NIE WEEK: STUDENTS FIND LEARNING OPTION IN NEWSPAPERS

Marcia Walton, who teaches learning-disabled and behavior-disabled students at Cape Girardeau Central High School, says newspapers in the classroom provide a helpful option.

Students who balk at reading a textbook often enjoy reading the newspaper, she said. "Maybe it's because it's not a textbook. The newspaper is readable for them."

Walton is one of more than 200 area teachers using the Southeast Missourian newspaper in the classroom as part of the Newspapers In Education (NIE) program. This is the start of NIE Week.

Kim McDowell, NIE coordinator for the Missourian, said, "This is the second year we have delivered newspapers daily into the classrooms."

On Mondays, over 3,000 students receive the newspaper. Many elementary teachers choose to take only the Monday paper and utilize the Mini Page, a special section published in that edition for students. An average of 1,700 students receive the newspaper each day Mondays through Fridays.

The NIE program represents almost a $100,000 commitment to education. Half of that cost is covered by the Southeast Missourian; the other half is paid by sponsors. Schools pay nothing for the newspapers.

McDowell said: "In tight budget times for schools, they appreciate this type of support from the community and business. We are providing them another classroom resource they might not be able to afford otherwise."

She said the newspaper also hopes to encourage literacy through the program.

"We hope to build a love of reading and a love of reading the newspaper. The newspaper offers an understanding of current events that cannot come from the fast flashes the electronic media provides," McDowell said.

"We have received so many thank-you notes from teachers and students who say that one of their favorite parts of the day is reading the newspaper."

McDowell said teachers are creative in finding ways to use the newspaper in the classroom.

Teachers from kindergarten through high school have found ways to use the newspaper to teach or reinforce skills. It's not just reading and current events. While students are learning about the presidential primaries, they also have been following the winter Olympics.

"Teachers take Olympic medal totals and teach percentages, or they discuss the aerodynamics of Luge," McDowell said. "They take topics students are interested in and make it a learning exercise."

Walton, the Central High School teacher, said: "We really use the newspapers all day long. Some of the students come in here for study hall and they enjoy just reading the newspaper. Some of the students have found jobs from the classified ads."

She said the newspapers provide another resource to use with students. Teaching learning-disabled and behavior-disabled students requires great flexibility, Walton explained.

"We have used them for language class picking out parts of speech. We use the weather maps in science. And students never can say they don't have anything to do; they can read the newspaper."

Denise McDowell, second-grade teacher at Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Jackson, said her beginning readers also enjoy the newspaper.

"A lot of the students see Mom and Dad reading the newspaper," she said. "They feel grown up when they read it. Often the students read the Monday paper before their parents. They really like knowing what's going on before their parents."

"I like to use the comics," Denise McDowell said. "We did a tally of punctuation marks commas, quotation marks, explanation marks for each comic."

Then she had students graph the results.

She explained that students got experience recognizing punctuation marks and learned a math lesson without even realizing they were doing an assignment.

"Some of them got interested in some of the comics and now they read every day," she said.

Denise McDowell uses the newspaper to reinforce the lesson of the day. "When we were studying nouns, I had the students circle nouns in the newspaper. When we studied proper nouns, they circled proper nouns. We're getting ready to study verbs, so they will circle verbs. There is an unending supply of material for them to use.

"We did a community service project because of the newspaper," she said. "We had a used-book sale and used the money to buy toys for the Toybox and gifts for the elderly people. Every Monday the students read the articles about the children and the elderly. They felt they knew where their money was going."

She even had students make their newspapers into hats and then write spelling words on the hats. "It was just something different to do," Denise McDowell said.

Students in Barbara Goodman's sixth-grade class at Scott City Elementary School were inspired by reading the Southeast Missourian to create their own newspaper.

"We started by using the newspaper with social studies class," Goodman said. "Then our reading book had a section on newspapers, so we started looking at the parts of the newspapers.

"One thing lead to another and the students said, `Well, why don't we start to write one of our own?'"

Students interviewed teachers, did surveys of students and even included a joke section.

"We studied the different kinds of news, editorials and sports," Goodman said.

Goodman said students are interested in the newspaper.

"For many students it's the first thing they go to each morning. It seems to be more interesting to them than a textbook," she said.

Kim McDowell said this type of response from teachers and students is what keeps the newspaper interested in sponsoring the program.

In September the newspaper and the Area Wide United Way sponsored the first local Old Newsboys Day called YELL for Newspapers. Half the proceeds from that program went to NIE. The other half went to literacy projects of the United Way.

In addition, the newspaper has solicited sponsors to help cover the costs of the NIE program. "We have received such enthusiastic support from so many businesses, and all the money goes directly into NIE," Kim McDowell said.

The NIE program has received two national awards. The Southeast Missourian received a community service award from the Suburban Newspapers Association and the YELL project was honored this week by the United Way of America.