Learning activities that make Your News an effective teaching tool
These are just a few of the features you will find in Your News. Students appreciate a learning tool that includes colorful graphics, appealing articles, and lively activities that keep them engaged. Your News provides all of this in one convenient, easy-to-use package. Try it. You and your students will like it.
| Activity | Sample |
|---|---|
| Idioms: Each issue of Your News includes featured idioms on a selected theme. There is a visual dimension to this exercise which introduces language learners to the often puzzling expressions that are a part of everyday English. In this activity, students are invited to replace standard descriptions under the pictures with given idiomatic expressions that match the meaning. | 
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| Feature stories: Easy-reading articles about interesting current events encourage language learners to read and understand their content. Whether reading silently or orally in a group, students are aided by vocabulary definitions pertaining to the story at the bottom of the page. Also accompanying the articles are related questions or talking points intended to further language acquisition and oral practice. | 
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| Cloze exercise: Every month, a standard “fill in the blanks” cloze exercise appears on page four. The story is usually about a public figure, an artist, or a celebrity. Several words are omitted from the text and placed in a list at the top of the page. The reader must choose the appropriate words from this list and place them correctly within the context of the story. Cloze exercises develop a student’s ability to determine context, establish meaning and improve vocabulary. | 
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| Reading comprehension quiz: True/False quizzes accompany articles devoted to subjects from the arts, sciences, or humanities usually featured on page five. After carefully reading the article, the student must decide whether a statement about a specific point in the article is true or false. Quizzes of this type test the reader’s comprehension of the text and encourage a careful review of the content. | 
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| Crossword: The unique crossword puzzle format provided by Your News includes the actual words used in the puzzle. The words are listed in alphabetical order in an inset box at the bottom of the page. This feature makes the puzzle less daunting for both beginners and intermediate-level English-language learners who are able to find the words they need to complete it. For more advanced students, the difficulty level of the puzzle can be enhanced by cutting out or otherwise obscuring the provided words. The crossword permits individual or group participation in an engaging language task. The pedagogical objectives for this popular activity include word meaning recognition and spelling awareness. | 
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| Word Search:The goal of this enjoyable activity is to find words hidden in a grid of letters. The words, based on a specific theme, might be written up, down, across, diagonally, or backwards. Some letters may also be used in several words at once. The student circles the letters in each word, then crosses off the discovered word from a provided list. When all the words have been found, a few unused letters remain. These letters form a secret word. The pedagogical objectives of this exercise are vocabulary building, word identification and spelling awareness. | 
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| Circular word find: In this activity, words are arranged in an uninterrupted circle. The student starts at the top and proceeds to the right, discovering as many words as possible without skipping any letters. Some long words have shorter words within them. The goal is to find as many words as possible. This game promotes word recognition, spelling awareness and vocabulary building. | 
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| Build a word: The objective of this activity is to create as many words as possible using only the letters found in a single sample word. The letters of the word may be used in any order, and the same letter may be used more than once. Pedagogically, this activity encourages vocabulary expansion, dictionary use and word mastery. | 
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| How well did you read?: This global exercise on page ten asks general questions about topics that appear throughout the issue. It can be used either as an oral exercise to encourage speaking among the students, or as a review of an individual’s contextual reading and comprehension. | 
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| Poetry page: Every issue of Your News includes a poetry page with vocabulary and accompanying questions. Poetry, in particular rhyming poetry, affords students the opportunity to correctly pronounce unfamiliar words and to understand their syllabication through the poem’s cadence and metrical structure. The simple poems provided in each issue promote reading comprehension, language acquisition, and the opportunity for collaborative classroom work. | 
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| Complete sample issue for evaluation purposes only (warning: the file size is very large, and may take some time to download). A sample of the teachers’ answer sheet is available upon request. | Download Sample |
