Curated OER
Mannequin
Students design and construct an outfit for one member of their group using only newspapers and masking tape. This activity is designed to help students get acquainted with each other.
Curated OER
Progressive Newspapers
High schoolers create a newspaper on local, state and national issues in the muckracking style of progessive era journalism. They research the style by reading articles from the time period on women's sufrage, child labor laws and...
Curated OER
Creating Our Newspapers
Students write newspaper articles in groups to form a class newspaper. In this newspaper lesson plan, students share their work with another group who critiques it.
Media Smarts
Newspaper Ads
Just how free is the press? After examining the advertising and propaganda techniques used by advertisers, class members consider the influence advertisers may exert over newspaper content.
Curated OER
Let There Be Peace: Nobel Prize Winners
What is the Nobel Peace Prize? After they establish criteria for great leadership, secondary learners read a New York Times article about President Jimmy Carter's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Individuals research the...
Curated OER
Screen Play
High schoolers examine the New York Times review of the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and explore the elements of scriptwriting. They read the article about the film adaptation screenplay and examine a...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Fred Seibel, the Times-Dispatch, and Massive Resistance
A lesson challenges scholars to analyze editorial cartoons created by Fred Seibel, illustrator for the Times-Dispatch, during the Massive Resistance. A class discussion looking at today's editorial pages and Jim Crow Laws leads the...
Teachers Network
Witness for the Prosecution: Online Newspaper
Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution becomes the text for an online newspaper activity. Young journalists craft news, features, obituary, and opinion articles based on the characters and events in the play.
EngageNY
Researching: Eyewitness Accounts, Part 1
Time to go on a quote hunt! Because learners cannot interview real eye witnesses for their newspaper articles, they read through text The Great Earthquake and Fires of 1906 looking for quotes to answer their questions. Learners...
EngageNY
Organizing Research: The Inverted Pyramid
Bottom side up! Scholars complete an Inverted Pyramid handout to gain a better idea of how journalists organize information. They then look at the organization of a model newspaper article and gain ideas about creating their own...
EngageNY
Revising the Newspaper Article: Sentence Structure and Transitions
Take two. After a mini instructional activity covering sentence structure and transition words, scholars revise their End of Unit 3 Assessment based on feedback. Writers self-score their assessments against row three in the Newspaper...
EngageNY
Performance Task: Final Draft of the Newspaper Article
It's time for the grand finale! Scholars complete the final draft of their newspaper articles for the End of Unit 3 Assessment. They share their article with a classmate for peer critique. After considering all feedback and including a...
EngageNY
Researching: Eyewitness Accounts, Part 2
Continue on. Learners continue with the work they began in the last lesson looking for quotes to complete an eye witness interview. Pupils work in their groups to examine the texts in their research folders and The Great Earthquake and...
EngageNY
End of Unit 3 Assessment: Drafting the Newspaper Article
Choose your words carefully. Scholars continue looking at the creation of a newspaper article by examining word choice. They highlight key verbs, vocabulary, and descriptive words in the model article Sandy wreaks havoc...
Media Smarts
Bias
See how bias operates firsthand. Half of the class reads one article while the other half reads another article on the same event. The obvious differences emerge when the two sides talk about their observations though. Several handouts...
PBS
Facts vs. Opinions vs. Informed Opinions and their Role in Journalism
Do reporters write about what they see, or what they think? Examine the differences between investigative writing and opinion writing with a activity from PBS. Learners look over different examples of each kind of reporting, and convince...
Library Sparks
Reference Tools Vocabulary Challenge
Learners love the opportunity of going to the library to jump into that one comfy chair in the whole room with a book, or be a lucky one to get to the computers before anyone else. But knowing how to locate books and other reference...
iCivics
Mini Lesson A: Monetization
Advertising is everywhere! Does your class know that their attention span is for sale, even when they're watching a simple news story? The second installment in a five-part series from iCivics examines the relationship between news...
Social Media Toolbox
Social Media Usage
Is there a difference in the way organizations present news via social media and in print? The third in a series of 16 lessons from The Social Media Toolbox explores news outlets and their delivery methods. Groups follow a story for a...
Newseum
Recognizing Bias: Analyzing Context and Execution
Young journalists learn how to identify bias in the news media. First, they watch a video in which a Newseum expert identifies bias in a story about the 1919 Chicago race riots. They then use what they have learned to analyze a...
Newseum
The Fundamentals of News
A short video introduces middle schoolers to different media-related news terms. Viewers then complete a worksheet and discuss the differences between news and journalism, between facts and opinions.
News Literacy Project
Democracy’s Watchdog
As part of a study of the importance of the First Amendment, expert groups research different historic case studies of investigative reporting, and then the experts share their findings with jigsaw groups. The case studies include Nellie...
Newseum
News About My Community
After researching statistics about their community in local census reports, young journalists interview a resident about their interests and then analyze a local newspaper or homepage to see how similar the stories are to the residents'...
Curated OER
Putting Together the Confederation Newspaper
Pupils create a four-page newspaper that represents their assigned region/province of Canada. They assess their individual contribution to the group in the creation of their newspaper.