Materials: 
Newspapers
Scissors
Glue
Sticks
Markers/crayons
Paper,
larger than 8x11

Congratulations! You are one of the citizens who has been selected to have a one-minute TV spot just before the prime presidential contenders have their first debate. You will have a chance to tell the presidential candidates one, two or three things that YOU think are
priorities for our country. What needs to be done? What might be a good way to deal with the situation or situations you have chosen?

The one-minute spot will not show your face. The TV audience will see your Presidential Priority poster, which you will have ___  minutes to create. Cut or tear out pictures, headlines, words, letters…whatever you find in the newspaper to help you broadcast your ideas. You may decorate with markers or crayons, but all the words must be in newsprint.  

When time is up, you will have one minute in which to explain your Presidential Priority or Priorities, while showing the poster.  

Massachusetts Curriculum Framework Learning Standards
Visual Art: Subject exploration through a specific medium; attention to space and composition
English Language Arts: Skimming, scanning; media literacy; theme development; oral presentation; considering audience and
purpose
History and Social Science: Varies according to grade level

Theme: Place
All places have characteristics that give them meaning and character and distinguish them from other places on earth.
Place is a theme of geography that conjures up a mental picture of a place with people going about their everyday lives in the familiar environment. 

Place Activity "Mystery Postcards"
Using articles from the Travel section of the newspaper, collect information about a travel destination. On one side of a postcard, draw an image representative of your place. On the other side, write a message that provides readers with several clues about the place.
Do not include the name of your location. Be sure to include lots of detailed information to help your classmates appreciate the “personality” of the place you are describing.

Post the postcards on a bulletin board and number each card. Students will have a week to read all the cards on their own and to jot down their best guesses as to the place. At the end of the week, students can turn over the cards to learn the correct answers. Who correctly guessed the most places?

Theme: Location
Around the World - Mount a political map of the world on a wall. Challenge students to collect newspaper articles featuring as
many different countries as possible. As a student reports on a country, place a colored pin on that country. Students receive bonus points for being the first to find an article about a country not previously identified. The more obscure the country, the higher the number of points awarded. For example, more points are earned for an article about Finland than China.

Find these election related items in your newspaper! See if you can find them all!

Picture of one of the candidates
Quote from one of the candidates
Picture of the American Flag
Positive story about the election
Negative story about the election
Political symbol or cartoon
Story or picture of potential running mate

Ask students to look through the newspaper for examples of grammar and usage rules that they are currently studying in class.
Students can record newspaper models of those rules and then write their own examples.

Having students use the newspaper to find models of good writing that follow standard English conventions for sentence structure, usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling bridges the gap between the classroom and the "real" world. This lesson applies Learning Standard 5 of the Massachusetts Language Arts Frameworks and is applicable for use at many grade levels.

Gas Mileage Math!
Ask students to look through the classified advertisements for automobiles from the newspaper. Students must choose one automobile from five favorites that gives the best mileage on a round trip to one of the destinations in the newspaper. 

This lesson integrates computation skills, decision-making, newspaper skills, and map skills and can be used on the middle school through high school levels in both mathematics and geography classes.