News and News Headlines

1. Lead in the topic by going through and explaining difficult words of the first paragraph of the highlight.
2. Ask students what they know about what, why, how, when, and where of the disaster.
3. Then read with students the headlines and their first paragraphs and explain to students that the headlines and the paragraphs indicate different aspects of the disaster.
4. Find out the words in the headlines and paragraphs highlighting different aspects of the disaster. See the attached file for illustration and worksheet.

Structure of News Article

1. The first paragraph of a news article shows usually the theme(s) of its content. It is illustrated in the example below.
2. Usually quotations of what people say will be used to tell details of the topics. And issues relevant to the topics will be found in the last few paragraphs of an article.
3. In this exercise, students read through the article and find out the organization of it.
4. Firstly, ask students to number the paragraphs of the article.
5. Secondly, identify the themes of the article from its headline and the first paragraph.
6. Then, ask them to read through the article and decide which paragraphs should belong to which themes of the article. To arouse their interest, you may ask them to compete with others to find out the structure.

For example:

In 'Terrifying walls of water leave massive trail of destruction', you will find:

• Para 2 – 7 are describing the terrifying walls of water.
• Para 8 – 10 are describing the massive trail of destruction of it.
• Para 11 – 12 as well as 14-15 are descriptions of the water and Para 13 & 16 are the destruction respectively.
• Para 17 –21 show the situations after the destruction.

Other easy references are 'Tsunamis: devastating tidal waves born deep in the ocean', 'First tsunami alert lost in Indian bureaucracy', and 'Tidal wave disaster will require biggest relief effort ever: UN'.

Back >>

Updated on 4 January 2004