Especially for Teachers

The Mini Page — 2003 Activities

Your Newspaper

This week´s standards:

Students read and understand a variety of texts. (Language Arts: Reading)

Students use the structure of text to construct meaning. (Language Arts: Reading)

Students write for a variety of purposes. (Language Arts: Writing)

Activities:

1. Find an interesting photo in the newspaper. Cut it out and paste it on a piece of paper. Write a story to go with the photo.

2. Find a newspaper ad for an item you would like to have. Draw a circle around the words in the ad that make the item appealing. What other words would you use to describe the item?

3. Look at the sports page in the newspaper. Make a list of at least 10 exciting action words (verbs) from sports stories.

4. Take a survey of family members and friends. Ask them to name their two favorite sections of the newspaper. Which newspapers sections were the most popular? Why?

5. Use news stories and feature stories to learn more about newspaper writing. Cut out the first paragraph from three news stories from the front page of the newspaper. Cut out the first paragraph from three feature stories. (Look in the local, lifestyle and entertainment sections for feature stories.) Compare the two sets of paragraphs. What differences do you see? Use these questions to guide your analysis: Do news stories or feature stories have more words in the first paragraph? Which paragraphs tell you the who, what, where and when of the story in the first paragraph? Which paragraphs try to get your attention by starting with a quote, an unusual fact or an intriguing sentence? Which type of writing do you like best? Why?

Dr. Sherrye D. Garrett
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

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