I go through a piece of news with my students every week. This is to broaden their knowledge about the world, get them interested in reading and it is also a good way to learn new phrases which will be useful for their composition and comprehension cloze. For the upper primary students, I usually share with them stories from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times to expose them to good writing.
It’s not easy to find news- it has to be child-friendly, non-offensive and interesting to the child. We had discussed Occupy Hong Kong, the Malaysia Airlines crash, Marvel’s decision to portray Thor as a female, Joseph Schooling’s win at the Asian Games, the Ebola crisis and others. I try to explain the stories in a simple manner so that they can comprehend them.
As I prepare for this year’s last class, I am swamped with options!
For hard news: the U.S. elections
Fun news: Sales of Elsa’s ‘Frozen’ merchandise doubled that of Anna’s (the article explains why), Taylor Swift removed all her songs from Spotify
Local news: Over $9,000 was raised for a Vietnamese tourist scammed at Sim Lim Square
Which piece of news would you choose to discuss with the students?