Newspapers Make Good Teachers
By Heidi Stephens
Developmental Editor
News for You
It’s hard to find any teaching tool more relevant or authentic than a newspaper. Here are three activities to consider when planning lessons:
- Send students on a “treasure hunt” to find grammatical structures. Give them a sheet that lists the structures they should find (e.g., three present-tense verbs, three past-tense verbs, three adjectives, three proper nouns, one abbreviation, and a comparative adjective).
- Have learners rewrite headlines in the form of complete sentences, using proper capitalization and punctuation.
- Choose a photo in the newspaper. Without showing the caption or having them read the article, ask learners to write a few lines about the photo.
Reprinted from LitScape, Winter 2006