Objectives:
- The students will write a collaborative class newspaper on current events in their country and send/receive copies
to/from other participating schools.
- Students will learn about the different jobs involved in making a newspaper.
- Students will be in contact with other news and cultures around the world.
- Each student is responsible for one page of the class paper.
How I do it:
- In a brainstorming session (popcorn), have the students decide on the sections they want to include in their class newspaper.
- List their choices on the board. Have them take notes. Sections might include sports, music, entertainment,games, horoscope, art, school, current events...
- Have your students name the different jobs involved in making a newspaper. List on board: editor in chief, section editors, reporters, artists, layout personnel, proof readers and so on.
- Ask them if they can describe the jobs they do.
- Explain their different responsibilities.
- Divide your class into as many sections as your class paper has. You might want to make sure that a fairly equal number of students be part of each team.
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- Tell the students they will be individually responsible for one page of the paper and collectively responsible to bring cohesivness to their section.
- Explain the difference between facts (reporters) and opinions (editors).
- As a homework, students should prepare the plan of their article and write the first draft. All plans should include the following: student's name, section name, title of article (punchy)and the source of information.
The plan for editors should consist of: reason for choice of topic, arguments (for and against), opinion and questions to feed the debate.
The plan for reporters should consist on gathering information about facts: what?, where?, when?, who?, why?, how?
- Go over student's plans, making sure everyone is on the right track. I grade the plan on 10.
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- As you go over the plans, have students get in section teams, exchange copies with their partners, proof read the articles and make corrections.
- Pick up copies to correct the final mistakes. I evaluate according to sentence structure, vocabulary, accuracy of information and mistakes made. This part is on 30.
- This is a good time to review any particular grammar seen in class.
- Still in section teams, it's now time to work on the final layout, integrating text, pictures, captions and drawings.
This team work should also be graded. I give it 10, for a total of 50 for the entire project.
- Last but not least, don't forget to make copies of student work and send it via snail mail to participating schools :-)
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