Newspaper a Valuable Teaching Tool for Parents and Educators

Few resources are so cheap but valuable in itself as the newspaper. For as little as the change in coins in their pockets, readers can get all your local news and learn what is happening abroad, and for sports fans, what happened during last night's games.

For educators, newspapers can be a valuable teaching tool as well. Younger children generally are not avid readers, but newspapers are often easy to read, with concise articles that are not as neat as chapters of a book. The teachers hope to instill a love of reading in your students can put in the local newspaper to work in a variety of ways.

* Teach children the "5Ws (and H)." Most adults remember the lesson of "5Ws (and H)." 5Ws and H are the Who, What, When, Where, Why and how. Newspaper articles are usually about the rule which encourages journalists to answer these six questions in the first of several paragraphs of an article. Teachers can give students the newspaper and tell them to identify and H. 5Ws Students tend to take on the character easy to read news articles, and may pick up your mom or dad a newspaper in the house as a result.

* Teach the difference between editorials and hard news. When using newspaper as a teaching tool, teachers can give students two different articles, a news and editorial one. Before explaining the difference, ask children to identify the differences. Chances are, the children gathered in the main dispute, that an editorial is an opinion piece that uses data to support an idea, while confined to a news report the facts without giving an opinion. This can be a valuable lesson for children to learn, the promotion of reading and teach children to question the source of their reading materials in an analytical way.

* Encourage children to read their favorite sections of the newspaper. Children are children, and are not be interested in the stories of first page or most of what is included in Section A. However, there are sections in the newspapers that can attract children and teachers and parents should encourage their children to read the sections that interest them. The entertainment section may have histories of favorite children's movies, while young sports fans can enjoy articles on your favorite teams and players. The goal is to get kids excited about reading, and in many parts of the newspaper articles are full of children can enjoy.

* Use the local section as a teaching tool. Children may or may not be interested in what is happening in world financial markets and even the nation's capital. However, the local section is something that children can often relate to, with stories about people and places that are familiar in their own cities. Human interest stories about local residents do good deeds or local businessmen and women setting trends could give children a greater sense of pride in their community.

The local newspaper is a wonderful tool for educators to use with their students. If there is one already, teachers should contact their local school board or even your local newspaper to see if an agreement can be resolved that teachers can provide students with the local newspaper every day.

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