It is often said that today’s news is tomorrow’s history and that newspapers print the first draft. Newspapers and other printed media provide rich detail into the events of the day. It comes fresh each day either in print form or electronically. The newspaper is a living textbook that can be used to supplement and enhance reading, social studies, science, and math lessons. Most newspapers provide some or all of their content online. Many offer educational materials both online and in print format. During the year, a limited number of sponsored copies of the print edition of Newsday and the electronic version of the New York Times are available to schools in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens through corporate and subscriber sponsorship. Paid subscriptions are available throughout the school year.
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Newspaper activities can reinforce and enrich your classroom activities and can be aligned with the New York State ELA and subject area standards. You may want to copy these activities into your word processing program and print in large font onto card stock to create activity cards.
Create an ABC book about your neighborhood or community using pictures and words found throughout the newspaper.
Long Island is made up of four counties: Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Kings (Brooklyn). Find a photo in today’s newspaper that was taken on Long Island. Are there people in the photo? What are they doing? Tell why you think the photo was taken and put in the newspaper.
Find photos and drawings of foods you, your classmates and your family like to eat. Cut them out and create a collage.
October is National Safety Month
It is important to be safe when using electricity. Cut out four or more pictures of items that use electricity. Mount on cardstock. Create a label how that item should be safely used. Your safety placard can be used to create a safety bulletin board.
Cut out twelve headlines and cut apart the words. Organize the words by part of speech (noun, verb, adverb, adjective). Using at least ten of the words, create a fictional story. Your teacher may give you a theme and/or length requirements.
Collect news stories, editorials and photos of varied regions of the world. Select one and identify the physical and cultural characteristics of that region. Research the region using your school or local library and the internet and create a visual display on oak tag or a tri-fold or multimedia display using PowerPoint, highlighting the information you learned about that region.
Locate an article about a local problem. With a classmate discuss the issues. Using a graphic organizer create a cause and effect chart.
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Educational activities using the newspaper can be found on this web site as well as those web sites indicated with a *.
Newspaper Links:
Newslink - links to U.S. and world newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and other news sources.
Newsvoyager- Link to daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States and around the world
New York Times Learning Network* - Site contains reproducible student activity sheets that can be use with any day’s newspaper and curriculum guides. Offers daily lesson based on a current day’s newspaper article
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html
Palm Beach Post - Short weekly k-12 newspaper lessons*
http://www.nieonline.com/palmbeachpost/lessons.cfm
Parade Classroom – Links to weekly news quiz, skills sheets and lesson plans.*
http://www.parade.com/paradeclassroom/index.html
Scholastic – Teaching materials including lessons, reproducible worksheets and monthly calendar can be downloaded.
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/home.jsp
Target Date - Compare newspapers from around the US.*
http://www.nieconnects.com/PDFs/TargetDate_directions.pdf
USA Weekend Weekly Teacher Guides*
http://www.usaweekend.com/classroom/teacher_guides.html
Weekly Reader – Reproducible worksheets and other teacher resources available for downloading.