This lesson, from Education World, teaches different subjects using the newspaper.

Preserving the news! Dissolve a milk of magnesia tablet in a quart of water, and let it stand overnight. Pour the mixture into a flat baking pan large enough to hold the news clippings that you want to preserve. Place the clippings in the solution so they're completely covered by the liquid. Let them soak for an hour. Then take them out and pat them dry. They'll be crisp and new for a long time to come! (This works because the magnesium carbide in the solution neutralizes the acid in the paper; it is the acid that makes the newspaper yellow.)

Listening for details.  Ask your child to listen carefully as you read aloud a story from the day's newspaper.  Then ask questions about details from the story. The higher the grade, the harder (more detailed) questions you can ask. 

News-mapping. Post a map (a community, state, U.S., or world map, depending on the focus of your current events curriculum) . Post stories around the map and string yarn from each story to the location on the map where the story takes place.

More news-mapping. Take a look at the front page of the local newspaper each day. Plot on the map the location of each of the news stories on that page. Invite your child to use the scale of miles on the map to figure out how far each place in the news is from your community. If longitude and latitude is a skill your child is expected to master, he might plot each location's longitude and latitude to the nearest degree.

News scavenger hunts. Provide kids with a list of things to find on the front page of today's newspaper. Kids might hunt in the paper for math-related words and terms (a percent, a measurement of distance, a cost, an address, and a fraction) or grammar-related terms (a present-tense verb, a past-tense verb, a proper noun, an abbreviation, a colon, and a list separated by commas). Or  scavenge the main sports page for a list of sports-related terms. Or hunt for as many nouns (or proper nouns, or verbs) they can find in a story or on the front page. 

A to Z adjectives. Have your child write the letters from A to Z on a sheet of paper. Search the day's front page (or the entire newspaper,  for an adjective that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Kids cut the adjectives from the newspaper and paste them on their list.

Graphing the news. Pull facts from the news that lend themselves to graphing (e.g., the cost of a postage stamp, the population of your community, the number of barrels of oil imported). Provide kids with the information needed and invite them to create a bar, line, or picture graph to depict that information.

Scanning the page. Provide a copy of a news story for this activity that teaches the skill of "skimming for information,"  Provide a list of words from the story/front page and invite students to skim the page to find as many of those words as they can. Set a time limit. Who finds the most words before time runs out?

Abbreviation/acronym search. The names of many common organizations are shortened to their acronym form when used in news stories. For example, the American Broadcasting Corporation becomes ABC, the National Organization for Women becomes NOW, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration becomes NASA. Also, abbreviations are commonly used for state names and some titles, such as Tex. (for Texas) or Sen. (for Senator). Find and create a list of acronyms and abbreviations they find in the daily newspaper.

Local, national, or international? To develop your childs' understanding of a news story's "place," create a bulletin board divided into three sections. Post news stories that might fit into each of the three sections. News of the community or state will be posted in the "Local" section. News of interest around the country will fit in the "National" section. And world news will be posted in the "International" section.

Headline match. Collect ten news stories and separate the story text from the headline. Number each headline from 1 to 10. Assign a letter, from A to J, to each story text. Match each headline to the correct text.

The five Ws. Introduce students to the 5Ws found in most news stories. Often, the five Ws are introduced in a story's opening paragraph. Create an overhead transparency of a major news story. Invite students to talk about the who, where, when, what, and why of the story. Circle or highlight and label the areas of the story that tell each of the five Ws. Then provide your child with a news story and ask them to report to the class the who, where, when, what, and why of the story. Underline each of the five Ws with a different colored crayon.

A five W variation. Provide kids with a news story. The student lists on a separate sheet of paper the who, where, when, what, and why of the story. Then the students' papers are collected and redistributed so no student has his or her own sheet. Each students takes a look at their five W list and writes the opening paragraph of a news story based on that information. At the end of the activity, students share their stories and the original stories to see how they compare. How accurate were the students' stories?

Sequencing the facts. Select a news story that includes a clear sequence of events. Write each of the facts of the story on a separate strip of paper. Invite students to order the sentence strips to tell the story in its correct sequence. (Option: Once you've done this activity, you might invite students to do the same thing. They can retell the events of a story in five simple sentences, each written on a separate strip of paper. Then each student shares the activity he/she created and a copy of the original story with another student, who gets to try the activity.)

Why is it news? Each day, newspaper editors around the world must make decisions about which stories they will publish. Stories make it into newspapers for many different reasons. Invite students to look at the stories that have made the front page of a local newspaper during the last few days and to talk about why each of those stories made headlines. Among the reasons students might come up with are these:

• Timeliness -- News that is happening right now, news of interest to readers right now.
• Relevance -- The story happened nearby or is about a concern of local interest.
• Magnitude -- The story is great in size or number; for example, a tornado that destroys a couple houses might not make the news but a story about a tornado that devastates a community would be very newsworthy.
• Unexpectedness -- Something unusual, or something that occurs without warning.
• Impact -- News that will affect a large number of readers.
• Reference to someone famous or important -- News about a prominent person or personality.
• Oddity -- A unique or unusual situation.
• Conflict -- A major struggle in the news.
• Reference to something negative -- Bad news often "sells" better than good news.
• Continuity -- A follow-up or continuation to a story that has been in the news or is familiar.
• Emotions -- Emotions (such as fear, jealousy, love, or hate) increase interest in a story.
• Progress -- News of new hope, new achievement, new improvements.

In the days ahead, study each front-page story and talk about why editors decided to put the story on page one. Which reason(s) on the students' list would explain the newsworthiness of the story?

Voice your opinion. Set up a tape recorder in a convenient location in the classroom. Pose to students an opinion question and let them think about it for a few days. When students are ready, they can take turns expressing their opinions to the recorder. This can be a little less threatening for some students than talking in front of a class would be. Later in the week, once all students have had a chance to express their opinions, you might begin a class discussion of the question by playing back the tape or by sharing select opinions that you cull from it.

Charting the weather. The weather page in the newspaper can be the starting point for many great classroom activities. The class might follow the local weather for a week or a month and create charts and graphs to show the ups and downs of temperatures. Or each student might follow the weather of a different city in the United States (or the world) for a set period. Students can use the collected information to compare weather (high and low temperatures, total precipitation, sky conditions, etc.) in different places.

Create historical newspapers. Challenge students to create a newspaper about a period of time they are studying. If students are studying U.S. history, they might include stories such as "Pilgrims and Indians Gather for Feast" and "Lincoln Wins Election." The stories relate the facts as students have researched them. Students should include each of the five Ws in their first paragraphs.

Plan a healthful menu. After a study of nutrition, invite students to plan a healthful menu for a day. Provide three paper plates for each student; each plate represents a different meal -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Invite students to find and cut out from newspapers, magazines, store ads, etc., pictures of foods and to arrange them into healthful meals on the three plates. Invite students to share the results, which will make a colorful and attractive bulletin board!

You be the editor. Rewrite a news story to include ten errors of punctuation, capitalization, or grammar.  Invite students to "edit" your story free of errors!