Curriculum Ideas

Language Arts:
Listening and Reading skills can be enhanced when using the newspaper as a jumping off point.

  • Find in the newspaper an example of each of the following: News, Comics, Ads, Jobs, Sports, Business, Features, Food News, Editorials, Weather, and Fashions. Paste and label each on a sheet of paper.
  • The first sentence of paragraph of a news story is the lead, it usually answers who, what, where, why, and how. Cut out a lead. Paste it on a sheet of paper, label it, and draw lines from the words that answer who, what, where, when, and why.
  • Slang is everywhere. How many examples of slang can you find in today's paper? Remember to look in the sports section and in the comics.
  • Look through the whole newspaper and find four pairs of synonyms. Copy all the sentences onto a sheet of paper. Under each sentence write your own sentence for the synonym.

Social Studies and Sciences
Using the newspaper, social studies and science concepts can seem to come to life for your students.

  • Collect pictures and stories for a scrapbook about your state from newspaper clippings. Divide into sections including People, Schools, Weather, Travel, Government, etc.
  • Whom do your trust? Do you know why? Can you find a picture in the newspaper of someone you trust? Can you find a picture of someone you do not trust? Do you know why?
  • Turn to the sports section of the newspaper. Find an article about an athlete who is successful in the sport he or she plays? What is outstanding about this athlete? What are some good health habits this person must have to be successful?
  • Make a poster which is divided into four parts: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Cut out pictures of clothing you would wear during each season. Paste the pictures under the right word. Find pictures in the newspaper that let you know what season it is.

Math
Wherever you look in the newspaper, numbers can be found to use to teach math concepts.

  • Use a felt pen or crayon to outline circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles found on one page in the newspaper.
  • Find items for sale in the newspaper that are advertised for less that $1,000. Round-off the figures to the nearest 100. Round-off the figures below 100 to the nearest 10.
  • Locate the "Apartments for Rent" section of the classified advertisements in the newspaper. Cut out five different monthly rent payments. Arrange the payments in order from the smallest amount to the largest amount.
Language Arts
Parts of Speech
Have students select a sports story in the newspaper. Read the story carefully. Cut out and tape the story on a sheet of paper. Make the following five headings on the same sheet of paper: Pronoun, Noun, Verb, Adjective, and Adverb. Find at least one example of each part of speech from your story. Write the words under the proper headings. partly sunny

Poetry
Read the forecast in the weather section of The Post-Journal aloud to your students. Have them write a poem about the day's weather.

Power Words
Make a list of words from advertisements that might be considered "attention getters." Do the same with the headlines. Compare the words in the headlines to those from the ads.

Descriptive Words
Choose a newspaper photograph with more than one person pictured. List all the words that come to mind when trying to describe what is happening in the photo. Categorize these words into nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Vocabulary Development
Ask students to skim a short newspaper article and underline 5 words they do not know. Write several on the board. Using context cues, have students guess the meanings of the words. Make a list of the guesses and then look in the dictionary for the real meaning.

Language Arts | Math | Science | Social Studies

Math
Subtracting Money
$ Allot each student $500.00 to spend. Have them go shopping in the paper for items they would like to have. As they select each item they should subtract the cost from the $500.00. See who can come the closest to spending exactly $500.00.

Area
Using the newspaper, have students locate four pictures (advertisements, photos, etc.) Identify the picture shape as a square or rectangle. Have students compute the area of each shape using the appropriate formula.

Multiplication
Have students locate three monthly rent charges in the classified section of The Post-Journal. Then have them calculate bi-annual and annual rent charges.

Percentage
Using The Post-Journal, have students compute the sales tax on a sale item and then determine the total purchase price. Repeat this process using the regular price of the item. Calculate the actual savings when purchasing the item on sale.

Division/Unit Price
Find an advertisement that is selling products in unit prices (i.e., 3 for $1.00). Determine what the individual price would be. How much would the total cost be if you add 2 more units for sale (i.e., 5 would cost 1.66).

Language Arts | Math | Science | Social Studies

Science
Current issues in science Choose an article in The Post-Journal that discusses a science related problem of local or national concern. Describe all of the issues related to the problem and propose a solution.

Weather Using the Weather page, choose a city other than Jamestown. Based on the weather map of the United States, create a 5-day forecast for that city and draw the outlook maps to go along with your forecast.

Safety & Wellness Find 5 advertisements for products which, if misused or not used, can result in a health hazard or problem. Identify what type of accident or problem could result. For example, toothpaste/not used/decayed teeth; aspirin/misused/stomach problems; stereo/misused/hearing problems. 3Rs

Recycling
Using the newspaper, find examples that illustrate the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). Make a collage of your findings. Create a comic strip, single panel cartoon or editorial cartoon to comment on one of the issues.

Energy Conservation
Look through the photos and ads in the newspaper to find alternative ways that people can travel in order to conserve energy (be creative).

Language Arts | Math | Science | Social Studies
circles

Social Studies
Current Events/Critical Thinking
Write an editorial or design an editorial cartoon based on an issue in today's newspaper.

Fact vs Opinion
Read an editorial. Pick out the facts and rewrite the story and a news article.

History
To show that history tends to repeat itself, locate current events which appear to repeat events or issues in history in terms of background and outcome. Then make a table of correlations between current issues and historical issues. For example: immigration to the New World/ displaced persons or refugees.

Heroes
Choose a person you admire in today's Post-Journal. From the story, list the personal characteristics and accomplishments mentioned which you think make this person a hero. Write a short paragraph as if you were describing this person to someone who was unfamiliar with him/her.

Quotes
Look through the newspaper for quotes which are relevant to today's news. Choose a quote which you think will be in the history books of the future. Discuss why.