Newspaper Activities What’s the Story? Skills Practice: predicting/ vocab/discussion/listening for main idea & detail Choose a news story relevant to level and current class study (theme or grammar) Write several new words taken from the news story on the whiteboard Brainstorm word meanings and pre-teach as necessary Students work in groups to predict what the story is about (5 minutes) Group leaders relate the story to the class (This can also be turned into a game whereby teacher, without telling the students what the story is, gives points for the number of correct facts each group has given) Interest in what the story actually is, will be high The teacher reads the story and students make notes of key words The story could be read twice; once at normal speed for gist and the second time for detail depending on the level of the class Groups then re-form to share the information and then relate their version of the correct story to the Class Again, points may be allocated for: 1) correct facts & 2) correct grammar Wh question practice – Running Race Skills Practice: /question forms/vocab/ listening/pronunciation/skimming & scanning Choose a reasonably straightforward news article Pre teach new vocabulary so that students will have an idea of the topic In groups of 3, students write wh/h questions that they need to ask to find out what happens in the text One student in each group is given the article, one has the questions and one is the “runner” The student with the text, sits at one side of the room and the student with the questions sits at the other with the runner The question holder reads the first question to the runner who runs to the reader and asks it The reader scans the text to find the information The runner then runs back to the questioner and gives the answer using correct spelling and grammar First group with correct answers (including spelling, and grammar) is the winner Reading Race Skills Practice: skimming & scanning/ vocab/grammar focus/speculating Choose a topical news article at appropriate level Pre-teach any new vocabulary Put students into groups and give each group copies of the same story Students highlight main points and make notes individually Students then share information in their groups to put the story together Teacher puts a time limit on this and then takes the article away Group reporter then gives the group version of the story Teacher can allocate points for factually and grammatically correct answers Variation: Instead of asking the groups to provide a version of the story, this can be turned into a comprehension quiz competition The teacher asks a series of 10 questions based on the article and groups provide factually and grammatically correct answers i.e point for correct fact & point for correct grammar