We recently enjoyed a field trip to the printing offices of Central Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Bulletin. I felt it was thereby a great opportunity to explore the parts of the paper with them. They both enjoy writing a mini-newsletter themselves, so I knew they would take an interest, but I didn’t want to get bogged down in the details.
I thereby planned only a few short lessons .. meant only as an introduction. The first day, we explored all the sections of the paper and discussed how the paper was organized much like the offices we had visited (or vice versa). I showed them where to find the BMX race scores, the theater times, the weather (which they were already familiar as a result of our weather unit earlier this year) and numerous other components I felt they would be interested.
In the second lesson, I introduced some of the vocabulary. Onto index cards, I printed ten newspaper terms I felt were the most important. I then laid them out on the floor next to the front page and asked the kids to take turns selecting one and reading it aloud. I then read them the definition and asked them to point it out on the paper. We then adhered the term to the paper with a piece of tape. When we finished all ten terms, we displayed it on our door. The kiddos won’t likely remember all of the terms we learned, but the foundation has been laid.