ESL Reading Lesson Plan Utilizing Newspaper Articles

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In this PPP reading lesson plan, the teacher begins by pre-teaching key vocabulary terms that require explanation and clarification for the students to comprehend the text’s gist. The teacher should probably pre-teach the following depending on the students prior knowledge: (from the first article below) trash/garbage, to crowd, to ship, destination, temporary, to bid – (from the second article below) to earn, to scoop, to support, sample, ripe, primitive. This will be done by writing the word on the board, miming the actions for verbs and showing a picture example of the nouns. The teacher should say the key term several times clearly while miming or showing a picture and have the students repeat it back to be. This will be s>t and t>s interaction will take approx. 15-20 minutes.

Pre Reading Activity
Then, as a pre-reading activity, the teacher should ask the students (in groups of 3) to brainstorm the following 2 questions:

Do you think we have a trash problem and why?
Do you think there is life on other planets and why?

The students will be asked to discuss these questions briefly as best they can while the teacher walks around and facilitate by asking groups more questions on their personal feelings on the subjects. This will bring the context of the text into discussion and will relate the context back to the students.

This will be done for 5 -10 minutes and will be mostly s>s interaction with minimal t>s.

Before beginning with the practice, read through the text once out loud, and ask the students to simply listen.

3 Gist Questions

True/False

1. Phoenix Mars Lander studies the soil on Mars.
2. Hawaii wants to ship trash to Japan.
3. This would be a temporary fix for Hawaii.

For practice in extensive reading and skimming, the teacher should give the students each a copy of the text without the titles of the articles. The teacher will give them 3 minutes to skim through the articles and then have them answer the 3 gist questions above.

6 Detailed Questions

1. Name at least two places Hawaii is looking ship its trash.
2. Does Idaho’s Governor want Hawaii’s trash?
3. Honolulu wants to move at least how many tons of waste each year?
4. How long is the mission for Phoenix?
5. Why put the soil sample into a small oven?
6. When did Phoenix reach Mars?

For practice with more detailed comprehension, the teacher will give the student 5 minutes to re-read the text and then ask them to answer the 6 detailed questions.

The teacher can also utilize this text for teaching and practicing verb tenses. Verbs like, to ship, to crowd, to earn, etc. have already been presented and practiced. Some of the tenses may have already been practiced as seen in the text, but now the class can practice other tenses not seen in the text like – to ship, shipped, will ship – to crowd, crowded, will crowd. This will be done by writing different categories of verb tenses on the board (like past, present and future), and having the whole class break up into pairs and work together to place the right word in the right category. Each pair will be assigned a group of words to place in different categories. The teacher can help them do this if they need assistance, but its best to let them work together to figure out the correct answer. This will take about 5 minutes.

Then, the students should switch to a different partner and do a fill-in-the-blank activity. Each pair will have a handout that with a paragraph that has key verbs missing and a list of verbs. The students will have to work together to figure out which verb and which tense goes where. This will take about 5-10 minutes.

The teacher should then read a paragraph similar to the one on the handouts aloud for the whole class and have them listen closely as a listening practice activity. Then call on random students to answer whether specific verbs used are present, past, or future. This will take about 5 minutes.

Finally, have the students practice writing their own creative sentences utilizing the verbs and tenses we have practiced. They will be asked to choose their favorite sentence and say it out loud for the whole class. This will take about 5-10 minutes.

Challenges To Be Aware of That Students Might Face With The Lesson

Some problems students might have with this lesson is that the reading material is a little advanced. This is understood but the sooner students are exposed to English news resources (like the internet, newspaper, etc) the better. Having a good grasp on how to read news articles and understand them seems like one of the most important things to know when learning how to understand proper English. Therefore, with a good and solid presentation part of the lesson plan, the students will benefit greatly from this exposure and teaching.

Lesson Materials

The following are two short online news articles that are used together as a text for an intermediate ESL reading lesson plan.

Hawaiian trash headed for the mainland USA Today
Trash is starting to crowd paradise, so Hawaii is looking to ship its trash thousands of miles to dumps in Idaho, Oregon or Washington, The Oregonian reports.
The newspaper says Honolulu wants to move at least 100,000 tons of waste each year for three to six years.

The plan would be a temporary fix while Honolulu considers other options, the newspaper says.

Shrink-wrapped bales of compressed garbage would make a 12- to 18-day journey by barge, The Oregonian says.

“It kind of makes sense not to put trash in your backyard when you live on an island,” says Shawn Teevin, whose Oregon-based firm is bidding on the trash contract.
Idaho’s Republican Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter told the feds he wants his state off the list of destinations until his environmental concerns are addressed.

Dig it: Phoenix lander gets down to business on Mars USA Today
The Phoenix Mars Lander began earning its keep today, using its robot arm to scoop soil samples, NASA reports. A “second scoop full of soil and revealed whitish material at the bottom of the dig area,” the space agency says. As always with NASA, there are pictures and videos.

Over the next several days, plans call for dumping a soil sample into a small oven to be baked and studied.

Phoenix reached Mars on May 25 on a three-month mission to study whether conditions are ripe for supporting primitive forms of life. The mission is led by the University of Arizona and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Resource by Kelly

I am a former ESL teacher who loves helping adults learn new skills. I enjoy going to concerts and listening to great music when I'm not teaching. I currently live in Chicago, IL and really enjoy the city life.

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