Editors decide what is the important news of the day and then assemble the newspaper. Your students can make similar judgments and learn how to analyze what they read.
Many stories in the newspaper contain five facts that can be determined. They are known as the 5 Ws. Once students master the skill of locating the five Ws, they can essentially summarize any news story in one sentence. E-editions offer brief summaries of news stories, too. Readers can find those summaries by moving the mouse over the headline and the story.
Begin by explaining to students:
Who identifies who the story is about.
- What explains what that person or group is doing.
- Where tells where the story takes place.
- Why tells the reasons behind the action in the story.
- When tells when the action happened.
TipTIP: List the 5 W's on the board and, as a class, read an article aloud together to extract the 5 W's. This is a great tool for learning how to summarize a news article in one sentence. It's a good idea to choose a short news story for this activity. Then, once students are able to work independently, they can choose the top five news stories of the day, rank them 1-5 (with 1 being most important) and write a 5 W summary for each one.
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 Try This...5.1.1 5.1a TRY THIS: Click here for a graphic organizer about the 5Ws. |