1. Conduct a newspaper scavenger hunt. Give students a list of specific items to find and set a time limit on the search. (Examples of items to find: a movie you would like to see, an apartment for rent, a score for a professional sports team, and a letter to the editor about a local issue.)

2. Set aside time during the school day when everyone in the school stops what they are doing and reads the Herald-Leader silently. At the end of the time each student must state a fact he/she learned, express an opinion in agreement with the author of a letter to the editor, and state a price for an item he/she would like to buy.

3. Have students find several sports headlines and replace the verbs with new ones.

4. Instruct students to locate the birth announcements. Have them figure the percentage of boys born and the percentage of girls born. Ask them to figure the ratio of boys to girls.

5. Have students pick a local, state, or federal government leader featured in the newspaper. Then have them write a list of reporter's questions that would help them get to know the leader better.

6. As a class, discuss the natural resources that are abundant in your area. Then ask students to look through the Herald-Leader’s classified ad section for jobs related to the region's natural resources.

7. Instruct students to find the commodity markets listing in the Herald-Leader’s business section. Have them make a list of all the natural resources traded on the commodities market.

8. When studying historical events, have students write newspaper headlines that may have appeared in a newspaper during the time of the events.

9. Have students analyze the topics covered on a week's worth of front pages. At the end of each week, ask them to draw conclusions about the stories with the most prominence on the front page. Then ask what they would have done differently if they had been editor during the week in review.

10. Have students graph the number of local, state, national, and international stories on the front page or in the main section of the Herald-Leader for one week. Have students present their findings in percentages.

11. Have students find newspaper stories pertaining to: the natural world, the physical world, the human body, and technology. They should be prepared to justify their choices.

12. Science involves identifying a problem and finding a solution. Have students find a news story about a problem and how it was solved. See if they can identify any scientific principles.

13. Have students find examples of technology in the newspaper's comic strips. Ask them if the technology depicted is real or imagined.

14. Have students peruse the classified ads for jobs that, despite technological advances, will be around in the future. Discuss.

15. Ask students to clip newspaper ads for businesses that are affected by different types of weather. Based on the extended forecast, what kinds of sales can these businesses expect in the upcoming days?

16. Have students make a bar graph of the high and low temperatures of the United States for one week using the weather report in the newspaper. Ask what conclusions they can draw.

17. Have students look through the newspaper's advertisements for sports and fitness equipment. Judging from the ads, what are the most popular forms of exercise?

18. Discuss the importance of mental as well as physical health. Have the students pick out a comic-strip character that exhibits good mental health (happy, high self-esteem, confidence). Ask each student to talk about the reasons for his/her choice. Create a bulletin board display about good mental health.

19. Have students use the Herald-Leader’s grocery ads and food section to plan a meal that includes at least one serving from each of the five major food groups.

20. As a class, interview the head of the school cafeteria to find out what guidelines are used in preparing healthy foods for lunch. Then ask each student to write a story based on the interview.

21. Following a discussion about needs and wants, ask students to find and list items advertised in the newspaper that illustrate these concepts. Have students compare their lists and draw conclusions about the similarities and differences.

22. Basic needs and wants change over time. Using a list of reporter's questions prepared by the students, interview a grandparent or other senior citizen about their needs and wants as a child versus now.

23. Have students check and compare prices for similar items advertised in the newspaper: sneakers, pizza, DVDs, movie tickets.

24. What percentage of jobs in the classified section require the use of computer related skills?

25. Have students prepare a classified ad listing the skills and education required for their dream job.

26. As a class, "invent" a new product for a fictitious company. Then ask the students to scan the newspaper for potential investors. Have them write a mock letter persuading the investors to buy stock in the company.

27. Find a company whose stock made a dramatic gain or loss the previous day. Then have the students look through the newspaper to see if there is any news that might explain the drastic change.

28. Compare and contrast pictures appearing on the front page versus those appearing in the local section of the paper. How are they similar? How are they different? List or chart the physical and human characteristics of each.

29. Locate a newspaper story about the governments of two nations interacting. Write a headline for the news story. Predict the effect of the interaction in a few months; in 10 years; in 20 years.

30. The region is the basic unit of study in geography. After reading through the Region section of the paper, have students list the necessary components required for a community (e.g. stores, public safety buildings and personnel, parks, schools, government, religious institutions).

31. Based on a reading of regional news, think of a major improvement needed in your community ( example: an addition to or removal of something from the environment). Have students write an article describing the need for the improvement project and how it will improve the region.

32. Plan a shopping trip to buy a new wardrobe. How many dollars would you spend? Calculate the sales tax on your total by adding 6 cents for every dollar. What is the new total?

33. Study a comic strip and determine the age of the children and adults in the strip according to their actions, speech, and physical characteristics. Cite clues that helped you make your decision.

34. Select any fifteen items found in newspaper ads. Then have the students classify them into three categories only.

35. Have students select a major crisis that has received regular news coverage in the newspaper. Have students brainstorm as many possible solutions to the crisis as they can. Then list the solutions in order of most to least probable and state why.

36. The sports page gives many examples of simple statistics such as the win/loss record of a sports team. Have students express the method of finding that statistic in algebraic form.

37. Have students list the variables involved in predicting the winning of a championship in a major league sport (examples include weather conditions, comparison of team and individual player statistics, playing field conditions, etc.). What stories would the students follow to help them make a prediction?

38. Select two items pictured for sale in today's newspaper. For one product, have students write an alliterative phrase that would help sell the product. For the second, have them write an alliterative phrase in which all the words begin the letter "P."

39. Using the classified ads for used cars, have students create a list of words that illustrate the difference between "fact" and "opinion."

40. In the comics, have students find an example of a character who is defying a law of science.

41. Have students examine the front page of today's newspaper and find five different ways numbers are used.

42. Clip articles from various sections of the newspaper and challenge students to choose where in the paper they appeared (sports, editorial, front page, regional, specialty section?). Why do editors choose the placements they do?

43. Post a world map on the bulletin board. Ask students to find and clip articles about different countries. Post them on the bulletin board, place a star on the location and stretch a string to the location from the article. How many stars could they place by the end of the year?

44. Clip and distribute the first paragraph from a newspaper article. Have the students try and determine what happened next. Let them develop an appropriate ending to the story.

45. Have students develop an original comic strip (or modify an existing one) in which the dialogue of the characters demonstrates the use of three or more figures of speech.

46. Using the crossword puzzle, have students calculate the average number of letters in the "Across" answers to the puzzle.

47. Have students plot the geographic locations of all natural disasters around the world over a week's time. Are there any discernable patterns?

48. Show students a picture from the newspaper. Have them tell or write a story about what happened before the event, what is happening in the picture and what might happen next.

49. Pair students up to read an article. One student reads an article to the second student (oral reading) who must recite back what he heard when the article is completed (listening skills).

50. Create a Who/What/When/Where/Why chart. Allow students five minutes to read as much of the front page of the newspaper as they can. Then see how many of the 5 W's the students can fill in for the stories on the front page.

Thanks to The Press of Atlantic City's NIE Program