| June 2006 | |
NIE teaches Kerrville students life-long reading habitsIf your newspaper has an NIE success story to share send it to the editor. By Aurora Meyer KERRVILLE — Teachers using the newspaper to in their classrooms may bring to mind a social studies class using the newspaper to highlight national and world events. Many Tivy High School teachers use the newspaper in their classes, but instead focus on life lessons. They honored Newspapers In Education Week (March 6-10) by sharing their experiences using the newspaper. Three teachers said they really appreciated the newspapers and will continue to use them in the years to come, not just during Newspapers In Education Week. Paula Reynolds teaches the functional living unit (FLU), and every morning her students deliver the newspaper to other classrooms throughout the school. “It’s a wonderful skill for the kids and just gives us that much more exposure to the other teachers and students,” she said. “It’s just a good thing.” FLU student Betsy Laird, 17, said she really likes counting out the stacks of papers to make sure each classroom gets the right amount. Assistant teacher James Wessels said sports is the most popular section of the paper, especially with the recent girls state basketball tournament run. “We have some students that steal them from the little stacks if the teacher doesn’t get to it fast enough,” he said. English teacher Cathy Berryhill said she started using the newspaper for her non-college bound seniors to encourage lifelong reading habits. One day recently, her students had to identify the relationship between literature and real life drama by finding five examples of real life drama out of the newspaper that can be used as a theme for literary work such as tragedy, characterization, plot or love.
“I want them to develop a habit of reading the newspaper every time we get together, so that when they graduate from high school, they’ll continue to read the newspaper. Because a lot of times, students when they graduate from high school if they don’t go to college, they stop reading,” she said. Later in the year, the students did a “Beowulf” newspaper project. “Beowulf” is a classic medieval epic poem. Each student had to create a newspaper that could have been printed during Beowulf’s time, about 1000 A.D. They created a weather forecast, a sports section, news articles, want ads, a news story and a feature story. Berryhill also uses the unit to teach the different parts of a newspaper and the differences between a news story and a feature story. Art teacher Brigdet Putman uses the newspaper to show her students composition techniques. “The kids don’t always understand what composition is when they see it in a painting,” she said. “They don’t quite understand eye movement and flowing around the paper and what looks nice.” The visual picture of the black and white newspaper helps some students better see the concept, Putman said. She teaches the same lesson in all of her art classes to refresh the topic and make sure every student understands. Putman’s use of the newspaper doesn’t just end there. She often asks her students to take a news article without a photo and sketch or paint the scene the story describes. Or vice-versa, the students will have to write a story from a photo printed in the newspaper. She also collects newspapers to discuss layouts, fonts and what makes a newspaper appealing and why. |
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