Inspiring! English and NIE hand in hand @ Presidium

INCORPORATING NEWSPAPER IN CLASS-ROOM TEACHING

Newspaper has become an integral part of our lives. As an educator and leaner it is not just the source of getting information but is also a medium of creating, analyzing, learning and developing various skills in language. The importance of newspaper in classroom has greater significance as now-a days engaging students has become quite a challenging task for educators. The objective behind Newspaper in Education encourages autonomous learning which goes well with primary objective of Presidium , which is to make learners independent.

In Presidium Indirapuram, the middle school (VI-VIII) has integrated English language learning with NIE. This not only has enhanced the quality of teaching-learning but it has also helped in breaking the monotony of learning in a structured way.

The first step towards this direction is using articles as Comprehension Passages. It not only saves the labour and paper but also connects the new generation of language learners to the world of print media. Students paste the articles and answer the questions given by the teacher. It also helps during substitution periods as it makes the substitution periods more productive.

Every day, CTP is being exclusively devoted to newspaper reading. It makes the maximum use of zero period and develops the habit of reading newspaper daily.

Teaching Grammar and vocabulary prove to be quite challenging at times as it requires understanding and application in day to day life. In this regard, newspaper plays a crucial role as the Junk-yard section caters to many topics related to Grammar in an interesting manner. Students enjoy doing the Vocabulary Builder, Crosswords and Word watch section. After solving these sections , once in a week they paste their favourite section in their notebooks that gives them a sense of  relation with that particular section. Likewise, while doing Pronouns students were asked to mark Personal and Possessive pronouns in the newspaper and share with each other.

Similarly, NIE has helped a great deal in factual writing skills  like report writing , article writing and data interpretation as students get to know how to deal with these topics in the most authentic way. Often, we try to derive the formats of these topics using NIE. Similarly, Dialogue Writing  and Picture Description was made interesting by using Cartoon Strips from the newspaper. It not only made the topic more interesting for students but also challenged their creativity.

These are few small steps taken to enhance language learning and hone various skills in students. We strive to come up with more such ideas to make learning and teaching fun for students and teachers, rest as it said Sky is the limit!

Teacher Credit: Ms.Disha Pandey