Verlissa Echols

Rationale:

To use the newspaper to improve student listening and reading comprehension skills.
 

Materials:

Newspapers, color pictures, construction paper, collection or articles
 

Procedures:

1. Hold up a large color picture from the newspaper or elsewhere, making sure everyone in the class gets a good look at it. After about 30 seconds, put the picture face down and ask students to jot down everything they can remember about it.
 

• Compare lists. Talk about how easy it is to look at something without really paying attention to it. Ask students if they ever have had a similar experience with listening or reading.

 
• Tell students that you are going to use a game to help them improve their comprehension skills. Read an interesting story from the newspaper, and ask students (individually or in teams) to answer questions about it. Questions might be based on the 5Ws and H-the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story. See which students or teams can recall the most. Try this activity with other stories as well.

 
• Give students a list of 10 categories: sports, fashion, school news, entertainment, celebrities, etc. Have them choose the two or three that interest them most.

 
• Set up five learning stations, each containing news stories from a popular category. The articles for that category can be mounted on construction paper; questions about the article should appear on the reverse side. Students can go to the station of their choice and read the articles, testing their own comprehension with the questions. Change the articles every week or so.

 

Pressley, Michael. The Elementary School Journal. The University of Chicago. 1989. pgs1-27
 
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