Seasonal
Concepts
The students can clip pictures of people from the newspaper.
Have the students discuss and describe how the people are
dressed. Have the students think about where the people
are going, what they are doing, and what season of the year
it is. What conclusions can the students draw from the pictures?
Record their responses on chart paper.
Using
Electricity
Using the newspaper as a resource, the students can find
five examples of how they use electricity in their daily
lives. They can talk about other ways to do those jobs without
using electricity. The students can look for five items
that can be recycled. Have them make a classroom bulletin
board of recyclable items.
Breaking
down the Weather
The students can turn to the weather forecast in today's
newspaper to answer these questions: Which US city had the
warmest temperature and which had the coldest? Which city
had the most rainfall? Are there cities where it snowed?
Which international city had the warmest temperature? What
is the weather outlook for the area?
Times
Have Changed
Have the students look in the newspaper for pictures of
items they might find in their homes. The class can discuss
which of these items they would not have found in their
homes 50 years ago. How was life different without each
item?
Machines
Challenge the students to find pictures of simple machines
in the paper. They can label the types of machines they
find. Then they can look through the newspaper for photos
and ads of complex machines. Ask them to list the machines
they find and include the type of simple machines that actually
make them work. Have the students write brief descriptions
of how one of the machines operates.
Can’t
Live Without It
Have the students select one electrical appliance pictured
in the newspaper ads that they use regularly. Have them
write a description of how they could live without that
appliance and still accomplish the same function using only
their own energy, not electrical power. For example, they
could replace a hair dryer by letting hair air dry.
Natural
Disasters
The students can collect articles about environmental disasters
and have them locate the place on a map. They can record
what happened and what were the effects in a "cause
and effect" page in their notebooks. Then they can
write a description of the physical changes to the earth.
