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Try This With Your Child
Teaching with Newspapers
New Ideas to Clip and Save
To find helpful web sites browse our Webliography!
Scavenger Bs
Have your students find the following parts of speech in the newspaper. But there's a catch—all the words must start with the letter B. a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, a proper name.
Standards Link: Grammar: Distinguish between parts of speech.
Freedom Patrol
Have students look through the newspaper for articles that show ways in which people's freedoms are being violated. Discuss ways to better protect the freedoms of all people living in your community.
Standards Link: Civics: Understand the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
Tricky Math
Have students cut out a selections of ten candy ads from the newspaper that include price and weight. Each students should: add up the weight of their candy; add up the total price of their candy; find the average weight and price of each candy; rank the candy prices in numberical order from the least to the most expensive; decide which candy is the best value for the money.
Standards Link: Number Sense: Calculate sums, averages; rank a range of items.
Comic Creation
Have students create their own comics. Let them cut out pictures or drawings from the newspaper and paste them onto paper. Draw "talking bubbles" from their characters and write a joke or riddle in each bubble and write a joke to go in each. Display the comics in your classroom so students can share the fun.
Standards Link: Visual Arts: Use a variety of media to express ideas.
Science News
Look through the newspaper for three examples of news articles related to science. Tell which science(s) each article connects to. For example, a weather story is related to the science of meteorology.
Standards Link: Physical Science: Understand that science involves work in many different disciplines.
Who's in charge?
Have your students look through the newspaper to identify the elected officials in your community. Make a chart showing their titles, responsibilities and which branch of government each is a part of.
Standards Link: Civics: Understand the major characteristics of systems of shared power and of parliamentary systems.
Look Out for Others
Look through the newspaper for people and places that address the problems facing disabled people. Brainstorm ideas for making your community a better place for someone with a physical disability.
Standards Link: Civics: Understand issues regarding personal, political and economic rights.
Action Words
Identify action verbs on one newspaper page. Divide your students into pairs. Have the "reporter" write five questions. The "athlete" must include the action verbs in their responses.
Standards Link: Grammar: Recognize and use verbs in writing.
Exchange Rates
First explain that Canada has a different currency to the U.S. Have your students look up the money exchange rate and explain how it works. Now have them select items from the ad section of the newspaper and work out how much that item would cost them in Canadian vs. U.S. dollars/
Standards Link: Number Sense: Solve real-world problems involving number operations (e.g., computations with dollars and cents).
Explorers
Do explorers and expeditions still exist today? Have students look through the newspaper for stories about present day explorers and researchers. What are they searching for? What do they hope to find?
Standards Link: Language Arts: Use resource material to gather information; summarize and paraphrase information in text?
Cartoon Chatter
Let students select from the newspaper a cartoon with dialog bubbles. White out the words in the bubbles, and then have students write their own words there. Or, if your newspaper does not have comics, make a bubble on a photograph, and have students write what they think the people in the photograph are saying.
Standards Link: Language Arts: Understand quotations; use dialog in writing.
Book Clue
Have students look through the newspaper for an item that reminds them of a book they have read or a movie they have seen. Let them write a review of the book or movie and present it to the class. Read reviews in the newspaper as models.
Standards Link: Language Arts: Write for different purposes (e.g. to entertain, inform, learn, communicate ideas); summarize ideas.
Backyard Scientist
Take one sheet of your newspaper and place it in an area of your backyard that you think will attract bugs. Weigh the corners down with rocks. Your job as a scientist is to observe this space. Take notes about the creatures that land on the paper. Leave the paper overnight and observe again. Life up the paper to see if any creatures have crawled under it during the night.
Standards Link: Science/Investigation: Know scientists' explanations come partly from what hey observe and partly from how they interpret observations.
Mystery Message
Have students clip headlines from the newspaper. Then, using the headlines, students each choose words that they rearrange into a mystery message. After shuffling the messages, hand one out to every students. Each students should write a surprising story using that mystery message as a title and theme.
Standards Link: Language Arts: Write narrative accounts; establish a context that enables the reader to imagine the event or experience.
Sleuth Search
Have your students look through the newspaper to find:
Standards Link: Language Arts: Use resource material to gather information.
Suspects
Find pictures of people and animals in the newspaper. Have your students cut out individual features: eyes, nose, hair, hands, paws or even a tail. Now let them select and glue together various features to create a suspicious character or creature.
Standards Link: Visual Arts: Use different media, techniques and processes to communicate ideas.
