Read All About It!

Free class sets of the local newspaper used to be delivered to our classroom daily. Budget issues ended that program and I can only bring one copy in per day. That's pretty hard for 33 students to share and learn from effectively. Copy budgets don't allow for copying articles that many times or making multiple transparencies. A document camera would help with this problem. An interactive whiteboard would increase potential even more!

I've found that (and research confirms that) utilizing student work in lessons increases student involvement and attention as well as motivating thoughtful responses. Keeping those things in mind...

The teacher peruses the daily newspaper for 3 articles that might interest students. I tend to look for articles about kids, students, people in need (to possibly inspire a class service learning project), sports, or weather.

Students follow along looking at projected image as the teacher reads the article and ensures understanding. Then students are prompted to interact with the projection to underline the "who", "what", "where", "when", and "why" of the article.

With the second article students have to write the "5 W's" on their papers which are later projected for class discussion.

With the third article students turn their "5 W's" into succinct summaries of the article which again are projected for class discussion. The ensuing discussions (also opportunities for me to adapt and differentiate lessons based on needs I see) allow the students to see expectations and models of great work or how to improve, right there in front of them in real time (as opposed to waiting for my feedback in future days after the lesson is over).

Doing this activity several times a week with a variety of nonfiction materials should improve student thinking skills (research has shown that summarizing helps with comprehension), vocabulary, and writing. Summarization is one of our weakest areas on the state assessments (as is nonfiction comprehension), so this lesson definitely addresses areas of need and state standards. In addition students learn a lot of historical facts and understandings of the world around them.