Yes, I firmly believe there are many teaching possibilities using news, doc.s in the english or any other classroom! I have seen it used and have used it myself and found it to be very effective, if done correctly.
When I completed my first Practicum at Arlington high school, one of the strategies for using news was modeled to me by my co-operating teacher. The St Paul Pioneer Press was providing us w/ free daily newspapers for the staff and students! "Joe" would direct his students to get a newspaper and locate one of the articles he had listed on the board (a good way to informally assess how well they can read and locate info in a written format)! He'd usually include a current sports article, a current event, a news story (all the diff. genres) so that most of the students could write and read about something interesting to them. Then he'd have them read the article they found, and answer a couple simple questions re: info from that article. A great way to utilize news in the english classroom.
Another way is to straight up teach journalism in the classroom, as in most schools having a school newspaper! By using news instead of say, some really old Lit., the students will have more of a personal connection to the material.
Documentaries are a favorite thing of mine! I think they can definately be useful in the classroom, and have long been used in this manner. What a better way to have students actually understand a concept, than to actually watch history unfold in front of their eyes! Instead of reading a MLK speech to your students, show them a doc. of the Real MLK actually giving the speech! No one can deliver like MLK anyway, so it is so much more profound to hear him do it!
Also, by using doc.s one can also become more proficient at using the many new technologies that are out there now. There are inumerable sites that have doc.s and clips available (ie YouTube, TeacherTube, History Ch.com, etc) for the use of teachers. In fact, Hist Ch has a regular program called "Hist. in the Classroom" which are all docs that are available free to teachers.
Yes, I do see many teaching possibilities in using news, doc.s etc in the classroom, and the above are only some of them!
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