Literacy Development: Class Newspapers
Reading is a major asset to second language vocabulary development, but for this asset to materialize, students must be able to understand the majority of what they are reading. In fact, it is said that when a reader reaches the point of not being able to understand five words on a page s/he will abandon the text. Thus in order to promote the practice of literacy it is important to offer learners interesting reading material at their language level.
Creating a class, department or school newspaper about interesting, relevant and familiar topics at three language and literacy levels is one way to promote the practice of literacy for all students in a second language class or program. A newspaper also offers a forum for a variety of short texts; thus students who process material slowly will be motivated by the feeling of success in being able to comprehend some of the contents of the newspaper (and perhaps become curious about higher level texts) while stronger students will be able to read all of the contents.
A teacher-created newspaper not only provides the students with an opportunity to USE their language skills outside of class time (and become aware of their skill levels) but also develop a positive identity toward the subject area and language.
Newspaper Examples
Click on the links below to download PDF samples of different student newspapers.
Spanish Example
French Example