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This lesson plan was downloaded from Big Sky Telegraph. Telnet:
192.231.192.1
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Curriculum Guide - The Montana Standard - Butte, MT.
CREATING A CLASS NEWSPAPER
OBJECTIVE To develop students' writing skills through production of a class newspaper
MATERIALS NEEDED A few newspapers for models, poster paper
TO START Open class discussion with the statement that not everything in the newspaper is of interest to everyone. In fact, very few people read the entire newspaper; most read only those parts that interest them. Ask: What does not interest you in the local newspaper? What does? If you could publish your very own newspaper, what would it feature regularly? Record student suggestions on the board.
GROUP ACTIVITY Have students become editors and create their own newspaper, with the teacher as publisher. Divide the class into editorial groups on subjects that interest students- say, school news, fashion, sports, money, etc. Have each group begin by proposing a list of story ideas for its newspaper section. Individually or in teams of two, students should write one of these stories within the next week. (Editorial groups should each produce three or four stories.) As publisher, you should schedule 10-minute editorial conferences with each writer or team to help students get started. Stress the 5Ws and H-who, what, when, where, why and how-and suggest possible interview or research questions. Set a deadline by which articles must be turned in. Each editorial group is responsible for seeing that everyone in the group meets the deadline. Peer teaching works!
FOLLOW-UP When all articles have been turned in and have been corrected for errors by the publisher, give corrected "copy" back to student editors. Write should copy their stories neatly on a large sheet of paper, laying it out so that four or more stories fit on a page. (Typing the stories with narrow column margins would be ideal!) After the layout is done, each group can design a cover for its section, focusing on one of the key stories and using an illustration or photo with related headline. Explain how "teasers" or short lines of copy also can be used to draw readers' attention to other articles inside the section. (You might want to create your own cover for a section, or show examples of section covers in the local newspaper.) Groups doing straight news might design a logo and front-page illustration instead of a section cover, to make the class newspaper look like the real thing. The final step is to form a production line of editors who collate and tape the sections together to make the finished product. Circulate the class newspaper to others in the school or use it as a display. .
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