In June we gave the English Forward training to teachers and trainers from around Arkansas. We had a blast and got great feedback from participants. I also got a lot of questions about using newspapers. Ann Ritter from Crawford County Volunteers for Literacy in Van Buren, Arkansas asked for suggestions about ways to use newspapers in conjunction with English Forward.
Newspapers are a great classroom resource. They are an authentic material with content that’s timely and relevant. And if you use a local paper, you’re giving your students information directly applicable to their lives in their community. The result is heightened motivation and engagement. Sound familiar? This all falls right in line with the English Forward guiding principles.
There’s all kinds of info on the internet about using newspapers – enough to make your head spin. Much of what you’ll find is in the context of reading & writing and is more applicable to academic instruction than community ESL classes. Since the focus of English Forward is on speaking & listening and many of our learners are at the beginning levels, I’m going to narrow this post to interactive activities for students with less prior exposure to English.
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
Here are some of the things I like to do with newspapers for lower-level classes. Almost all of these activities I would ask students to do in pairs or groups to encourage communication.
**Use weather maps. USA Today has a nice map that’s in color. It’s a great start to a discussion on weather and would complement lessons 2.5 and 2.6 in the English Forward curriculum. I’ve also used weather maps when talking about travel, clothing, geography, and even color and number basics. A fun lesson is to have students work in groups using the map to plan a vacation, and then make a list of clothing to pack based on the weather.
**Classified sections are great if you’re looking for a job or a place to live – situations most of our students will find themselves in shortly after arriving in the US. Select some job openings from the newspaper relevant to your students and write up biographies or resumes for sample job seekers. Have students match up people with jobs. For housing, I write up sample paragraphs about the lives of different families and have students find a suitable place for them to live.
**If you use a newspaper with a weekly entertainment section, have students plan a fun evening out.
**If you want students to be more familiar with how the newspaper is organized, use a treasure hunt, much like the one we do in the English Forward teacher training. Depending on the ease of the questions you ask, this could even be done with the most beginning of learners. (ex. What is the name of the newspaper?, What is the date of the newspaper?, etc.)
**Newspapers are a great source of engaging visuals. A few things to try with photos: Match pictures with the corresponding headline, predict what an article is about based on the photo, or ask students to write their own headlines for photos
**Use store ads and flyers to plan a grocery list. If you’ve been working with money, you can give students a budget and ask them to plan a party.
I also wanted to share this short article written by Carolyn Chandler on Using Newspapers in the ESL Literacy Classroom: http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9216/esl.htm . The article suggests newspapers can be useful for even very beginning learners and outlines activities for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students. The end of the article lists some of the efforts newspaper publishers have made to assist students learning ESL – from developing materials to offering English classes. On this note, I’d encourage you to check with your local newspaper to see if they have any resources you could use in the classroom. Many newspapers provide free copies for educators.
It’s easy to get access to newspapers and focus instruction on having students read articles and write summaries. These are useful tasks, but they don’t always lead to communicative activities. Don’t forget the English Forward guiding principles and focus lessons on student interaction and communication.
Interested in digging deeper into using newspapers? Sharon Sloan from Carroll County Literacy Council in Berryville, Arkansas asked for some tips on ways to use the New Readers Press newspaper News For You. Check back soon for a follow-up post where I answer Sharon’s question and share other online resources for accessing news to use in the classroom.