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
Students can do this activity individually or in small groups. Ask students to listen carefully as you read aloud a story from the day's newspaper. (Story length will vary by grade level.) Then hand out to students a sheet with questions about details from the story. The higher the grade, the harder (more detailed) questions you can ask. Invite students or groups to respond to the questions. Who caught the most details?

News Mapping
Post a map (a community, state, U.S., or world map, depending on the focus of your current events curriculum) on a bulletin board. 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 students 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 students are expected to master, students might plot each location's longitude and latitude to the nearest degree.

News Scavenger Hunts
Provide students with a list of things to find on the front page of today's newspaper. Students 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 students might scavenge the main sports page for a list of sports-related terms. Or you might let students work in small groups to hunt for as many nouns (or proper nouns, or verbs) as they can find in a story or on the front page. The group that finds the most is the winner!

A to Z Adjectives.
Each student writes the letters from A to Z on a sheet of paper. Challenge students to search the day's front page (or the entire newspaper, if your students are older) for an adjective that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Students 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 students 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," or let all students work with their own copy of the front page of the same daily paper. 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). Invite students to work in groups to find and create a list of acronyms and abbreviations they find in the daily newspaper. (Note: You might include the classified ad section in your students' search. Many abbreviations can be found there.)

Local, National, or International?
To develop your students' understanding of a news story's "place," create a bulletin board divided into three sections. Invite students to bring in news stories from home 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. Invite students to 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 each student or group of students with a news story and ask them to report to the class the who, where, when, what, and why of the story. Students might underline each of the five Ws with a different colored crayon.

A Five W Variation
Provide each student 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 student takes a look at their five W lists 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 as follows:

• 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 of 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. (Emphasize skills your students are working on in class wherever possible.) Invite students to "edit" your story free of errors!

What’s It to You? 
Ask students to search the paper for local, state, national and international news that could affect them or their families.  Examples:  A new town curfew; new state regulations on the driving age; a rise in oil prices; or an international conflict that could eventually involve American troops.  How might each event affect students?  What are the broader implications?

National and Local News
Ask one group of students to write down national headlines for several days, and another to record local headlines.  Are the articles related?  Are local trends becoming national?  Are national trends reaching your area?

Identify the Issues
Ask students to think of a national or world problem they’ve heard about in the news.  What do they already know about this issue?  Have students gather additional information from the newspaper.  Then ask them to prepare solutions to the problem.  Discuss and analyze the solutions.  Will they work?  Have elected officials or political candidates proposed solutions of their own?

Facts and Opinions
Ask students to look through a front-page news story, underlining facts and circling opinions.  Then have them repeat the process with editorials, columns, reviews, or other feature stories.

Track a Story
Ask students to pick a story that will be ongoing (the war in Iraq, a natural disaster, an unfolding scandal).  For a month, have them clip related and follow-up stories.  How do the stories and their opinions change overtime?

Foreign View
Have students imagine they live in a distant country and their only source of information about America is your newspaper.  What impressions so they get of teen life?  What roles do teens have?  How do they look, act and dress?

World Hot Spots
Display a world  map.  Then ask students to put a pin in any place that is mentioned on the front page of the newspaper for a week.  Which places get the most pins?  Repeat the exercise in a few months.  Are the results different? 

Maps
Ask students to study maps in the paper.  How are they used in different sections of the paper?  Do maps in different sections look different?  Which maps have the most details?  Do small maps help students understand an article better?

Tech Talk
Ask students to scan the paper for words and phrases that technology has added to our lexicon (e.g. spam, iPod, gps, digital camera, etc.).  Are the words listed in the dictionary yet?  Are they in online dictionaries?  Ask them to write an article using as many of the technology words as possible.

 The Web
Does your newspaper have a website?  If so, ask students to visit it.  How does the information available online differ from what’s in the paper?  Is the entire paper available online each day?  What format do students prefer?