What is Newspapers in Education (NIE)?

For over 40 years, The Bangor Daily News has partnered with area businesses and individuals to provide educational services and resources to educators throughout our 8-county service area. The Newspapers in Education program encourages using the newspaper in the classroom as a supplemental teaching tool to help students develop essential academic and life skills. Newspapers are an authentic resource for teaching concepts and skills in all subject areas and at all grade levels. Unlike any other medium of communication, the newspaper is a daily almanac, vocabulary bonanza, encyclopedia of current events, community record, consumer guide and more all rolled into one.

How does it work?

Of course the newspaper is a great source for current events but it is so much more!

• Students’ reading comprehension and writing skills are enhanced with regular use of the newspaper in the classroom. It is chock full of capital letters, verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, homonyms, synonyms and more!
• Students have the opportunity see examples of and determine the difference between fact and opinion.
• Imagine motivating students to learn math skills with the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots by teaching mean, median and mode, probability, fractions, decimals and percentages using the scores and statistics on the sports pages.
• Connect charting and graphing to real life by using the Television schedule or weather page. These ideas and many more are available in the curriculum and activity guides provided by Newspapers in Education.

The NIE Student Supplement Process!

The contest begins in the fall when teachers and Bangor Daily staff work together to create drawing and editorial prompts. Those questions are then sent to NIE teachers across the region. Teachers work with their students on writing style, composition, artistic skill and grammar to create entries for the contest. Entries are then sent to the Bangor Daily News. Our editorial staff impartially judges every entry and chooses out winners based on several different criteria. Senior winners receive scholarships from the Bangor Daily News up to $1,000 for their effort. Once winners are chosen they are reproduced in a supplement published Wednesday, March 24^th Bangor Daily News.

The winners along with every other entry can be found here on this website. Please take a look around and see some of the great work that students and teachers have worked hard on this year. Also make sure you grab a copy of the Bangor Daily News on Wednesday, March 24^th to see the supplement and all the winners.

If you are a parent, Community member, business owner, teacher or student interested in learning more about NIE, contact the NIE Coordinator at 207-990-8219.