Ten Great Activities: Teaching With the Newspaper

                                          

Ten terrific classroom activities that use the newspaper to teach all sorts of valuable skills -- including reading and writing for meaning, map reading, media literacy, sequencing, word meaning, and math.

"The newspaper is the most widely used of the media [as a teaching instrument in the classroom], the direct result of a national campaign by publishers, known as Newspapers in Education (NIE).

Before the advent of NIE, newspapers tended to be used only by secondary school social studies teachers in two-week units or for Friday current events sessions. Now, however, newspapers are used throughout the school year in every area of the curriculum."

Those are the word of Nola Kortner Aiex, author of Using Newspapers as Effective Teaching Tools. Indeed, the news is more a part of the school curriculum than it ever was -- for many reasons. Ten of the reasons teachers find newspapers such effective classroom teaching tools are detailed in the NIE feature "Why Use Newspapers?" which points out that newspapers

1. are an adult medium that students of all ability levels can be proud to be seen reading.
2. deal in what's happening here and now, providing motivation for reading and discussion.
3. make learning fun.
4. are extremely flexible and adaptable to all curriculum areas and grade levels.
5. bridge the gap between the classroom and the "real" world.
6. build good reading habits that will last a lifetime.
7. can be cut, marked, clipped, pasted, filed, and recycled.
8. give everyone something to read -- news, sports, weather, editorials, and comics.
9. are a cost-effective way to educate.
10. contain practical vocabulary and the best models of clear, concise writing.

This week, Education World offers ten additional reasons -- in the form of ten terrific classroom activities -- for you to use newspapers in your classroom.

- See more at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/Ten-Great-Activities-Teaching-With-the-Newspaper.shtml#sthash.AdRhALgD.dpuf