The Newspapers in Education program has long acknowledged the worth of using newspaper material as a learning resource. Their website provides a balance between online news and the printed word, offering ideas to publishers, educators, and parents. The Washington, Missouri school district has provided a PDF that specifically addresses using newspapers to teach the Common Core: Their introduction states: "Newspapers are a timely, relevant and affordable source of nonfiction text that allows teachers to meet their classroom goals and students to master the skills." Teachers and Administrators in one NewYork district were trying to find a way to enhance the literacy skills of their scientifically minded STEM students. While our students are gifted in the sciences, they struggle, like many high school students, with analytical reading skills and writing. With the Common Core's emphasis on argumentative writing and reading informational text, we felt the urge to restructure our classroom to better meet these standards and the needs of our students. We decided to bring newspapers into our daily classroom routine and focus our instruction around their content since they provide a flood of informational text every single day. A group of educators in Illinois put together ideas for teaching common core literacy standards for their elementary aged students. One of the examples that uses newspapers: Headline News. After exposure to the organization of newspaper articles, provide several sentences relating to a story read in class. Help students choose the sentence/headline phrase that represents the headline for the article (the central idea/lesson) and use the remaining sentences to tell the story beneath the headline. After sentences are in order, color or decorate the headline, so it is different from the rest of the "article" and is similar to a newspaper. There are many other resources online with engaging ideas for incorporating newspapers into literacy standards. An idea from the Reading Rockets page: Sports Glossary Skill: Student uses a variety of strategies to analyze words. Have students select an article from the Sports section. As they skim the story, they can make a list of vocabulary words that are used in the sport. Then they should write a definition for each word and draw a picture to illustrate what the word means. They can add any other words they can think of that also have to do with the sport, but that do not appear in the article. Now they have a sports glossary! An internet search combining "Common Core" and "Newspapers" provides a wealth of additional ideas. |