This is the Daily Yomiuri Column from Sep 26 2011. It celebrated 6 years of writing for the paper and I decided to provide an overview of successful activities and approaches (well ….. ones I have found successful in my own context.
________________________________________________________________
The Great Daily Yomiuri Treasure Hunt!
Genre Sorting – Personalisation
TEACHERS NOTE; you can present the following questions to the students on a single page or give sections at a time. I’ve found the activity works better if students are given shorter activities and a time limit.
1. Look through the newspaper and list all the different sections of the newspaper (e.g. national news, sports, TV page etc.). How many sections are there in total?
2. Which sections do you read every day? Make a list and compare with a partner.
3. Now, put the sections in the order you read them. (e.g. sports page first, TV page second)
4. Compare your lists with the rest of your class.
5a. Which sections of the newspaper are most popular?
5b. Which section do most people read first?
6a. Which section of the newspaper do you read most?
6b. How many different articles are there in that section today?
6c. Which article looks most interesting?
FACT FINDING
Weather Reports
1. Look at the cities listed in the weather information.
2. Which city is closest to where you live?
3. Which Japanese city has the best weather today?
4. Find the following;
- The hottest place in Japan today
- The coldest place in Japan today
- The hottest city in the world today
- The coldest city in the world today
- Which cities will be sunny?
- Which cities will be cloudy?
- Which cities will have rain?
Extension
A) Use the information in the weather report to make a short weather report for radio or TV. If you can, record the radio report on tape or with a recording device. For a TV report, act out the report for your class or make a video if you have access to a video camera. If you have a map of Japan or a world map, use these to make the report more realistic.
B) Choose a country you would like to visit.
What will the weather be like in that country?
What is the exchange rate for that country today?
Imagine you work at the money exchange counter. Role play exchanging money for tourists travelling to different countries.
SPORTS REPORTS
Look at the sports pages of the newspaper. How many different sports are covered? For each sport, how many stories are there?
Choose a story about your favourite sport. Make a list of the following things from the story;
Verbs / nouns / people / team names / place names
Now practice making sentences using words from your list;
e.g. “Messi headed the winner at the Nou Camp Stadium”
TV PAGE PLANNERS
Turn to the TV page in the newspaper. Look at the “Television Spotlight” section. Read about each program and decide which one sounds most interesting.
Look at the TV page and find the following; NEWS, animation, sports, movies, drama, music.
Note the channel and time for each of the programs you select.
READING WARM UPS
Look at the “BRIEFS” section on Page 2/3 of the newspaper. Read each story as quickly as possible. Time how fast you can read the stories, then close the newspaper and write a short summary of each short story.
SERIES READING
Choose a story from today’s newspaper. Over the next 1-2 weeks collect any follow up stories in the Daily Yomiuri. For each follow up story identify a) repeated information, b) new information.
________________________________________________________________
The PDF of the newspaper article is here: Pending updat of file
