A VERSATILE WAY TO TEACH

Looking at the textbooks used by some students is as easy as stepping out the front door and picking up the newspaper.

Whether their students are preschoolers or high school seniors, teachers said they have found ways to use the newspaper for teaching or reinforcing skills. Newspapers can easily function as a textbook, filler for an art project and fodder for classroom discussion.

Laura McClard, a fifth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, said she uses newspapers to teach students to write summaries about what they have read. Newspapers also build vocabulary for students, who are encouraged to clip out words they don't know or which could be used to describe characters in other books students are reading.

And then there are the old-fashioned reasons for having newspapers.

"Some of my students just like to read it for enjoyment," said McClard. "They like the comics and the Mini-Page."

Teachers like Rhonda Dunham, a sixth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, said there is no limit to the ways a newspaper can be used to teach students. One of her favorite lessons allows students to develop artistically. Students use scissors to cut out words from headlines. They can cut lots of words or just a few. But the focus must be on getting the right words so students can write original poetry.

"They can only use whole words, and they can only use headlines," Dunham said. "We've really had some interesting poems come out of that. Some were good, some were interesting."

There are many other ways to use newspapers in classroom. Mary Boeller, principal at Nell Holcomb School, said teachers use the newspaper for everything from letter identification to learning the difference between fact and opinion.

With general elections next week, politics also have been a major topic this year, she said.

Dunham said newspapers are an important part of her classroom instruction because they introduce students to local, state, national and international events.

"We could be doing something different with it every day," she said. "It opens up their minds and lets them see the world. It gets them out of their box."

Thousands of schools across the country receive newspapers without charge or at reduced cost as part of the national Newspapers In Education program.

Locally, 23 different school buildings receive free newspapers for use in classrooms.

Mark Kneer, who oversees the Southeast Missourian's NIE program, said about 2,500 copies of the Learning section, which runs on Tuesdays, is delivered to kindergarten through third-grade classes in schools in Cape Girardeau County and Scott City. And over 2,200 newspapers are delivered weekly to fourth- through 12th-grade classrooms in the region.

"A lot of schools use the program, especially in the high school, where they get the paper every day and use them as a textbook," said Kneer. "We probably will be expanding our area in the future because one of our goals is we want to get more schools that are in our coverage area."