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Browse these suggestions from teachers on ways to use News for You in the classroom.
You can find suggestions to meet your learners' needs by category — such as comprehension, research, or writing. Just click on the category name on the left side of this page.
Have a tip you'd like to share? Email us at nfyeditor@proliteracy.org.
You can download the free 2024 News for You Voting Guide to help explain U.S. elections to your students.
The guide explains who can vote and how, why we vote and what we vote on, and the process of choosing a president. It also includes pointers on watching debates and thinking critically about campaign ads. Defined voting vocabulary and a special subscription offer are also included.
February is Black History Month. It's a time to honor important people and events in U.S. history. The month is a way to learn more about the cultural heritage, victories, and struggles of Black Americans.
You can help your students learn more about Black History Month and important figures in Black history with articles from News for You. The following articles are just a sampling of the resources from News for You. Everyone can get free access to these articles; if you are not a subscriber just enter the password BHM in the password box near the top of the page.
Web Brings Black History to Life (2/17/2016)
Women Jump In to Bring Back Double Dutch (10/11/2023)
Monument Tells the "American Story" of Emmett Till (9/27/2023)
Her Ancestors Were Enslaved. Her Husband's Ancestors Were Enslavers. (8/9/2023)
Poll: Black Americans See Personal Gains, but Are Still Troubled About Racism (7/5/2023)
Reparations: Cities and States Study How to Repay Black Americans (5/24/2023)
The Changing Face of Weather: Black Women Reach Top Jobs (3/15/2023)
Statuary Hall Adds First Statue of a Black American (9/7/2022)
Congress Votes to Honor Black Female WWII Unit (4/6/2022)
Records Found: Sojourner Truth's Fight to Save Her Enslaved Son (7/27/2022)
Dancer, Spy, Civil Rights Fighter Josephine Baker Makes History Again (2/2/2022)
New Orleans Ends Little-Known Ban on Jazz in Schools (5/4/2022)
Learn About Juneteenth: America's Second Independence Day (6/8/2022)
New Museum Tells the Story of African Americans (9/7/2016)
New Marker Recognizes That Slavery Helped Build the White House (9/15/2021)
Experts May Have Found Harriet Tubman's Childhood Home (6/2/2021)
Little-Known Black Explorer Honored With Mystery Statue (4/7/2021)
U.S. Remembers Baseball Legend Hank Aaron (2/10/2021)
U.S. Negro Leagues Raised to Major League Status (1/27/2021)
Stick to Sports? Black Athletes Have a Long History of Protest (2/21/2018)
Make a list of homophones based on words in News for You articles. Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently. Have students look at the list and find homophones in the articles.
Here, for example, are words that might go on such a list along with words that students might find in articles: to/too/two, four/for, know/no, inn/in, wood/would.
Ask students to write the crossword puzzle answers in alphabetical order. This process helps them find words in the dictionary much more easily.
Choose an article from News for You and ask students to read it carefully. Then have them put away the paper or close the article on their screens online. Read the article aloud to the students, but make some changes. For example, change dates, names, or other facts. Ask students to call out or raise their hands when they hear something different from what they read in the story. Then they can give the correct version.
Variation: Let students "doctor" the stories and read their versions aloud to classmates. Ask the classmates to listen for differences.
This activity integrates reading and listening skills. It also provides practice in listening for detail.
Divide students into small groups. List headlines from an issue of News for You on the board and assign one headline and its article to each group. Have each group read the article and write questions about it.
Next, write the headlines on separate pieces of paper, then put them in a hat and have each group draw one. (If they choose the headline they used for writing questions, they should put it back and choose another.) Each group must read the article with the chosen headline and try to answer the questions written by their fellow students.
Ask students to locate on a map the states and countries mentioned in an issue of News for You. Then discuss those places. Who has visited them? Who has relatives in them? What time is it there? What is the weather like there?
If students want to know more about one or more states/countries, set up group research projects. Each group could decide what it would like to know. You might want to help groups locate sources of information that could yield answers to their questions. Then ask the groups to report what they learn back to the class.
Connecting students to math problems in real-time shows them how useful math can be in the real world and with every day useful activities. Here is an example of the results from a News for You poll and how you can use them to teach these math concepts.
Number Line: students can place these numbers on a number line. The numbers can include the total votes (56), along with the total “Yes” votes (19) and the total “No” votes (37).
Addition: Students work to see how many votes in total were can by adding the Yes (19) and No (37) votes together. Mental math can also be used with this example. Students can be asked to make a mental calculation. By breaking the problem down to show that there are nearly 20 Yes votes and nearly 40 No votes, students can understand that the answer must be less than 60 total votes.
Subtraction: By using the weekly poll as a formula, students can learn subtraction. By taking the total number of votes 56 and subtracting either 19 or 37 from that number, they can check to make sure the total is correct.
Fractions: Fractions can easily be taught each week using the News for You Poll. Using the same poll, these figures can be turned into fractions, and
Decimals: Using the above fractions, students can work to turn these into decimals: .339 and .667.
Percents: Students could also use the same numbers above and turn them into percents (33.9% and 66.07%).
Ratios: Teaching ratios is a great way to help students make representations and comparisons. Using the same poll, students can estimate ratios for the Yes votes as 1:3, while the No votes are 2:3.
Send students on a treasure hunt to find grammatical structures within News for You.
Distribute a list of the structures you want students to find. Then have the students circle the words/structures they find and write the words on the lists. Ask students to locate, for example, structures like these:
Students could search individually or in small groups. Or you could make a competition of it -- the group that finds all the examples first wins. Vary the difficulty of the structures depending on your students' skill levels.
Before class, choose an article from News for You and cut it out. Then cut out each paragraph separately. Glue or tape each paragraph to an index card, then shuffle the cards.
In class, have students work together to assemble the cards so the article is in the correct order. This activity can help learners practice identifying linking words and pronouns, and improve sequential skills.
News for You articles are targeted to reading grade levels 3 through 6 and may be used to strengthen students' skills with various College and Career Readiness and Common Core State Standards.
Download this list to see which standards can be addressed with News for You.
Researchers at the Stanford History Education Group have created a free Civic Online Reasoning curriculum based on four years of research and field testing.
Lessons are designed to help students answer three important questions about online information: Who's behind the information? What's the evidence? What do other sources say?
You can sign up for the free curriculum here: https://cor.stanford.edu/curriculum/
Save old copies of News for You until you have at least 10 weeks' worth. Put students into small groups and give each group a large white piece of paper, several pairs of scissors, and a couple of glue sticks. Give a different back issue to each member of the group. Then give the students a list of things to find.They are to glue their findings onto the group's paper and label them. They can race or you can give a time limit. The following is an example of a list. You can add to it or create your own in order to reinforce things you have studied in your class.
Find:
NewseumEd has compiled a number of free resources for teachers to help students evaluate online news.
The lesson plan "Is This Story Share-Worthy?" includes an infographic poster to guide students as they weigh the value of a story and what to do with it, a collection of links to real and fake news stories for students to analyze, and worksheets for students to use to help decide whether the stories are share-worthy.
Find a mix of real and fake articles to show at the front of the class. You can use articles from The Onion for the fakes, and from News for You for the real news, or choose some suggestions from the list below.
Give students a few minutes to read each article, then ask them to stand if they believe the article is true. Talk about why they think so.
Suggested real news stories:
U.S. Navy will use Xbox controllers to steer submarine periscopes
Updated: Bullet-riddled Bieber portrait stolen during TIFF returned to museum, charges laid
Duterte: If my son is involved in illegal drug trade, kill him
Suggested fake news stories:
Grandpa nearly dies after girl unplugs his life support so she can charge her phone
(Hints: There's no About page, byline, or dateline)
Beyonce, Jay-Z to launch online contest to determine baby names
(Hints: The About section of the website shows it to be satire. Beyoncesbabynames.com site doesn't exist. Cross-checking through Google finds no reputable stories about it.)
You can use the Newseum's E.S.C.A.P.E. Junk News lesson and poster (free; registration required) to help students go over what makes a story reliable.
Enlarge a copy of a News for You article and cut it into 3 or 4 pieces. Post a piece on each wall of the classroom (not in the order they appear in the article). Label the pieces A, B, C, and D in the order they appear going around the room.
Assign each student a letter. Tell students to go to the wall where their section is posted and read their part of the article. No paper or pencil is allowed. If students want to take notes, they must go back to their seats to do it. They can discuss the article with other people at their wall. A student reads only one section.
Form new groups. In each group, include one A, one B, one C, and one D person. Each person explains his or her section of the article. The rest of the group listens and, if necessary, asks questions for clarity. Then the group decides on the logical sequence of the sections, for example, B, C, A, D.
If an article is sequential, write a simple outline on the board by asking students for suggestions. Students can choose broad categories and subcategories under each Roman numeral.
After students have studied vowels or consonant blends, have a timed contest. Choose an article or articles in News for You and ask students to circle every word they can find that contains the sound or sounds you specify.
For example, you might say, "Circle all the words that have the long e sound. You have five minutes. Go!" When time is up, have students write their words on the board. Practice pronouncing and defining them and make sure they all have the right sound.
The same approach works for identifying parts of speech, verb forms, etc.
This activity gets students to think about a person and share what they know before they read about him or her.
Select a well-known person from a current issue of News for You. Make sure it is someone your students are likely to know something about. Write the name on the board. Divide the class into pairs or small groups and ask them to share what they know about the person. You can use the 5W questions: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Give the students a time limit for gathering information. Ask each group to choose a recorder.
When time is up, the groups share what they gathered with the class. Write the information on the board as each group's recorder responds.
The activity generates vocabulary related to the person. It also gives students good background for reading the article itself and discussing the issues it raises.
Cut out the photos, with captions, from a print copy of News for You. Next, cut out the headlines and the articles separately. Have learners match the photos to the headlines and articles, using clues from reading the captions and text.
To help either basic literacy or ESL students with grammar, have them underline a particular part of speech, such as all the nouns in an article. You might have them put one line under subjects and two lines under predicates, or you might have them underline all the prepositional phrases. Students are usually amazed to actually find these in something they are reading.
Assign each student a person from the week’s news. Each student should then become that person and prepare a monologue telling the person’s story and how he or she feels about the situation reported. Students should take turns presenting their characters. While one student is presenting, the others can play the role of journalists at a press conference by asking questions of the presenter. The presenter would be expected to answer the questions. These activities take the news off the page and give it immediacy. They allow the students to imagine a person’s life vividly rather than simply reading about it.
If you're interested in studying news literacy and how to avoid "fake news" more in depth with your students, here are some helpful links to fact-checking sites, resources, and lessons:
International Fact-Checking Day
Short video from Factcheck.org.
From The Atlantic: Can a Beautiful Website of Facts Change Anybody’s Mind?
Stanford study: Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning
To help students evaulate news stories, break the class into small groups of three or four. Pass out two articles to each group on the same topic -- one legitimate news story, and one that is either opinion or other type of "fake news."
Instruct the group to read the articles and decide:
After several minutes, reconvene the class and discuss the groups' findings.
Help your students evaluate whether a photo in an article is showing what is claimed.
An easy way to check where a photo came from is to use Google Images. Just save a copy of the photo to your desktop, and open http://images.google.com/ in your browser. Drag the photo to the page, and Google will show where else the photo has been used. (If you use Chrome, you can just right click on the photo on the website and select "Search Google for image.") If it has been shown to be fake by Snopes.com or another factchecking site, those results often show prominently.
First, have students skim News for You. This could be done as homework. Meanwhile, come up with 50 to 75 questions based on articles in that issue.
Divide the class into two groups. Have each group divvy up the articles so each person reads one or two stories carefully.
Now, ask your questions. Don't pause for long gaps between questions. Ask a volunteer to keep score on the board and help you listen for which group gives the correct answer first.
Anyone can answer the questions, so the answers come fast. Things get very noisy and exciting. Sometimes the winners get small prizes, but bragging rights are what the teams really want. This makes reading the newspaper really fun.
An interesting idea for a class project would be to start a "vertical file," or resource file of information. After the class has read the newspaper, students cut out the articles and classify them by subject matter. For example, they could create files on natural disasters or sports. This helps them classify and organize information. It also helps them create their own resource files for future reference.
Use News for You to teach students how to create an outline. After each paragraph is read, have the students locate the topics, subtopics, and additional details. Following this pattern, students end up with a structured outline of the news article and with increased understanding as well.
The teacher has students read an issue of News for You as homework before class. Before class, the teacher prepares a grid. Choose five stories and label columns with their names across the top. Then put the dollar amounts $100, $200, $300, $400, and $500 vertically down the left side. Prepare a question for each cell, with easiest questions at the $100 level and hardest ones at the $500 level.
In class, divide the group into two or three teams. Choose a team to go first. The first team member chooses a dollar amount and a story. The teacher reads the appropriate question. The student who chose the question must answer it but can consult with other members of the team.
If the student answers correctly, the team gets the "dollar amount" added to its total, and it is the next team's turn to pick a question. If the student answers incorrectly, the next team gets a chance to answer and then takes its regular turn. If no team gets the answer, the teacher can choose whether to give the answer or open it to later guessing.
The team with the most "money" at the end wins the game.
A K-W-L (Know-Want to Learn-Learned) chart can help learners sort information about an article.
Here's a reproducible K-W-L graphic organizer you can use.
In the first column, they write what they already know about the topic. In the second column, they write what the want to learn from the article. In the third column, they write what they learned from the article.
You can introduce the general topic of the article to learners, then fill out the "What I already know about this topic" column together. Next, have them read the headline or read it to them, then have them write questions under the "What I want to learn from this article" column. Finally, after reading the article, have them fill out the "What I learned from this article" column. If the information they learned helped to answer any questions they had in the "What I want to learn from this article" column, they can put a check mark beside that information.
You can discuss and share charts as a class when finished.
Divide the class into two groups. Assign an article from News for You to each group. Each group will then teach the rest of the class about the contents of their article. Prepare a list of written questions for each group to guide them in their planning. Tell students you will give a short true-or-false quiz on the article to the entire class following each group's teaching presentation. Set time limits for planning and presenting.
Have students find a country or U.S. state mentioned in News for You stories on a globe or map.
This activity provides practice in anticipating content.
Choose a News for You photo from which students might be able to guess an article's topic. Show students only the photo. Then ask each of them to write a sentence in which they predict the content of the related story. Encourage them to use their imaginations — this does not have to be a test of current events. After they share their sentences with fellow students, have them read the related article. Vote on which sentence best predicts the story content. You may also want to vote on the most imaginative prediction.
Choose two articles from News for You that can be developed into skits. Set time limits for planning and presenting the skits. Divide the class into two groups, and give each group suggested ideas for each skit. Include characters, scenes, and actions. Get class members in the audience involved in each skit by having them ask questions of the players in character after the skit presentation.
Ask each student to choose six crossword puzzle words and get familiar with their meanings. Have them write each of the words in a sentence.
With a bunch of colored markers or pens and copies of News for You, ask students to locate various parts of speech in sentences from the newspaper. Provide a key with color coding for each part of speech, and have them find and circle: common nouns, proper nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, and conjunctions.
Ask students to read one of the articles in News for You. Then ask each student to write a summary. The twist is that the summary must be exactly 15 words long. This gives students practice finding the essential message of a story and expressing that message succinctly. If you wish, you could ask students to pair up and proofread each others' summaries. Then authors can refine and polish their work so that each summary has exactly the right number of words and captures the essence of the story.
You may choose to spread these activities into more than one class session.
First, ask students to read an article or articles from News for You. Then ask them to make a list of words that begin with each letter of the alphabet. Or you could draw words from News for You articles for the list yourself.
Set the list up in the first column of a three column grid. Label the columns "Word," "Part of Speech," and "Type."
Next, on that gridded list of words, have students label the nouns and verbs (as the words are used in the NFY article from which they were taken.) Put those labels in the "Part of Speech" column. Then label each noun as "common" or "proper." Label each verb as "action" or "being." Put these choices in the "Type" column.
Finally, have students make up sentences using the words.
Cut an article from News for You in half, then make enough copies of each piece so every learner will have one half. Separate the class into two groups, and give each group a different half of the story. Ask each group to read their portion of the article and write down details that are missing.
Put the learners into small groups with others who have the same half. Ask them to talk about the article, to try to fill in any missing information, and to compile a list of questions they want answered about the article.
Pair up students who have different halves of the article. Have them talk about the article so they discover the whole story, but without looking back at their original half of the article.
Finally, have the learners go back to their original groups. Have the groups write a summary of the entire article without looking back at it.
Whenever there is news from another country, have students mark the country on individual maps or color it in with colored pencils. From time to time, review the countries that have been identified. Ask students to recall why the countries were in the news.
Choose three to five words from a News for You article that you think will be unfamiliar to most of your students. Write the words on the board, then have the students read the article aloud or silently. Have the students try to come up with a definition for the first word based on the context of the article. When they're finished, have them look up the word in a dictionary to check whether they were correct. Repeat these steps with the rest of the words.
The teacher chooses one word at random from a photo caption somewhere in News for You. The first student to find the word must give the page number and story headline where the caption is, then read the caption aloud. If students don't know the meaning of the word, they can look it up in a dictionary. If there are several possible meanings, the class can discuss them.
Use a new crossword puzzle word as the basis for a lesson. For example, the clue "short for Delaware" could lead into a search for Delaware on a map, followed by learning a little of the history of the state.
Put students into groups of three or four. Have them read an article together. Then have students retell the story in their own words, with each student responsible for making at least one comment.
Here’s a tip for using News for You crossword puzzles. Once students get used to doing the puzzles in class, it may not take them long to be able to do them independently. They may not need much assistance from the teacher. If that happens, try placing them in groups to work on the puzzles. Have the groups compete with one another. Students often enjoy the competition.
Try to ensure that teams are nearly equal in reading level. Sometimes that can be difficult to do. To help level the playing field, go around to those tables and give clues to those teams that need assistance. Don’t give students the answers. Just give them more clues.
Have students write an opinion about, not a condensation of, an article topic for homework. Then look at their work, circle places where it needs to be revised, and let the students try to make the corrections. If necessary, tell the students what is expected. Later, the students read the corrected pieces aloud. This helps students become increasingly secure in oral work. It also often leads to discussions.
Have each student choose a key word or name from an article and construct an acrostic using words or short phrases related to the chosen word. Here's an example using Capaci, the last name of a Powerball lottery winner:
Confirmed winner
Acquired $195 million
Powerball lottery
A retired electrician
Celebrated with friends
In an Illinois tavern
This is a good summarizing activity that involves higher-level thinking skills. It is appropriate for basic literacy, ESL, or GED students.
Choose a page or article from News for You. Ask students to find as many city names on the page or article as they can in three minutes. Next, ask students to name the country where the city is located, or the state if it's in the U.S.
Locate cities on a map. Expand the lesson by asking students to share any personal knowledge of these locations.
After reading and discussing an article, play Stump the Teacher. Students need to write at least two questions about the article. The students should know the answers to their questions. Writing questions is often difficult, especially for ESL students. The teacher must answer the questions from memory without referring to the article. Students love to stump their teachers.
Set up a regular time for journal writing in class. Subjects for writing can vary, of course, but News for You is a good source of ideas. Pose a question and ask students to write about it. For instance, imagine a photo captioned "Half-Ton Couch." Then pose the question, "What would you do if you woke up one morning and everything in your room was huge?" Students can use imagination as they write their responses.
The activity promotes creativity and humor. You may choose to ask students to share what they have written with their classmates.
The discussion questions in the Teacher's Guide are also good starting points for coming up with writing prompts.
First, model and explain that "who," "what," "where," "when," "why," and "how" questions can be literal (facts from the article) or inferential (no "right" answer in the article). For inferential questions, students must either give an opinion or gather evidence from the story to make a judgment.
Tape two large pieces of paper on a wall. Label one "Literal" and the other "Inferential."
Ask each student to read one article and then write at least 3 questions about it, each on a sticky note. One of the questions should be inferential.
Students exchange sticky notes with a partner. The partners answer their questions. Then the partners decide which of their questions are literal and which are inferential. They stick the notes into the appropriate sections of the papers on the wall.
Discuss with students whether the questions are in the right groups. Sticky notes can be moved if necessary. Finally, have the class group the questions into other categories (such as settings, themes, etc.)
In advance, find nine numerical figures in an issue of News for You, and prepare clues that would help students figure out which story each figure comes from.
In class, after the students have read that issue of News for You, write the nine figures on the board. Distribute a blank, nine-square grid to each student and have then write the nine figures on their grid, in any order.
Give the students the clues, and have them cross out the correct numerical answer on the grid. Whoever gets three in a row first is the winner.
Check the answers for accuracy, then hand out copies of News for You and find the stories associated with the numbers.
Ask students to read a front-page story from News for You (those are the top two stories on News for You Online). Don't read the story yourself--it is important that you not know the details. Tell the students that you haven't read it, and that their task is to tell you the most important facts and details in the story.
After they read, you can debrief orally or in writing. You could list the points students tell you on the board and then discuss whether they agree on main points, or you could ask students to write the main points and exchange them with a partner to see whether they agree about which points are most important.
Read the headline of an article to the class. Have students predict what the article is about. Brainstorm as a group to find out what they already know about the topic. Then have the students read the article. Discuss what what new information they have learned.
This activity is good for ABE and GED students. It is especially useful as an activity to precede formal essay instruction.
Ask each student to choose an article from News for You to read carefully. Then ask students to write short two- or three-sentence summaries of their articles. Finally, ask them to write their reactions to the articles. These reactions should reflect the student's feelings and should be supported with details and/or examples.
Choose an article in News for You that students may find controversial. Have students read the article. Then ask each of them to take and defend a position on that controversial topic. They can do this in writing or orally, individually, or in groups. Encourage them to "disagree agreeably." These discussions can lead to good topics for essay writing.
Have students construct crossword puzzles using clues that call for facts from the articles. Then students can exchange and solve their completed puzzles.
If your class has access to computers, this website may help.
This activity is especially good for students who process information best by manipulating it.
First, have the students read an appropriate article. It might work best to have someone read the story aloud. Then ask the group to discuss the characters, the setting, and the sequence of events described in the article.
Hand out art supplies, magazines, etc. for the students to use to create their own cartoon versions of the story complete with dialog bubbles. Share results with the rest of the class and/or post the cartoon strips.
Pick an article from the latest issue of News for You. Then write about the topic as if the date were one year from today. Explain what has happened by that date.
Choose one article from News for You and have students circle the verbs in each sentence. List the words on the board, and talk about which verbs they think are the "strongest." You can talk about strong, active verbs and how they make writing better.
Have students review articles in News for You and have each choose one story to read carefully. After reading, ask each student to write several paragraphs relating the article to his or her own life experience. Students can read their paragraphs aloud, or they can exchange their experiences in small groups.
This activity extends comprehension, provides a purpose for reading, and gives writing practice.
Divide the class into pairs or small groups. Then ask each pair or group to select a photo from News for You and come up with a scene based on it, complete with dialogue. Each group will perform its scene for classmates. The rest of the students guess which photo the performers used. This works well for upper-level ESL students.
This activity gives students practice using idioms presented in previous News for You lessons. Write an idiom (for example, "cry wolf") on a piece of paper. Write a definition (for example, "give a false warning") on another piece of paper. Make sure you have enough idioms and definitions so that each student can participate.
Place idioms and definitions together in an envelope. Have each student select one slip of paper and then proceed around the room to find its match. When two students have matched an idiom with the correct definition, have them sit down together and write a sentence using the idiom. Students then share their sentences with the class.
Before students see News for You, block out the headlines from one or more stories (or print stories from News for You Online and remove the headlines). Ask students to read each story carefully and write an appropriate headline for it. This requires accurate interpretation of the information in the article, and it tests students' ability to identify the most important message. It also is an opportunity for demonstrating creativity. Then see how closely the students' headlines match the ones in the paper.
Have students work individually or in pairs. Assign each person or pair a different article from News for You. Ask the students to read their assigned articles carefully and write comprehension questions about them. Then have students take each others' "tests" and hand them back to the writers. Writers can then "grade" the tests.
This activity promotes reading comprehension and gives practice in forming questions. For variety, you could ask students to create true/false questions about the articles.
Use News for You as the basis for a national and international scavenger hunt in the classroom. Give students copies of two maps: one of the world and one of the United States. Divide students into pairs or small groups. Ask them to skim the newspaper for national and international place names. When they find a country, state, or city name in an article, ask them to find and color its location on the relevant map. Then ask each student to write a sentence or two explaining why each place is mentioned in News for You. Have the students attach their summaries to their maps.
This work can lead to discussion. Which country seems to be the setting for the most interesting or meaningful news? What does anyone in the class know about this country or state, in addition to the information shared in the newspaper?
This activity provides practice in recognizing and using blend sounds. The materials you need are an envelope for each student, index cards, and News for You.
On each card, print a word that contains a blend that has already been taught (ex. glad or stand). Cut each card in two between the blend and the remainder of the word. Place cards for about 8 to 10 words in each envelope. Pass out the envelopes to the students.
The students then assemble the blends and word parts to make words. Check each student's work. Then have students exchange envelopes so each student eventually assembles the words in each envelope.
First, have students choose an article to work on. After they have read it carefully, ask each to review the five W's for it--who, what, when, where, and why--and write a summary. Then ask students to write a critique of the article or an editorial about it. This will require applying the information in a subjective way.
If the students get really interested in the topic, form small discussion groups or teams. Formulate a question or issue for the students to discuss, and then ask them to do some research to find facts to back up their opinions. A class discussion or debate based on such research should be rich. And students can feel knowledgeable about a current issue while developing their research and writing skills.
Have students take notes as they listen to you read a News for You article. Here are some ways to approach the activity:
Prepare enough copies of a photo from News for You to give one to each of your students. Before the students read the story from which the photo came, ask them to write stories to fit the photo. Imagination is welcome here! When they are done, they can read their stories to each other. And then they can read the original story that went with the photo. It can be interesting to see the different interpretations.
Ask your students to bring highlighting pens to class. Then ask them to highlight any new words or words they are unsure of in News for You stories.
Ask students to pair up. Then have them compare their highlighted words. Student A can explain to Student B any of Student B's words that he or she understands and vice versa.
The pairs can join into groups of four. Again, students can teach each other any words that are still unknown. It is important for you to monitor this work closely to make sure the word meanings are correct. If any highlighted words remain unexplained after this step, you can explain them.
This activity gives students practice speaking clearly as they try to explain the meanings of the words they know. It recognizes that although students may be at the same "level," the knowledge they bring with them differs.
In this exercise, students are assigned roles as evening news program TV announcers. Have students choose any two articles from the current issue of News for You. After reading the articles, they must summarize the most important information in three or four clear sentences. Have each student sit at a table facing the class and role-play a TV announcer delivering the "Evening News for You."
At first, students may be hesitant to be put in the spotlight. But after the second or third time, they often get caught up in the performance and become more creative.
Here are some phrases that can help them begin their newscasts:
Blank out the caption on a photo or infographic and allow students to write captions of their own. This livens up a dull session and brings groups together to share many serious and humorous ideas.
Have students write an opinion about, not a condensation of, an article topic for homework. Then look at their work, circle places where it needs to be revised, and let the students try to make the corrections. If necessary, tell the students what is expected. Later, the students read the corrected pieces aloud. This helps students become increasingly secure in oral work. It also often leads to discussions.