Newspaper based Activities

Simple activities that can be done using newspapers:

Activities for the English Class 

Cut a picture from an advertisement in a newspaper and use it to sell something else. You can sell anything even friendship and care. Something else you can do is to keep the picture of the advertisement but change the meaning of the advertisement by changing some or all of the words. 

Take a small paragraph from a news item. Now try to change its meaning by changing the punctuation marks. Or change pronouns, prepositions, verbs (tense), etc., depending on what grammar you are studying. 

Take a story from a newspaper. Convert that story into a poem using the main words from in the report. Since here both the content and the vocabulary are given it is easy for children to convert a report into a poem and for many it becomes a first step into understanding the rhythm of language that makes poetry. 

Every child selects an unfamiliar word, from the newspaper, finds the, meaning and then tests his or her classmates for their understanding of that word. Testing each other clarifies the meaning as well stores the word in the memory better. Encourage children to test their parents and other adults at home. You could extend them to a continuous hom-based activity where every child is asked to pick out one new word and bring it to class every day, or assign one child or one pair of children to do this each day. 

Let children work in pairs. One child chooses a story and makes a mind map of the story, or a visual, or a flow chart. This is given to the partner who recreates the story in a written format. 

Activities for the Hindi Class (or any language class) 

Often newspaper supplements have comic strips in them. Take any comics that you like and write the dialogues in Hindi. Paste your dialogues on top of the English ones to make a Hindi comic or cartoon.  

One child reads a news story. A second child interviews the first in Hindi, while a third child records the interview by writing downs the questions and responses. A fourth child then prepares a report of their interview and presents to the whole class. 

Take a favourite Hindi song. Find a news item in the paper where this song will broadly fit in. Then change some of the key words of the song to make a parody (in Hindi) to fit in with news-story. 

Pick up specific words (jargon) used by specific reporters (about travel, finance, sports, etc). Now think of equivalent Hindi terms. Create your own Hindi guide to such classes of English words. A wonderful Internet resource (English to Hindi dictionary) is available at www.shabdkosh.com 

Get Hindi and English newspapers of the same day. Choose common reports. Compare the two reports - with respect to content, style of reporting, terms used, etc. Children can also mark out new Hindi words they encountered and guess the meaning based on the English report (or vice versa). 
 

Activities for the maths class 

Get the children to look for as many different units of measurement as they can in a given newspaper and prepare a chart showing how these measurements are used. For example what is millimeter used for and what are kilometers used for. 

Each child needs to search for a number in the paper, ranging from units, tens, thousands, to the largest number possible. They list them down in order; write in what context each number appears and so on. In fact this idea can be generalized to any concept that children are currently learning in math. If they are learning areas, find where area measurement is used, if they are learning fractions, find stories with fractions, find negative numbers, averages, decimals, angles, percentages, etc. Newspapers have a lot of math in them for children to relate to. 

A wonderful way to understand math concepts is to create questions out of the numbers (data) given. For example, if the news is that petrol prices have gone up by Rs. 2.10, children use this information to form questions and post it for others to answer. Example questions, "What is the percentage increase?", "By how much will my monthly petrol expenses go up if I use 5 liters of petrol everyday?" and so on. 

Cut up a newspaper to show a particular concept. Since newspapers are a cheap resource children can easily cut or tear or even make small balls to use as manipulatives. This is of great use in geometry where concepts can be explored by paper cutting and paper folding. (For example cut a triangle and measure its (internal) angles to conclude that summation of the three angles of a triangle is 180.  

Another example (for learning the multiplication table):, tear thin strips of a newspaper. Now if one wants to know how much is three times two (3x2) you can use three horizontal strips and overlay them with two vertical strips - the resulting number of intersections is the answer - that is 6. 

Give the children an imaginary rupee account of say Rs1000 which they have to invest in scrips based on the share prices given in newspapers. Then they track the performance of their scrips as well as their portfolio. They make their own conclusions about the stock market and its trends. 
 

Activities for the science and nature class  

Collect news stories about animals, trees, plants over a period of time. Categorize them as per their theme or location. Write your comments on each story and put them up on your notice board. This can lead to questions like: what sorts of topics get more coverage? How are the stories told? What pictures are used and what impact do they have? 

Take any story about conservation - good or bad - talk about what you will do if you were in-charge of the conservation. Or collect ideas about conservation given in these stories.

Think of a scientific principle and then collect advertisements that use that principle. For example, water or sun for pre-primary age group; energy and force for primary age group, levers for middle age group and so on. 

Make a poster from pictures, advertisements and articles showing how machines help people do different things.  

Find areas that were witness to severe weather - floods, quakes, hailstorms and the like. Get children to create art works, songs, etc., to depict the problems faced by the people living there. 

Activities for the social sciences class 

Take an interesting story. The children try to predict what will happen today as a follow up to an event that happened yesterday and then note that down. The next day they check the newspaper to see how good their prediction was.  

Find a newspaper article that is about each of the following: a meeting of a government agency, a press conference, a disaster or unexpected happening, schools. Ask the children to determine the social content of each news story. They can collect / classify stories based on concepts like democratic / autocratic process / rules and enforcement (like cricket player getting suspension from ICC) etc.  

Pick up different important news stories, cut the headlines and pin according to their place of origin to a map of India (or the world). Children can also predict how likely it is that this event can happen in their city (floods, or a cricket match, or a strike, for instance.) 

Depending on what topic is being covered in social studies (Geography) class, let the children collect all images, data and information related to a particular culture (or religion or state or profession) from a set of old newspapers. The can look for information related to fashion or clothing, food items, crops, news about music, dance, cinema, land form, tourism, climate, etc. 

Get the children to think about life in a society in which there are no mass media like newspapers, TV, Internet or Radio. Make a list of all the functions provided by the newspaper, including such things as providing news, serving as an advertising medium, social announcements, upcoming events, critical reviews, etc. How would each of these functions be met in a newspaper-less society?  
 

Activities for assembly time 

Working in teams, children take the story of the day from the newspaper and then use the same newspaper to create dresses, props, puppets, etc., to re-enact the news-story as it happened. 

The children working in either pairs or groups choose a theme from what they are studying (can be from history, geography, science, language, any subject) and then create a tableau using newspapers. While they may be allowed to use gum and tape and paints, the idea is to constrain them in terms of resources so that their creativity can shine through (at almost zero cost). 

From stories in the previous day’s paper, a team of children present a report of achievements and achievers. The team not only talks about who achieved what but also puts up a collage of photos, write-ups, etc., on the notice board for others to see.  

Children do a weekly technology report in the assembly. They talk about, display, even act out or dress up like the latest technological innovations, breakthroughs and research.

The stuff they can talk about can be a new feature in cars, a new kind of cricket bat or a new way to be healthy and so on. 

Each class is given a theme and few newspapers and each class has to come into the assembly line dressed according to their theme. This adds a lot of zing and fun into the assembly. The idea is to push children to come up with quick ideas and to help each other (within their class / section) so that the class comes out as one whole unit. Example themes: poverty, punctuality, prime numbers, politics, peninsula, prepositions, etc. 

To end here are nine generic ways of using the newspaper in classroom

N - Numbers and more numbers

E - Entertainment (jokes, comics, puzzles)

W - Write about things in a spicy and interesting manner

S - Search (for information on anything)

P - Pictures (learn about topics visually)

A - Art via newspapers

P - Physical games (like paper hockey: using a paper ball and roll to make sticks)

E – Explore the variety in society

R - Read it!