Share your great NIE ideas here!

Our unbiased research shows that teachers who use the Times in their classroom are super sharp! This new forum category is a place for you to share your best ideas and lessons on how to use the Times in the classroom.

Each week we will select a great teacher idea or lesson and post it in our DOWNLOADS section at tampabay.com/nie/. Selected teachers will receive cool string backpacks from the Times NIE department. So, let us hear from you!

Comments

[Peggy Dupee]

I am a High school teacher of English, Reading and Speech. I have used the newspaper alot this year for many activities in my classroom. I will give you an example for each class. In reading we used the newspaper daily for their bell assignments depending on the strategies we were working on in the classroom they incorporated the newspaper the following day with the strategy like using two stories to compare and contrast. In English we used the newspaper to practice our grammar skills once the students learned a new grammar lesson we used the newspaper the following day to go through articles and check for errors. Lastly in my Speech class we used the newspaper to do a current events speech and to do an open discussion. The newspaper has been very helpful this year as a supplement to my lessons.

[Shawn Siede]

I am a high school social studies teacher at Gibbs high school and a weekly assignment in my class all year long is a current event. Students need to know the importance of staying informed. Students that are getting ready to go out into the world need to understand what is really out there. Too many live a sheltered life and do know what is going on. Getting them to read the paper everyday is a great start to having informed voters of the future.

[Derrick Lyons]

I have used the St. Petersburg times all year in my classroom. I have found that my students are both more informed and more in-tune to what is happening in the real world.
The one project that I did with my students is for them to write up a current event that happened during this school year. No two students could do the same story nor could they copy another authors story word for word. They had to write the story as if they were the reporter, reporting the story for the first time using the facts they found in the course of their research. In addition, the students were to write a one page reflection using either their opinion or telling how this story impacted the world.
The students found this project very challenging but found that the stories that happen in everyday life affect their lives more than they originally thought.
Overall, I was amazed with the grace and maturity that my 7th graders displayed when they presented their projects. There were many real world questions asked and the students were forced to think on a higher level.

Derrick Lyons
7th grade Geography
Seminole Middle School

[Kelly Smallwood]

I am a teacher at Paul R. Smith Middle school in Holiday, FL. I LOVE using the Times in my classroom. As a Family and Consumer Science teacher (home ec), I get the Wednesday edition of the paper delivered to my room. I have a 'recipe review' that the students do. They have to search the paper, find the TASTE section, and choose a recipe to decipher. They must write all kinds of information about the recipe on the worksheet. They must know how many ingredients, the largest ingredient used, the mixing directions, the difficulty of the recipe, etc. It is a great teaching tool!!! Thank you for sending the paper to the kids!

[Tameka Tyrone Middle School 7th Grade]

knock knock to win a vote
10-10-06

dear author,
I really like your knock to knock to win a vote because ever sence I was a little girl I always wanted to vote but I couldn't because it was an age different so when I was looking on the news I saw that they was trying to get some more people to vote.