How to Use Newspapers to Teach Reading & Writing Skills
Reading, writing, and language teachers can use the newspaper as an effective tool for demonstrating the concepts of reading and writing, as well as the structure of the English language. Using newspapers in this way helps students see realistic examples of the practical applications of grammar and comprehension that they can utilize in their reading and writing experiences in and out of the classroom.
Instructions
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How to Use Newspapers to Teach Reading & Writing
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Identify the strategy. If you are a reading teacher, reinforce one strategy at a time. For example, if you have introduced the skill of summarizing, have students read short articles and work in pairs or small groups. Each student can read a paragraph and highlight the important details. Then they can paraphrase these details into sentences that best retell the event related in the article.
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As a writing teacher, you can teach students how to express themselves succinctly by examining the sentence structure in newspaper articles, which are usually written to convey the most meaningful information in synopsis form. Choose an article and lead a group discussion by reading and analyzing each sentence and paragraph. Show students how article writers learn to make each word count. This is a skill that students need to master in order to be able to write effective essays and research reports.
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Teach editing and revising procedures. Newspaper articles are good references for teaching students how to check their own writing for grammar and punctuation errors. Because articles are printed in final-draft status with few errors, you can have students study correct subject-verb agreement, capitalization, and punctuation. You can also point out use of concise wording to convey meaning and how to transition from one idea to another in a smooth, easy-to-understand manner. These are aspects of writing that students often have difficulty seeing in their own writing.
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