Using Newspapers in the Classroom

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Using Newspapers in the Classroom

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Title: Using Newspapers in the Classroom


1
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

2
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

3
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

4
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

5
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

6
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.

7
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.

8
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.

9
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

10
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

11
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.

12
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.

13
  • 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.

14
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.

15
  • 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

16
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

17
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.

18
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.

19
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.

20
  • 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.

21
  • 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.

22
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.

23
  • 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.

24
  • 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.

25
  • 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.

26
  • 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.

27
  • 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.

28
  • 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.

29
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
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