The newspaper is a terrific tool for teaching vital critical thinking skills. Skimming and scanning are study skills that save time and help students find the information they need quickly.
Explain to students that skimming means you run your eyes quickly over material, not reading every word. Scanning is the same, but when you scan you are looking for an exact word or phrase.
Ask students to skim the first page of the newspaper to get a general sense of what the stories are about.
- Ask them to scan to find a specific word like the name of a town or city.
- Tell students that it's a good idea to get into the habit of skimming a news story before reading. That better prepares them to understand the information. They should start by skimming the headline, the first paragraph and any photos or graphics accompanying the article.
TipTIP: Any activity you do with the Newspaper meets a state standard of some kind. When writing your lesson plans, you can easily determine which standard that lesson will meet. Just think about the objective of the lesson, i.e. identifying root words, reading fluently with expression, identifying consonant blends, etc. and then find the state standard that most closely matches that same objective. Most newspaper lessons will meet more than one standard.
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