Updated Newspaper Math Activity

One of my favorite classroom tools is the newspaper, and I'm excited to reintroduce it to my classes this year.  I updated this 2007 newspaper activity focused on rates, ratios and proportions.  In the activity, students are directed to specific sections of our local newspaper where there's data like currency exchange rates, gas prices, and our team's football statistics and use those numbers to solve problems.

It's designed specifically for my local paper, but you should easily be able to adapt it to your own.  I purchased enough papers for groups to share to keep costs (and mess) low and also picked up a stack of (free) flyers from our local supermarket chain.  The latter was used for students to find examples of rates and unit rates.

Updated Newspaper Math Activity on rates, ratios and proportions 

Here's a collection of the newspaper math activities I've used over the years:

Using the Newspaper in Algebra I
More Ways to Use Newspapers in Algebra I
Even More Ways to Use the Newspaper in Algebra I

You can find more ideas for using newspapers in the classroom in my book Ten Cheap Lessons.

More Newspaper Math: Ripped From The Headlines

I just rediscovered this newspaper-based activity I put together in November. We were studying reading graphs and charts, analyzing data and finding the mean, median, mode and range of a set of numbers. I found some interesting graphs, an ad and a local weather map (which you can't really read at all) and used them as a jumping off point for several questions.

Most newspaper activities I use are designed to be used with any issue of the paper, as they draw on regular features and sections. This type of activities doesn't require having any newspapers in the classroom, as you pick and choose what makes sense to share with your students.

Thanks to the Boston Globe; all of the graphs and charts come from papers I received via the Newspapers in Education program earlier this year. I doubt you will be able to use this particular activity as-is, but you can certainly adapt the idea for your needs. If you have any similar ideas, leave them in the comments.

Newspaper Math: Ripped From the Headlines!

50 Cheap Mini-Lessons for Teachers: #31-40

Thank you to everyone who's been reading and responding to my list thus far. Since I posted mini-lessons #21-30 so late last night, I am rebounding to post the penultimate ten a little earlier today.

31. Share your good ideas with other teachers. I believe that most teachers work hard to have a positive impact on their students, but don't realize how easy it is to extend your impact far beyond the walls of your classroom. You can create a blog or website, but you don't have to if you just have some things you want to submit. You can also just share with your colleagues (#14) on campus. If your great ideas are applied in some other classroom, then those students just learned from you.
    
32. Follow the Star Trek: The Next Generation Rule of Vocabulary. Star Trek stories often rely on "Treknobabble", made-up or pseudo-scientific jargon that explains the universe in which the story takes place. In some cases, it's used as a poor substitute for good storytelling. In the classroom, we use jargon every day. Our jargon is a split between content-area vocabulary and "big words" we inadvertently slip into our explanations. In either case, without context and clarification, it all becomes meaningless jargon to our students. The solution is not to stop using advanced vocabulary, but to make sure you always break it down and explain it as simply and directly as possible. On a typical good ST:TNG, "We'll reverse the polarity of the tachyon emitter," is turned into a simple analogy like, "We'll turn the ship into a giant magnet!" In the classroom, "isolate the y variable" can become "move the y to the left side of the equals and everything else to the other". By using advanced vocabulary and explaining it consistently, you'll build your students' vocabulary and understanding. Plus, it makes for a much better story.
    
33. Find opportunities to work with kids who aren't in any of your classes. Become a coach, club sponsor, tutor or look for opportunities in the community where students like yours live. This will give you a great opportunity to study student culture (#8), but I found it very cathartic to work with my "other students." They always wanted to be there and provided a welcome respite even when my regular classes didn't go well. Most importantly, it gives you the opportunity to extend your positive impact beyond your classroom (see #31 above).
34. Don't be a hypocrite. Be the model, set the example for everything you expect them to do. As I noted in mini-lesson #27, your students will never let you forget the times when you don't do as you say and say as you do.
35. Learn to adjust on the fly. It's good to always plan ahead for the worst case scenario, or merely to have more planned than you think you can accomplish in one class period. However, you will never be prepared for everything. I once had to evacuate my classroom mid-period due to overwhelming paint fumes, so I took my kids to the library and continued an abbreviated version of my lesson (sans overhead, whiteboard, or almost anything else). As long as you keep calm (#3 and #5), you should be able to make the most out of any situation. If you don't know what to do, at least act like you do (#19).
36. Seek at least one good takeaway lesson from every professional development workshop you attend. You won't always be able to choose your own PD (#25), so you need to challenge yourself to find something you can use, no matter how bad a workshop may be. If anything, you can use bad PD as an example of what not to do in your classroom!
37. Don't waste your money on teacher resource books. I am referring specifically to books full of worksheets that claim to be engaging, hands-on, fun, amazing, can't-miss, student-centered, real-life activities. If you need materials for independent practice, you can find it for free online (#18), borrow from colleagues, find them in current / replaced / evaluation copy textbooks your school or district has on hand, or make your own. In my experience, I don't think I've ever come across a worksheet from one of these resources that had everything I needed. I always end up cutting and pasting things from multiple resources while adding in my own, like they used to do for newspaper layouts.
38. Read Teaching With Love and Logic by Jim Fay and David Funk. This is the most important teaching book ever written. It will either change your way of teaching or reaffirm why we do what we do, but you will be moved by this book. I haven't mentioned anything about classroom rules or much about discipline issues in my advice thus far; this book is the reason.
39. Share your amazing experiences with your students. I don't think most teachers appreciate how amazing most of their experiences are, especially for students who might never have left their hometown, had any family members go to college, flown on a plane, or even gone out to dinner at a restaurant that wasn't a fast food joint. Your role as a teacher is not just to teach, but to inspire. Opening up the world to your students, in the form of what you've done and what you've learned, is part and parcel of your job. If you've seen the "Freedom Writers" movie, there's a moment when Ms. Gruwell realizes her students haven't even heard of the Holocaust. She had taken for granted that they obviously already knew about it, and so she realized she had something more to teach than just reading.
40. Incorporate literacy into your classroom. Create a print-rich environment, a classroom where reading materials are readily available and clearly visible in your daily lessons. It is not difficult to find relevant books, free magazines, newspapers, and high interest books outside of your content area. Create a classroom library, even if you're a math teacher like me. Create a bulletin board where you post news articles about your content area. Then, once you have the resources on hand, integrate them into your lesson plans. You can build projects for any content area around magazines and newspapers. If you do enough research, you'll probably find a novel you can read as a class no matter the subject. At the very least, allow students to do reports on books and articles for extra credit or as an alternative assessment when appropriate. Don't think of it as doing someone else's job (if you're not a language arts teacher), because your students' ability to read and think critically is necessary in every subject, especially for those standardized tests everyone is so concerned about!

You can read the other 40 lessons here: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and 41-50.

Even More Ways to Use the Newspaper in Algebra I

After Wednesday's TAKS Reading test, I tried to make Thursday as easy as possible while still making sure we learned something. Most students had finished most or all of our Newspaper Math group work on Tuesday, but I wanted to follow up with more work on interpreting data graphs.

In Part 1, students were asked to find a data graph, analyze it, draw conclusions and create a question about it as part of their assignment. For Part 2, I pulled 5 different data graphs from the paper (bar, circle, line and two that incorporated multiple graphs) and asked the kind of questions they're usually asked on the test:

1. What's the independent and dependent variables?
2. What's the trend/pattern/correlation/main idea of the data graph?
3. Based on the data, which of the following statements is true/a valid conclusion?
4. Which graph accurately reflects the given data?
   

Here's what they looked like (click here to read the questions only as a standalone document on Google Docs):

I hope you don't dismiss this as just another worksheet, because in truth I only posted this for use as an example. My students were a bit more invested in this than your standard issue work because the graphs were pulled from the local newspaper, I wrote the questions myself, and they are asked a variety of questions in a variety of ways. It took about an hour to find the graphs and write up appropriate questions.

We also talked about why we need this skill before we started, and I showed them six different questions from their last benchmark where they could use these data graph analysis skills to answer them correctly. Six questions is about a ten percent swing on that test, which is the difference between passing and failing for many students on the bubble.

Most importantly, this skill is required across many of our state objectives:

Objective 1
(A) The student describes independent and dependent quantities in functional relationships.
(D) The student represents relationships among quantities using [concrete] models, tables, graphs, diagrams, verbal descriptions, equations, and inequalities.
(E) The student interprets and makes inferences from functional relationships.

Objective 2
(C) The student interprets situations in terms of given graphs [or creates situations that fit given graphs].
(D) In solving problems, the student [collects and] organizes data, [makes and] interprets scatterplots, and models, predicts, and makes decisions and critical judgments.
(B) Given situations, the student looks for patterns and represents generalizations algebraically.

Objective 9
(C) construct circle graphs, bar graphs, and histograms, with and without technology.
(B) recognize misuses of graphical or numerical information and evaluate predictions and conclusions based on data analysis.

Objective 10
(A) identify and apply mathematics to everyday experiences, to activities in and outside of school, with other disciplines, and with other mathematical topics;
(A) make conjectures from patterns or sets of examples and nonexamples

Newspaper Math Part 2 (questions only)
More posts tagged with "newspaper"

For more ideas on using the newspaper in the classroom, check out my book Ten Cheap Lessons: Easy, Engaging Ideas for Every Secondary Classroom. Email me or leave a comment if you have more ideas to share.

More Ways to Use Newspapers in Algebra I

Tomorrow is the 9th grade Reading and 10th grade ELA TAKS test, so today's goal was to provide something stress-free but would still address the content and be memorable amid the distractions. Last week one of my students mentioned how our newspapers were once again piling up, and suggested we use them in class again soon. Good idea, I told him, and began thinking of how to adapt last year's materials to address these new objectives.

We are working on the foundation of functions (TAKS Objectives 1 and 2), so there are many parts that needed to be reviewed and addressed:

• representing functional relationships as equations, tables (data sets), and graphs
• identifying independent and dependent variables
• analyzing information graphs (line, bar, pie, etc), making predictions and drawing conclusions
• use equations to solve problems
  
• simple inequalities (they always forget the signs)

I added and subtracted a bit from last year's end of the year review to address as much as possible. By asking them to look for cars, jobs and apartments to rent, it gave the work some real world relevance. The best part was some of my girls telling me to save the apartment rental they found for graduation so they could live together. Of course, one of them was incredulous that she was going to have to sleep in the living room of the 2 bedroom unit they picked, until I told her that's what she had to look forward to in college.

I plan on extending this after Wednesday's test by using some data graphs I found in the paper to create some questions. Those types of questions are still a challenge for them, and considering that Spring Break starts this weekend, I need to get as much done as possible beforehand.

You need roughly 1-3 papers per group, so multiply that times the number of groups and classes (see my previous article for info on getting newspapers for your classroom). You'll also need scissors and tape (glue or something to affix the clipped ads to the paper). I had students work in groups of 2-4 which worked well together. Most groups finished or were well on there way, but this will take 1.5-2 45-55 minute periods to complete.

Newspaper Math group activity
(via Google Docs)

5 Tips for Building a Quality (non-ELA) Classroom Library

If your classroom is like mine, you have a lot of reluctant readers, LEP students, at-risk students, and those who just aren't engaged with school in general. Recently I posted some suggestions for taking control of your advisory period and instituting DEAR time. One way to ensure your success is to build a quality classroom library full of books your students will actually want to read.

1. Get them doing instead of just reading. I like to have as many how-to, reference and art books on hand as possible. I realized a long time ago that encouraging my students to get involved in some sort of art or hobby instead of merely getting them to read might keep them out of a lot of trouble. As the saying goes, students learn by doing, so there's a lot of non-fiction on my bookshelves. Here are three books that have been big hits:
2. Think local. Some books in your library should be either be set in or about your region, culturally relevant, or written by a local author. Teachers pay a lot of lip service towards approaching students at their level, but this is that idea in practice. Since we reside in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, I have two of Rene Saldana Jr's books in my classroom:
3. Having all the books in a popular series or by a popular author is never a bad thing. This year's students have been really into both the Twilight series as well as Ellen Hopkins' books (Impulse, Burned, and Crank). I found out about these by noticing what my students were already reading and by researching lots of recommendations and reviews online. Some students have already been asking about the Uglies series and I've noticed lots of similar teen-focused series popping up at the bookstore, so I know this area is only growing. The best part is that if your students get hooked on one, they'll probably read the entire series, which is why you need to get them all as soon as possible.
4. High school and middle school students like to read about high school and middle school students. If there's one trait of adolescents you can exploit fully and without guilty, its their shameless self-interest. We have been reading the The Freedom Writers Diary together during advisory and despite the length, my students have been riveted. Earlier selections we've read together were Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey and Gary Soto's Taking Sides, both of which dealt with students in high school dealing with seemingly insurmountable challenges. When I asked them if they wanted to read something of a different genre, they asked for more of the same, and I happily obliged.
   
5. Use lists of high interest/low reading level (Hi-Lo) books as a starting point. This compilation of 10 Hi-Lo reading lists on about.com should give you a lot of books to start with. After testing some out in your classroom, you can search for recommendations for similar books to whatever is getting over well with your students. Similarly, the ALA's yearly list of best books for reluctant readers can provided leads on dozens of titles that will work for your classroom.

How Can I Afford All This?

Besides soliciting donations from family and friends (either directly or by setting up a wish list on Amazon.com or other sites), Barnes & Noble's bargain section is an easy place to start. Ask your school librarian, department chair, and curriculum director if there are funds available for book purchases there or elsewhere. Set up a project on DonorsChoose if you're looking for a huge number of books. I have also drawn many books from my personal collection that otherwise would have gone unused for a long time.

Books Alone Are Not Enough

As I've discussed here before, my classroom library also has free daily newspapers (sponsored by my local paper) from the Newspapers in Education program and several free subscriptions to magazines. These are as essential to my cause as the books, because even those students who have never picked up a book will read one or the other.

Where Do I Put All These Books?

If you can't get any free shelving at school, you're The cheapest route is to buy some small office supply store bookcases. These usually run around $20, are easy to assemble, and don't take up too much space. For my magazines, I bought 3-tier magazine racks from an office supply store and plastic magazine bins from a dollar store for the older issues. My newspapers are generally kept in a repurposed printer paper box and later reused by students and other teachers for various academic endeavors.

How Can I Get Started?

Read my recent post entitled Take Back Advisory: DEAR Time for All for more ideas.

Using the Newspaper in Algebra I

It’s hard to get students to want to read and even harder to get them to enjoy reading. Two years ago, while teaching at an alternative school here in the Rio Grande Valley, I was introduced to the idea of a DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) program. We didn’t have a large selection of books, but even if we had, books of any length are intimidating to students who are reading well below grade level. So we also had newspapers delivered through the Newspapers in Education program two days a week. I noticed immediately that even the reluctant readers wanted to read on “newspaper day”, so I started to buy newspapers so we would have them every day. Stories in the paper led to many great discussions and, more importantly, instilled the idea that reading could be fun and interesting.

Last year, when I began teaching 9th graders at my current school, I ran into the same reluctance to read during our DEAR-style class. I again reached into my wallet to provide newspapers every day and saw a big improvement.

I realized as the papers began to pile up (there’s no recycling program at school) that I should maximize the use of these resources—like most things in life, the newspaper is full of practical applications of mathematics. As we approached May and I needed an engaging way to review for end-of-year exams, I turned to the newspaper:

• Mean, median and mode – Use the weather page and find the mean, median and mode of high temperatures for the cities listed on the regional map.
• Using formulas – Convert the day’s high temperature in Fahrenheit to Celsius using the formula C = (5/9)(F - 32).
• Inequalities – To remind you which sign means less than and greater than, find the best cars possible for <> 100,000 miles.
• Interpreting tables and graphs – Find any informational graph or table and write an appropriate word problem that would require a student to use the information in the graph to answer the question.
• Writing functions – Look up prices for jeans and for shirts you want. Write a function for the total cost C for buying j jeans and s shirts.
• Solving a word problem – Find a help wanted ad that includes a yearly salary, and figure out how much per month someone would make in that position after taxes.
  

We couldn’t cover everything on the exam, but as a supplement to other reviews, this helped students a lot and they enjoyed using the paper to help in class.

This year I have used the newspaper to help start our Fantasy Football and Mathematics project and to post examples from the paper on a “Math in the Real World” bulletin board. Two weeks ago we used the paper to provide real-life examples of rate, ratio and proportion problems. The example activity below refers to sections of my local paper that appear daily, so that it didn’t matter which day’s paper they used as long as they had all the sections needed. We had discussed a problem about rent-to-own businesses and how they take advantage of low-income communities as a real-life example of a rate problem, and I put a similar problem on the weekly quiz (also included below).

Newspaper Activity on rates, ratios and proportions
End of Year Newspaper Review
Example Quiz questions using a newspaper ad

This summer I went to a Newspapers in Education training and received free papers sponsored by my local newspaper just for attending, which saved me hundreds of dollars this year. To get newspapers for your classroom, contact the education coordinator at your local paper. Even if you can’t get a sponsor, the price of ordering through the newspaper is a fraction of the newsstand price. For more information on the NIE program, visit their website.

Stay tuned for more ideas for integrating the newspaper into Algebra 1!