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I have been implementing N.I.E. activities in my class for many years. Each year, I try to come up with something interesting and motivating for my students to do using the newspaper. Over half of my students´ families are receiving free News-Journal subscriptions due to the generosity of The News-Journal and a grant that has allowed for the opportunity to promote family literacy. Families are actually reading and discussing news!

My class also receives a class set of papers every Monday. We read the Mini-Page (Kids´ Page) together every week. On Monday, they take the paper home and find five facts about the topics discussed in the Kids´ Page. They are assigned this for family homework every week. Also, on Tuesday, they must look for an interesting article about a current event happening in their world right now, write a review of the article, attach the article to their review and return it to me. We have a large "Current Events" board posted in our room. It becomes so full that we have to dismantle it every few weeks. The children love going to it and reading what others are writing about news articles.

We also do newspaper treasure hunts as often as possible. The students truly enjoy searching through their newspapers for the items that I have pre-selected and posted on the white board. They work in teams or with partners to encourage cooperative learning. I also use the paper for each "theme/unit" that we study in Science and Social Studies. It is amazing just how much information they can locate in the current news about topics that are taken for granted in our daily studies. Math provides us with many opportunities for implementing newspaper activities in class. We use it to study decimals (the Sports Section provides many statistics that incorporate decimals), economics & money (shopping, advertisements, for example), etc. Grammar and writing instruction and practice are often enhanced with newspaper activities in my class. We may simply search for various parts of speech, such as prefixes, suffixes, antonyms, homonyms, etc., or we may read and critique a piece of writing style in the paper. Using the paper as a model for supportive details, etc. is an excellent and resourceful way to enhance writing skills.

Deb Hibdon
4th Grade
Volusia Pines Elementary School

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