Cut out several news stories from your regional paper and remove the headlines. Display both the news stories and headlines on a bulletin board in your classroom and ask students to match the appropriate story with the appropriate headline. Let students takes turns going to the bulletin board and pointing out the word or words in the headline that helped them make their choices. EducationWorld.com. recommends expanding this activity by providing students with additional headlines from lesser-known stories, perhaps from your local newspaper, and having students write their own news stories to match the headline. Once the stories are completed, give the students the original articles that match the headlines and have them see how close their stories came to the originals.
Telling the difference between fact and opinion can test a middle schooler’s ability to understand what she is reading. Have students make two columns on a piece of paper. Label one column “Fact” and the other “Opinion.” Select several editorials from your regional paper and read each statement from the articles together as a class. Have students label each statement on their papers as fact or opinion. Discuss what words put each statement into its proper category. Educational website Math and Reading Help also suggests having students write letters to the editor in response to the editorial pieces they read in class.
Education World suggests reading well-known fairy tales and having middle schoolers turn them into news stories to help them zero in on important concepts and boost comprehension. Read several news stories from your regional newspaper to students. Take time to point out how a news story is put together and how it quickly answers the questions, who, what, when, where, why and how. Point out how the headline lets the reader know in a few words what the story is going to be about. Have students choose their favorite fairy tale and rewrite it in the form of a news story with a unique headline.
Newspapers that introduce middle school students to new vocabulary words help strengthen reading comprehension. The Newspaper in Education site recommends having students choose one or two articles from the newspaper and list words from those articles that are unfamiliar to them. Students then take those words and create their own crossword puzzles using the definitions for the words as clues.