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Curriculum Use & Ideas

The benefits of writing a newspaper are endless. 
  • Newspaper text is concise and well-written, serving as a model for student writing across the curriculum
  • Research and interview skills
  • Serious collaboration with classmates to achieve a common goal
  • Differentiated lessons are natural due to the many levels of activities involved
  • Organization skills

Here are some integration ideas that have proven to be a success across the curriculum.

Our 200 series makes an awesome school newspaper; one front/back page provides four news pages!
 MATH
  • Write sports articles while applying formulas, percentages, probability, and statistics
  • Create and then convert chances of bad weather from percent to decimal on the weather page
  • Combine literacy with math to write creative news stories that transform math concepts into characters and events (see samples page for good examples)
 SCIENCE
  • Develop a weather page noting the different types of clouds, storms, and other phenomena
  • Create a newspaper that focuses just on recent science discoveries and technologies
  • Write scientist biographies
  • Students become field reporters, writing articles about significant experiments at the science fair
LANGUAGE ARTS
  • Teach students the 5 Ws used in newspaper writing, after which students write their own articles employing the same style
  • Learn what makes effective biographies (relevant information vs trivial details) and then write one for the obituaries section
  • Create a monthly class newspaper to communicate with parents & students
  • Book reviews in a variety of genres
  • Author studies
  • Chapter summaries (which can be effective assessment)
 SOCIAL STUDIES
  • Identify states, regions, cities, and capitals on the U.S. map found on the weather page
  • Create an entire paper around specific topics or time periods, such as  scientific discoveries of the 20th century, culture of the roaring 20s, technology available and used in ancient Egypt, Greece, etc.
  • Civics classes use two groups to write two papers, each with either a conservative or liberal point of view (excellent hands-on activity to understand media bias)
  • Write front-page stories, based on national and/or local current events
 ELECTIVES
ANDTHE ARTS
  •  Foreign language students write newspaper articles in their 2nd language; beginners should use the 100 series; advanced students use 300

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