Newspaper Activities that Span the Curriculum
| Headlines | News/Feature Articles | Weather | Subscription Rates | Lotteries | Advertising | Today in History | Sports | Financial Pages | Obituary | Food Section | TV Schedule | Movie Schedule | Classifieds | Birth Announcements | Real Estate | Comics |
-Count the number of letters in different headlines. Compare for greatest or least.
-Assign each letter a cent amount and find the total value of the headlines.
-Find the percentage or fraction of vowels in a certain headline.
-Predict the content of an article based solely on the headline. Write a paragraph describing what you think the article will be about.
-Create a headline for a fairy tale, or a book recently read.
-Write a ‘scientific headline’ that might appear in the paper based on your most recent science lesson
-Find an article of interest to students and locate the 5 W’s in the article.
-Have students write the lead paragraph for a “news article” about a recent class/school event. (or write a news article for one of the headlines they created in the headline activity section.)
-Create a lead paragraph for an article based on a fairy tale or book, scientific discovery, great invention, etc.
-Find an interesting picture and write an article based on what you think is happening in the picture.
-Summarize an important article in poetry form.
-Write a news article about a recent science experiment.
-Write a letter to someone in a news article. Be sure the letter is in proper format. Integrate technology by using the computer to type out the letter.
-Find the average high/low temperature in the state.
-How many hours of darkness can we expect today based on the sunset/sunrise times?
-Create a clock showing the hours of high tide, sunrise, etc.
-Convert °F temps to °C
-Write a descriptive paragraph about today’s weather.
-Write a story about a day it snowed in July.
-Research unusual weather patterns in NJ in recent years.
-Collect articles and graphics related to weather phenomenon, like hurricanes and tornadoes.
-How much do I save by purchasing the special 7-day home delivery rate instead of purchasing the paper individually each day at the newsstand?
-How much would it cost for me to have the Press delivered to my home every day for an entire year? A month?
-Write a story about something that happens to you while you are out delivering newspapers.
-Add the winning lottery numbers. Find other number combinations that would give the same sum.
-Keep track of the winning numbers over a period of time. Which number
appears most frequently.
-Write about what you would do if you won the lottery. How would you spend your money?
-If you won the lottery and were able to contribute to one great scientific discovery/cure, etc. what would it be and why?
-Draw/write about your “dream vacation”, “dream gift”, etc.
-Write out word problems from circulars or ads.
-Compare regular prices to sale prices. Compare the prices of the same
product at different stores.
-Purchase a certain number of items…. How much change would you
receive from a $50 bill?
-Categorize coupons.
-Round off prices to the nearest dollar.
-Make a collage of items that total $1,000 or a $1,000,000.
-Find geometric shapes in the ads.
-Find items that could be used to invent the “next most important invention”.
-Compare “good” ads to not so good ads. What attracts your attention?
-Create an ad for the school store.
-Determine how long ago an event occurred. How many DAYS ago was it
-Create a class timeline of some these important events.
-Create a time line of important scientific discoveries using cut out numbers from the newspaper.
-Collect science related ‘Today in History’ news and create a collage with them.
-Add or subtract scores to improve on speed in computation. Graph your
personal results.
-Which team had the highest score? The lowest score? What is the
difference between the highest and lowest scores?
-Pick one team and graph their scores over a certain period of time.
-Find synonyms for the word “WON”.
-Discuss the idioms, puns, homophones found in many sports headlines.
(Primary teachers, read Amelia Bedelia books to students)
-Find alliteration in sports headlines.
-Select certain stocks and purchase a certain quantity of shares of that
stock, estimate the cost, including the 2% brokerage fee.
-Find the closing prices of certain stocks from the day before by
examining the “change” column.
-Graph the changes in the Dow Jones Industrial averages from day to day.
-Write a job description for a stock broker or a banker.
-Keep track of the stock prices of companies who work to protect the environment.
-Find the average age of death in today’s paper
-Use the ages to find the mean, median, mode and range.
-List the ages in order from youngest to oldest.
-List the ages that are even numbers, prime numbers, etc.
-Of the people who died, who lived the farthest away? On a map, estimate the distance in miles. Go the a travel website and check to see how close your estimation came to the real thing.
-Write an obituary for a deceased scientist.
-Learn to read the recipe and what the numbers in the recipe mean
(temperature, time, measurement, size, etc…)
-Measure out the exact amount of ingredients in a recipe.
-Estimate the cost of making a certain recipe.
-Make a collage of food items found in today’s paper.
-Categorize food pictures found in the paper in the proper food groups.
-Write about and describe your favorite food.
-List the ingredient amounts if you were to double the recipe or cut it in half.
-Learn to read the TV Graph.
-Show on a clock what time a certain show starts and ends.
-Find the oldest movie? How many years ago was it made?
-List all the channels that are odd numbers, prime numbers… etc.
-Write a persuasive letter to your parents asking them to stay up late to
watch a particular TV show.
-Keep track of shows on the educational channels and categorize the ‘science’ shows by certain topics. Which topics make for good TV shows?
-Write the movie “start” times out in words instead of numbers.
-Which theater is showing the greatest number of different movies?
-Graph out the amount of money made from the “Box Office” leaders.
-Write a movie review for a movie you have recently seen.
-Pretend that your latest science experiment was a feature film. Write a movie review for it.
-Write a classified ad for a certain object. Estimate the cost to run the
ad 2-3 times a week.
-You have $500 to spend. Find some items that you would like to buy.
-Find a part time job, an apartment and a vehicle to use to go to work.
-Were more boys or girls born at Monmouth Medical Center? How many
more?
-On which day were the greatest number of children born?
-Keep a running graph of the number of babies born over a period of
time. Predict which gender will have the greatest number of births next month.
-Write out the prices of homes in words.
-Find the house that was sold for the most money or the least money amount of money
-What is the difference between the least expensive and the most expensive house in a certain town.
-Draw a picture of your “dream” house.
-Draw floor plans of your own home.
-Select any comic strip and have students re-write the comic in
paragraph form, transforming the “conversation bubbles” to proper quotation mark format.
-Use the comics to teach punctuation. Examine the use of commas,
periods, question marks, etc. found in the comics.
-Use the comics to locate nouns, verbs, etc…
-Design a comic that reflects a recent topic studied in science.