Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: By Nancy Sledd, NCFL Training Specialist Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.

The teen years are all about “hooking up”—hooking up with peers and their social environment, hooking up with the latest movies and celebrities, hooking up with the right set of wheels or with employment opportunities, and maybe even hooking up with the whole world. For many teenagers, hooking up with their parents is not tops on their list of connections to make. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.

On the other hand, most parents want to stay connected with their teens during these years of tremendous growth and changes. Using the newspaper to connect to your teenager can help you both learn about each other and the important issues in your lives. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.

During high school, teenagers often feel they are ready to make their own decisions about everything. In the next few years, they might be driving, going away to college, joining the armed forces, voting, and/or getting married. They may not seek parental advice to make any of these decisions. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.

However, many teens will turn to print or online versions of the newspaper to help them make informed decisions, which is where parents can get involved. Teens may read the newspaper or search a variety of newspapers online to gather information and learn about what is impacting their immediate world. Parents can encourage this information quest by clipping out articles they think will be of interest to their teens or discussing what they have read with their teens in the car, while they are watching TV or during meals together. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.

When reading the newspaper, parents demonstrate its usefulness and relevance by expressing how they learn new facts or react to various opinions. As teens express the ideas they glean from reading the paper, parents can encourage the development of critical thinking skills by asking appropriate questions. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University. What reasons or evidence did the writer present for that article? What do you think would happen if…? Do you think the writer has a bias? Can you consider another response to the same dilemma the writer discussed? Which one of the op-ed writers do you agree with the most and why?

Parents can also model the importance of reading the newspaper by turning off the TV or radio and focusing on the paper instead. Make a family time of reading the paper together by having each person in the family take a separate section of the paper and then summarizing what has been read. In this way teenagers will be exposed to a variety of writing styles and will have an opportunity to recognize different writers’ use of fact, opinion, humor, quotes, idioms, and questions as forms of expression. Using the News with Secondary Students Teens and Parents Hooking Up Through the Newspaper: Information provided by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in conjunction with Newspaper Association of America (2003) Copyright © Notice: The materials are copyrighted © and trademarked ™ as the property of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences, Texas Tech University.