Newspapers are in trouble. With adult readership sinking each year, we as educators can be pretty sure that fewer and fewer of our students are seeing newspapers in their homes at all, let alone having any sort of experience reading them. This is a shame, because newspaper articles can be used to teach a variety of state standards in English, language arts, and reading – fiction vs. nonfiction writing, recognizing opinion, identifying various forms of media, etc.
In light of all of this, I thought I would quickly share a cool opportunity offered by the New York Times with any teachers or parents out there who are looking for ways to introduce newspapers and newspaper articles to their students. The New York Times offers a daily lesson plan based on one of articles contained in the newspaper each day. The lesson plans can be chosen by age and/or subject matter and guide students through reading and interacting with the text. The New York Times has also archived all the previous lesson plans so if you don’t see something you can use in today’s paper, you can search for something that applies specifically to what you are teaching, a new topic you want to introduce, a unit you are wrapping up, etc.
To access this amazing database of lesson plans, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/index.html
From here, you can see today’s lesson plan, visit their archives, or sign up to have the daily lesson plan emailed directly to you every morning.
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