Using news with younger learners

When you watch the news on television, although some of the stories shown might be suitable to use with children and young teenagers, others are definitely NOT.

One great source of news items for students of these age groups is CBBC (BBC Children)'s Newsround. 

 

The home of news and fun facts for kids.

I remember watching this programme myself when I was growing up (so it's been around for a long time!)

The start-up page for the website is divided into 5 sections: home, news, sport, entertainment and animals.


I clicked on two news stories that I had watched yesterday morning on Sky News.  I chose them because they were thematically related (both talking about sport).

The first showed the actor Will Smith trying out some sports with athletes, boxers and basketball players from the GB Olympic team.

In class, you could show your students these pictures and then they could be asked to find them within the video clip.


The second story is to do with swimming.

Too many children can't swim properly, says news report

I thought this would be great to use in class when talking about 'can' and 'can't'.  

After the news report, CBBC have published comments from kids on the subject, like this one from 

Lilion, London, England

"I want to be a Olympic swimmer... but our school doesn't teach us!"

Your students could be asked to write their own comment on the subject.
And then, they could take the Olympic Games Quiz.

And don't forget to use materials from the Olympics sports page I wrote about last month!

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Olympic sports

If like me, you like interesting facts that you can share with your students, then I think you will also like the Olympic Sports page of the London 2012 website.

You can click on any of the sports listed on the left or on the blue icon for it.  This will take you to a new page where you can read about the dates the event will take place in London, the venue.  There is a video illustrating figures about the number of players taking part, etc.

For example, for Table Tennis:

Key facts

Venue: ExCeL

Dates: Saturday 28 July – Wednesday 8 August

Medal events: 4

Athletes: 172 (86 men, 86 women)

I particularly liked the 'Did you know?' box on the page.

Other names for Table Tennis include ‘Ping Pong’, ‘Whiff Waff’ and ‘Flim Flam’, reflecting the sound of the ball being struck and bouncing off the table.

There is lots of material here for all levels, including lower level classes.  And as sport usually features in most coursebooks and on most syllabuses, it should fit in - especially this year of the Olympics.

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