By Staff
Haley Aaron, Hartselle Enquirer
This year, the Hartselle Enquirer will continue its participation in the Newspapers in Education Program, which provides newspapers for use in local elementary, middle and high schools.
Last year, three businesses partnered with Hartselle Enquirer to provide newspapers to local classrooms. These businesses paid a portion of the cost of each newspaper, enabling the Enquirer to provide newspapers at no charge to the schools. Hartselle Eye Care Center provided newspapers to the fourth and fifth grade classes at F. E. Burleson Elementary School, while Peck Funeral Home provided the newspapers at Hartselle High School and Citizen's Bank provided newspapers for third and fourth grade classrooms at Crestline Elementary.
Subscribers to the Hartselle Enquirer were also able to contribute to the Newspapers in Education program. By donating $1 when renewing their subscription, readers could provide four newspapers to a school.
Lisa Shelton, a first grade teacher at Crestline Elementary, uses the newspapers provided by the program as a part of her Alabama Reading Initiative or ARI curriculum, which requires that students spend two hours each school day reading.
As part of the ARI program, Shelton sets up 10 "literacy stations" around her classroom, including a newspaper section where students can read articles about current events that relate to the subjects they are covering in class.
Shelton's newspaper station contains age-appropriate articles about topic ranging from bats to special events such as the Olympics or elections. She collects newspaper articles and places them in a large binder for students to read.
Last year when Shelton taught a second grade class, she allowed students to choose their favorite newspaper articles to read and summarize. Students also drew pictures to accompany their work. At the end of the year, students had a collection of articles they had written and illustrated and could take home their own "newspaper".
"At the end of the year, we had this huge notebook filled with articles that the children had summarized into their own words and illustrated," she said.
Although Shelton has taught several different grade levels, newspapers have remained an effective teaching tool, whether her students are I first grade or fifth the newspaper section has always been a part of her classroom. "I have been doing this about 10 years using the newspapers in different ways," Shelton said.
She plans to use newspapers in her first grade classroom this year, but she may not require students to write article summaries. "Anytime there is an article that backs up what I'm teaching, I'm going to bring it in to give them further information," she said.
The newspaper station has always been a popular station among her students, said Shelton. "It is absolutely their favorite center," she said. "That's the one that if the could pick, they would go back there every day."
Why are newspapers so popular? "I think it is because [reading the newspaper] looks like a grown-up activity," Shelton said. "They think that it is really neat to pick up a newspaper and read it like their parents or another adult that they admire."
In addition to making students feel "grown-up", Shelton feels that the newspaper shows students how topics are being discussed in the world outside the classroom.
"Instead of just a textbook that's inside your desk, [the newspaper] is a piece of material about what is going on out in the world and I think that it does foster greater learning and reading with children," she said.
Shelton encourages businesses and others to support the Newspapers in Education program. "It is something our children can use," she said. "It helps keep them updated on current events and what's going on in the world and they need to know that."