Engage students with news, events and anniversaries for the week of March 2-6, 2015
It's Newspaper in Education Week!
For more than 35 years, newspapers have been partnering with local schools each year in March to celebrate the use of newspapers in the classroom. Sometimes referred to as “the living textbook,” newspapers continue to be useful for teaching many content areas across multiple grade levels. So, when you use the newspaper this week, know that you are part of a long tradition of creative teaching!
Language Arts
1. In honor of NIE Week, invite your students to choose a story they would use if they were teaching someone to read, using the newspaper.
Indiana Academic Standard: Read and comprehend a variety of nonfiction within a range of complexity appropriate for grade
2. Explain to students that a simile is a literary device used to make a comparison, using the word “like” or something similar. An example is “Mazie ran like the wind,” meaning that she ran fast. Once you’ve explained the concept and asked students for other examples, put this example on the board. “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” The expression is meant to describe the March weather coming in as winter and going out as spring. Invite students to find examples of simile or other metaphors in the newspaper. The Sports section is a good place to begin the search.
Indiana Academic Standard: Identify relationships among words, including multiple meanings, synonyms and antonyms, homographs, metaphors, similes, and analogies.
3. On March 3, 1931, the United States adopted “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. Ask your students to review the lyrics and to extract the themes in the song. Then have them skim today’s news to extract themes that might be woven into an anthem written today.
Indiana Academic Standard: Determine a theme of a story, play, or poem from details in the text
Math
1. On March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain became the only NBA basketball player to score 100 points in a game. He played for the Philadelphia Warriors. In that game, they were playing the New York Knicks in Hershey, PA. In honor of Wilt, have your students review the basketball statistics in today’s news. Have them compare the number of points scored by individual players to Wilt’s record.
Indiana Academic Standard: Formulate questions that can be addressed with data and make predictions about the data
2. The 24 Game is a popular math game that uses different numbers and math operations to reach the number 24. There are even tournaments to find the champs. Have students use the Cars for Sale ads to create their own newspaper game of 24. They can use the index of the e-edition to find the ads for used cars in the Classified section. Using only the numbers they find on one ad, can they somehow reach 24? For example if a used 2001 Honda Civic costs $4800 and it has 2 doors, they could divide 4800 by 2 and get 2400. If the ad says they can put $100 as a down payment to buy the car, they could divide the 2400 by 100 and get 24. Let them have fun playing E-News 24.
Indiana Academic Standard: Solve real-world problems involving multiplication and division of whole numbers
Science Literacy
1. March is Expanding Girls’ Horizons in Science and Engineering Month. This international effort encourages girls to explore careers in science and technology. Have students check the Help Wanted ads to find jobs in those areas that might inspire girls and boys to study science.
Indiana Academic Standard: write arguments in a variety of forms
2. Introduce your students to …Frances Gabe, who hated housework. She called it a “nerve twangling bore.” She had to do something. So in 1984 she invented the self-cleaning house. Each room of Gabe’s house has a 10-inch square “Cleaning/ Drying/Heating/Cooling” apparatus in the middle of the ceiling. At the touch of a button, it sprays a powerful blast of soapy water over the room, then rinses and blow-dries the entire area. The rooms’ floors are sloped slightly so the extra water runs off. The breakable stuff is protected under glass. The dishes are cleaned, dried and kept in a cabinet, which is also a dishwasher; clothes are cleaned, dried and stored while hanging in a closet, which is also a combination washer-dryer. The sinks, tubs and toilets are self-cleaning and the bookshelves dust themselves. Gabe continued to perfect and live in her house for many years. Is there a chore your students don’t like? Can they find a creative way to solve that problem? Have them skim the newspaper to find an invention that made a household chore easier. They should imagine that the item was just invented and write a display ad to sell it. They can check the display ads in the newspaper to see how they are designed.
Indiana Academic Standard: Write informative compositions on a variety of topics
3. The old saying about weather this month is that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Lions are fierce; lambs are meek. Ask students to check the weather page and decide if March "came in like a lion." They should write their conclusion and defend it with the facts about the weather.
Indiana Academic Standard: write informative compositions
Social Studies
1. Students can go to this site and type in their birth year to see what happened that year. Here’s a great activity to use with this site. Have students imagine they are working for the company that manages this site. Their assignment is to use the information in the newspaper to write a chapter about what is happening now. If 20 years from now someone were to go on this site and type in 2015, what would they see, based on today’s news? What’s big in politics, in movies and entertainment, in sports and in business?
Indiana Academic Standard: write informative compositions on a variety of topics
2. March is Women’s History Month. Begin by introducing the work of the people at the first convention for women’s rights held in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. At that meeting the “Declaration of Sentiments” was drafted and signed by 68 women and 32 men. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, the document demanded equal rights for women. Ask students to think about the audience for whom it was written. How do they think men of that time would react? What about women? After reading it, have students write two newspaper editorials responding to the argument of the Seneca Falls "Declaration of Sentiments," one rejecting it and the other agreeing with it. Before they complete that assignment, have them read the editorials in your newspaper to see how they are written.
Indiana Academic Standard: Establish and maintain a consistent style and tone appropriate to purpose and audience
Write the News Lesson
Topic: A Valuable W
This is Newspaper in Education Week. It's a great time to think about how news stories are written. Many news stories will answer what’s known as the 5 W questions. Those are who, what, when, where and why.
Often, the “why” of a story tells the reader the reasons the story is important. When you write, you’ll want to do the same for your readers.
For practice, consider how you feel today. Describe it.
Next, consider why you feel the way you do today and explain that.
Can you see how explaining “why” helps the reader develop a clearer understanding?
Find a story in the news that explains why something is happening. In this space, explain how knowing why helps you to better understand the story. When you have finished reading, write a question telling one more thing you’d like to know about the topic.