All the News That’s Fit to Print |
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| Unit: Reading and Writing for the World Duration: | Cycle: 2 or 3 (Grade 4-5-6)
Topic: Reading and writing news |
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| Learning Objectives | To differentiate the intentions of producers and consumers of news media.
To define aspects of the art of writing news media based on examples. To produce effective news media. |
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| COMPETENCIES | ||
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COMPETENCY 1 • TO USE INFORMATION
COMPETENCY 3 • TO EXERCISE CRITICAL JUDGMENT COMPETENCY 4 • TO USE CREATIVITY COMPETENCY 5 • TO ADOPT EFFECTIVE WORK METHODS COMPETENCY 6 • TO USE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES (ICT) COMPETENCY 8 • TO COOPERATE WITH OTHERS COMPETENCY 9 • TO COMMUNICATE APPROPRIATELY |
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ELA Competencies
COMPETENCY 1 • TO READ AND LISTEN TO LITERARY, POPULAR AND INFORMATION-BASED TEXTS COMPETENCY 2 • TO WRITE SELF-EXPRESSIVE, NARRATIVE AND INFORMATION-BASED TEXTS COMPETENCY 3 • TO REPRESENT HER/HIS LITERACY IN DIFFERENT MEDIA COMPETENCY 4 • TO USE LANGUAGE TO COMMUNICATE AND LEARN Visual Arts Competencies COMPETENCY 2 • TO PRODUCE MEDIA WORKS IN THE VISUAL ARTS COMPETENCY 3 • TO APPRECIATE WORKS OF ART, TRADITIONAL ARTISTIC OBJECTS, MEDIA IMAGES, PERSONAL PRODUCTIONS AND THOSE OF CLASSMATES |
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ELA
LANGUAGE TO COMMUNICATE TALK FOR LEARNING AND THINKING LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES AND FEATURES COLLABORATIVE GROUP ACTIVITIES Visual Arts VISUAL ARTS APPRECIATION REPERTOIRE |
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| Professional
Development Goals
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1. To act as a professional inheritor, critic and interpreter of knowledge or culture when teaching students.
2. To communicate clearly in the language of instruction, both orally and in writing, using correct grammar, in various contexts related to teaching. 3. To develop appropriate teaching/learning situations. 4. To pilot teaching/learning situations. 5. To evaluate student progress in learning the subject content and mastering the related competencies. 6. To plan, organize and supervise a class in such a way as to promote students’ learning and social development. 7. To adapt teaching to the needs and characteristics of students with learning disabilities, social maladjustments or handicaps. 8. To integrate information and communications technologies (ICT) in the preparation and delivery of teaching/learning activities for instructional management and professional development purposes. 12. To demonstrate ethical and responsible professional behavior in the performance of his or her duties.
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| Materials
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Newspaper—At least one for every student
SMARTboard if available Computer lab with scanner Legal size white paper Paste Photocopier Shaun Tan’s Tales from outer suburbia (See Annotated Bibliography for more information on this book) Pencils, pens and imagination! |
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| Time | Part 1: 90 minutes
Part 2: 60 minutes Part 3: 60-90 minutes Part 4: 30 minutes |
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OUTLINE |
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TIME |
ACTIVITY |
| Engage
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10 minutes
When student’s enter the class, sit on a chair at the front of the room, face buried in a newspaper. Don’t lift your eyes, don’t say a thing to students. Have a pile of newspapers—students may think to take one and start looking through it. Don’t say a word for a few minutes (this will depend on the class. Up to 10 if the class catches on and takes their own newspapers, or 2 if the class doesn’t figure it out). Finally, look up from the newspaper. Look surprised. Oh, hello class. Sorry about that, I just can’t believe what I’m reading in the news these days. Some of it seems so farfetched it is hard to tell if it is real… What do you think?
10 minutes Discuss the news and how the students feel about it. Bring up some current events, see if students have heard about them, talk about them a bit. Get students comfortable with the idea that the topic for this project is the news. Who writes the news? Who decides what gets published? What makes a good article? What does this actually have to do with the news?
Students should start to think about the fact that news, like any other form of media, is produced to get a feeling out of the viewer/reader, and that the way the news is presented is more to make people watch/read it than to actually inform viewers/readers about current events. 20 minutes We are going to read a short excerpt from Shaun Tan’s Tales from outer suburbia. It is a compilation of short stories. Open to The Amnesia Machine on page 74-75.
Ask students about how the pages look. They look just like a real newspaper, right down to the crossword and Sudoku, and there is no indication that this is not a real news article. Talk about the design and the layout of the pages, and ask students what they expect the story to be like. Likely, they will expect it to resemble real news. Read the story. Look at the snippets of articles around the story. Ask students what struck them about it: Was it like the real news? What is going on in this story? What does the machine do? Who is in control here? Do you think that the people in control would allow this article to be printed in a newspaper? Allow students to raise their own points and their own questions. Discuss it. |
| Focus
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10 minutes
Reading, thinking, producing.
Using the inspiration provided to us by The Amnesia Machine, we are going to write our own newspaper.
Each of us will write a page. We will all chose some real newspaper articles to surround what we are writing, just like the example from the book. Choose articles that interest you, that you think are almost unbelievable.
Once you have chosen your articles, think about what you want your own article to be about. Keep in mind who your audience is, and who will be publishing your story. Unlike Shaun Tan, you will not be able to publish an article that those in charge would not approve of. So you must write in a way to get the audience—the general public—to care about your news, and also try and mask anything that newspapers would not want to print.
You will also need a photo to accompany your article. You have a few choices—you can borrow the digital camera and take a photo, you can bring in a photo you already have, or you could find a photo on the internet that you want to write about. I have no problem if you would like to alter a photograph using a photo editing program, but that is not part of the assignment, so I am not going to go over how to do it.
Write on the board (you can also provide this as a handout if students in your class would benefit from it):
You can all chose to put your own articles anywhere on the page. But make sure your name is there as the author!
20 minutes Begin with 20 minutes exactly to look through newspapers and cut out articles. Let students know that it is better to have too many than not enough. 10 minutes After those 20 minutes, demonstrate the writing activity. Remind students that the most important thing to keep in mind is that they are writing for a purpose: getting the audience interested and satisfying the publishers. I am going to do this activity as well. Here is how I will start: Begin an article about something unlikely, but that could potentially be possible given whatever is in the news at the current time. This should not be planned, and needs to be relevant to whatever is in that week’s newspapers. Write a paragraph or so on the board or on a SMARTboard. 10 minutes Take 5 minutes. Turn to your neighbor. Share your thoughts about what we have done so far, and an idea for your topic. How are you going to start? What do you think you will write about? Ask if anyone would like to share what they talked about. Wait until at least a few students volunteer their thoughts. Respond. Have students jot down their ideas. Your homework is to think about what picture you will need to accompany your article. If it is one from home, bring it in. Try to have your picture for tomorrow.
PART 2 Next day – 1 hour (or 1 period) Working period. We will do our drafts today. If you would like, I am here if you want to discuss your ideas. When you have at least part of your article written out, you may exchange with a neighbor and give each other constructive feedback. PART 3 Next day – 1 hour to 1.5 hours Go to the computer lab to complete good copies of the articles. Print. In class, have students paste together all of the required elements. Photocopy and publish as a newspaper. Make a copy for each student. Print double sided please! Make a copy available in the classroom, or in the school library, for students to read. |
| Closing
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PART 4—After copies have been distributed
30 minutes Let students talk about their articles, what they learned about producing the news, and what their favourite part of the activity was. Allow a few student volunteers to read their article. |
| REFLECTION ON LESSON | |
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Evaluation
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Evaluation is a personal matter.
I would likely give students a rubric with my expectations, and grade them according to that. I would focus on originality, style and tone of writing, overall aesthetics of the production. I may ask students what they think should be graded as well. |
| Notes about lesson
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