Kids' Newspaper Activity

Reading the newspaper with your child is a great way to help improve their reading skills. It provides benefits on a number levels.

The content of the article will help to improve your child's background knowledge and they will most likely also be exposed to new vocabulary. This will lead to improved reading comprehension and fluency.

In addition your child will become familiar with the literary style of newspaper articles which will help them understand this type of language pattern better in the future.

You could simply choose an article from the paper which you think would interest your child and read it to your child, or listen while they read it aloud to you.

However, if you want something a bit more 'hands-on' you could try this simple kids' newspaper activity, which provides a framework for sharing news articles with your child from your regular daily paper.

While your child is having fun matching photos with headlines and captions, they will also be practicing valuable techniques for improving reading comprehension.

Step 1

Look through your newspaper and find three or four articles which you think would interest your child, and which have a representative photo associated with them.

Step 2

For each article, cut out the photo, the caption below the photo and the headline associated with the article. Also cut out the full article and keep this to one side to refer to later. I advise using yesterday's paper if you or your spouse hasn't read today's yet!

Step 3

Separate the cuttings into three piles: headlines, photos, and captions.

Step 4

Ask your child to match each headline to the appropriate photo and caption. As my son is just starting to read, I decided to use the headlines and captions as reading practice. However, he actually found the text in the captions too small to read so I ended up reading those for him, and leaving him to decide which photo they referred to.

Step 5

As your child matches the cuttings, ask them to stick them onto another piece of paper to create their own simplified newspaper. My youngest son helped with this, which kept him occupied and happy throughout the activity also.

Step 6

Once your child has matched and glued the cuttings, you can talk to them about the articles in more detail, reading them all or part of each full article, depending on their interest.

This kids' newspaper activity could work equally well with older children, in which case you can also ask your child to read and match the full article text to the photo and headline.

The great thing about this kids' newspaper activity is that by having time to look at the picture and read the headline and caption first, your child's interest in the article is stimulated before they start reading it in detail. Your child has time to remember any relevant knowledge they may already have related to the article, which will help them to understand it better when they read the article in full.

As your child is gluing the cuttings you can also ask them to predict what the article is about. When they start reading it in detail, they can see if their predictions were accurate or not. This will help them to connect and interact with the text more easily.

These are all valuable reading strategies which will ultimately help your child to better understand the meaning of what they are reading and retain more about the text.

If you enjoyed this kids' newspaper activity find out more about using newspapers to help improve comprehension and fluency, including details of print and on-line newspapers especially for children.

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