to create class
  climate, and learn things about your students.

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Wacky Headlines

• Kids make nutritious snacks
• Police help dog bite victim
• Miners refuse to work after death
• Hospital sued by 7 foot doctors
• Panda mating fails veterinarian takes over
• Lung cancer in women mushrooms
• Eye drops off shelf
• Safety experts say school bus passengers should
  be belted

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More Wacky Headlines

• Stolen painting found by tree
• Red tape holds up new bridge
• Chef throws his heart into helping feed the needy
• Arson suspect is held in Massachusetts fire
• Local high school dropouts cut in half
• Include your children when baking cookies
• Juvenile court to try shooting defendant

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Activity

• Write one of the ambiguous headlines on the board
  Kids make nutritious snacks
• Ask your kids to explain the double meaning of
  the headline
• Ask students how the headline could be rewritten
  to make the intended meaning clear
• Give students several of the ambiguous headlines
  on a handout and ask them to rewrite them as a
  group or individual activity
• Have students choose one of the ambiguous
  headlines, and as a group or individual activity
  write a short story based on the amusing,
  unintentional meaning.
• Ask your students to look for further examples of
  ambiguous headlines and share them with the class.

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Who am I?

• This activity is a good one for later in the
  year, after the students have formed community,
  and feel comfortable sharing more about
  themselves.
• Give each student a few pages of the newspaper
  and ask them to cut out words and phrases which
  describe themselves. You can make the task
  harder or easier by asking them to find certain
  parts of speech or only words from headlines.

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• After each student has found and cut out a
  certain number of words, (this activity takes at
  least fifty word to be successful) have them form
  a picture of their faces using the words. This
  activity is really simple, but I have always had
  great participation and the students take great
  care to create a beautiful face collage using the
  words to form eyes, nose, hair etc. Some of them
  are really exceptional.

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Fact and opinion in the newspaper

• Students often assume that what they read in the
  newspaper is fact.
• This activity refines student ability to
  distinguish fact from opinion in news reporting.
• Point out to students ways in which news
  reporters avoid the appearance of personal
  opinion or judgment by using qualifying words or
  phrases.
• These qualifying words include reportedly, was
  reported to be, was thought to, allegedly, was
  believed, etc.

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• Give each student or pair of students a news
  section of the newspaper and ask them to find two
  articles which interest them and cut them out.
• After they have done this, ask them to read the
  articles carefully, looking for qualifying
  phrases and words in the articles and
  highlighting the sentences which contain opinion.
  Again this activity is best when the students
  are timed.
• As a culminating activity, ask students to share
  the article, and read several of the sentences
  which they found to contain opinion.
• This is a powerful lesson for the students as
  they hold up their articles and show how much of
  the article is highlighted, reflecting a writers
  opinion and not pure fact

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Scavenger Hunt

• Excellent skimming and scanning practice.
• Can be cross-curricular as items sought may be
  items referring to any discipline.
• Fun, fast and often competitive
• This activity is easily adaptable as you can
  change the number and difficulty of items for
  individual students

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Can you find.?

• A used Ford for less than 500.00
• A place to hear Irish music
• The oldest person on the obituary page
• A story about a mouse
• A recipe for bouillabaisse
• The price of Iams dog food
• Two places to have your teeth whitened
• What movie is playing at 730 at the cinema 12
• A story about the governor

• A used fiddle for sale
• The score of the football game
• Why Jerry Frenz is angry?
• The interest rate on a new Dodge pickup truck
• The address of the local library
• The time of the AARP meeting
• The publishers name
• Etc.

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Teaching with the classified ads

• Give each your students a task to complete using
  the classified ads
• 1. You have 1,000 and you must furnish your
  apartment. Cut out advertisements which contain
  items you need and can afford. Keep a running
  total of how much you have spent and how well you
  have completed your mission.

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Advertisements

• Ask your students to find ten jobs in the
  classified ads and rank them from the most
  desirable to the least desirable, with an
  explanation for your feelings toward each
  occupation.
• Ask your students to cut out many unusual items
  which are for sale in the classified ads a
  player piano, a large parrot cage, an unused
  wedding gown, etc. Place these items in a
  container and ask each pair of students to choose
  three of the items and write a newspaper article
  in which the three items appear conspicuously.

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• Describe your ideal house to the students,
  describing it in as much detail as you can. Give
  your students the classified pages which contain
  the ads for houses for sale. Read a few of them
  and explain any terms they do not understand.
  Pair your students and ask them to describe their
  own dream house to their partner, again giving as
  much detail as possible. Tell your students to
  take notes on their partners description. When
  all pairs have finished, each student should read
  the classified ads trying to find the closes
  possible match to their partners dream house.
  When all students have found what they think is
  the closest possible match, ask them to show the
  advertisement to their partner and explain why
  they chose it for them.

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• Tell each of your students to write a list of
  three people they would like to buy presents for,
  and the reasons why birthday, thank you present,
  special occasion. Pair students and ask partners
  to exchange lists and tell each other about the
  people on their lists, their hobbies, what they
  are interested in etc. The listener should take
  notes based on the information about each person
  on the list. When your students have exchanged
  lists and information , each student will choose
  presents for their partners list of
  people,(money is no object for this exercise) and
  then explain why they chose the present that they
  did.

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More activities than I can tell you about

• After reading the obituary page and noting the
  format, have students write obituaries for
  objects that are ready to be gone old tennis
  shoes, a bad habit etc.
• Read the advice column with your students and
  write and answer letters.
• Geographyask students to search the newspaper
  for stories that illustrate each of the five
  themes of geographylocation, place, human
  interactions and the environment, movement and
  communication, and regions. Display the stories
  on a labeled bulletin board.

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• Expand vocabulary --assign each student a letter
  of the alphabet and using skimming and scanning
  have them find as many words beginning with that
  letter as possible, then have them sort them
  according to parts of speech. Look for words
• with a particular suffix or prefix
• Compound words
• Words in the past, present, and future tenses
• Possessives
• Misspelled
• Similes and metaphors
• Hyperbolesatire etc.

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• Outliningafter teaching the rudiments of
  outlining, give the students a newspaper and have
  them select an article to read and then outline
  the story.
• Who, what ,when, where, whyGive each student a
  newspaper. Have each select an article. On a
  piece of paper have them list the five Ws. Next
  to the five Ws have them list the information
  from the article that pertains to each.
  Encourage them to write the answers in sentence
  form.

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• Content discriminationgive your students a page
  of the paper and have them highlight good news
  in one color and bad news in another. Have
  them explain their reasoning to a partner.
• Parts of speechSelect two or three parts of
  speech and have your students search the paper
  for words that match the category. Using
  scissors have them cut out the words and glue the
  words on a piece of paper according to the part
  of speech label.

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• After studying a certain author or topic, ask
  students to find articles that pertain to the
  topic or which the person in question would like,
  hate, be angry about etc. We just studied Thoreau
  and our newspaper was filled with articles to
  enrage Henry, according to students.
• Have your students make a poster, collage or
  booklet of what they feel are the most important
  items for a week. Instruct them to give reasons
  why they included each item.

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• Have students find five advertisements in the
  newspaper and ask them to list the products in
  order, according to the appeal of the ads.
  Distribute a list of propaganda techniques to the
  students bandwagon, card stacking, glittering
  generalities etc. and have them determine the
  propaganda techniques used in each ad and to rate
  the effectiveness of the techniques. As a
  follow-up ask the students to design their own
  ads using one of the propaganda techniques.

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• Have students write found poetry using words
  and phrases cut from the paper. I find these
  work best if they are given a theme to write on
  such as war or the economy.

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Sources for presentation

• Paul Sanderson --Using Newspapers in the
  Classroom . 1999
• The Teachers Desk Using Newspapers in the
  Classroom. http//www.teachersdesk.org
• Education WorldTen Great Activities Teaching
  with the Newspaper. http//www.education-world.co
  m