Strengthening Newspaper Literacy

Why are social studies texts so difficult to read? Five pages into Building Literacy in Social Studies: Strategies for Improving Comprehension and Critical Thinking by ASCD authors Donna Ogle, Ron Klemp, and Bill McBride, I came across several answers to this question. Among them was: students have poor attitudes about the study of “old events and dead people,” especially when no connection is made to present-day events. And that can seriously affect engagement and retention. Excerpted here is a teaching strategy you can employ to help students learn how to better dissect and understand newspaper articles. And the subject of the accompanying newspaper clipping, linked to here for your use, is on a topic quite relevant today.