Current Events
Advice: how to use current events in the classroom:
Using English Newspapers in the ESL/EFL Classroom | ITESLJ
Facilitating Discussions of Newspaper Articles in the ESL/EFL Classroom | ITESLJ
Talking about the Top News Stories | ITESLJ
Teaching the English Newspaper Effectively | ITESLJ
Using Advice Columns with ESL Students | ITESLJ
Activity: Headline Completion | ITESLJ
The Newspaper Scavenger Hunt | ITESLJ
News for English learners:
Breaking News English
Incredible resource for news stories edited for ESL use by one Sean Banville.
The KEY: A Newspaper for New Readers
This is a newspaper a project of the Milwaukee Area Technical College Office of Grants and Development, and is aimed at providing news for adult learners of English.
LiteracyNet
News articles in full, abridged, and outlined versions from CBS Broadcasting, Inc. A fantastic resource, even if some of the stories are outdated.
Bangkok Post’s Learning Post
This site focuses on English learners in Thailand, but can be very useful for its lesson plans and news content edited for learners.
BBC Learning English Articles with Lesson Plans
Current news articles with new or advanced words in bold throughout the story, then defined at the end, plus PDF lesson plans available for quick download!
The New York Times Learning Network
This site is geared towards American kids from grades 3 to 12, but the articles are simplified and likely very useful.
Other Media Resources:
PBS Teachers
Aimed at K-12 teachers in the U.S., there are a number of great media resources on this site.
Hi,
I’m a young English teacher and I’ve always loved the idea of using press in the classroom. I loved it so much that I even wrote my thesis on it.
However, what I find difficult is using press in teaching elementary or false beginners. One may argue that it’s not really necessary to use it when teaching beginners but I strongly believe that it’s at this very level of English proficiency that schemata and culture-bound items shoudl be presented to students.
So I’d like to knew whether you’ve had any success in using press in teaching beginners? If so, how what did you do exactly?
Hi efl boy;
I haven’t actually tried using news with just beginners, but I did do an introduction-to-reading-news-articles class with my multi-level adult class this week, and I don’t THINK the few beginners were too lost…
I noticed that they were able to follow along well when…
I wrote the 5 W’s on the board, then had the class discuss what the 5 W’s were using the headline and/or lead of the article only. I wrote our conclusions on the board and the beginners found those words (Madonna, Hollywood, hair-do, etc…) in the article and wrote “who”, “what”, “where” next to them.
FYI — Gossip works MUCH better than politics or “current affairs”. Starting easy, silly, and fun, is definitely a good idea… I learned that the hard way.