Teaching Tolerance
Evaluating Online Sources
Newspapers, television, social media ... how do people get their news? Using the informative resource, scholars locate and verify credible sources of information. Working in small groups, they discuss strategies for evaluating the...
Curated OER
Don't Lose Your Way in the News
Students explore language arts by participating in a newspaper analysis activity. In this journalism lesson, students identify how newspapers present stories, who is writing them and how they can obtain information from them....
Curated OER
Persuaded or Informed?
Give each learner a newspaper for this lesson plan! As a group, read select editorials and discuss them with your class. Are these articles informational or persuasive? Cut out select editorials and have learners identify the purpose of...
American Press Institute
Media Literacy: Where News Comes From
What actually happens at a press conference? Make sense of the mayhem with a mock press conference activity designed to promote media literacy. Individuals participate as either members of the press or the governor's office to examine...
Curated OER
Political Cartoons: Literacy
Readers decode and deconstruct political cartoons to heighten critical thinking, extra-textual literacy, and making meaning from symbolism and metaphor. A compatible activity to use in English class when your 8th or 11th graders are...
Curated OER
Picture Your Future Self
High schoolers research careers using the internet and newspapers. As a group, they create a newsletter about careers of the future.
Curated OER
The Art of Speech
Young scholars discuss President Bush's goals for his second term in office. After reading an article, they identify the major themes of his second inaugural address. In groups, they brainstorm ideas and create murals to illustrate them...
Curated OER
Abbreviations and Acronyms in Newspapers
Students investigate the purpose and meaning of common abbreviations and acronyms by examining them in newspapers.
Curated OER
The Reader's Recourse
Students discover the recourse newspapers face for reporting wrong information. After reading an article, they examine the dispute between a pharmaceutical company and the New York Times. They evaluate the roles of the editor and the...
Curated OER
Concealed Weapons Law Editorials: A Study of Persuasive Writing
High schoolers research Ohio's concealed gun legislation using provided resource links, read editorials and commentaries from Ohio's daily and weekly newspapers, and analyze these opinion pieces.
Curated OER
Biographical Activity
Learners particpate in discussion about biographies in order to become familiar with the term. They type their "Biography" using a word processing program and learn the cut/paste functions to transfer information from their document into...
Curated OER
Using Details from Text to Identify Author's Purpose
Explore writing techniques by analyzing newspapers and magazines with middle schoolers. They will collaborate in small groups to read local news stories and identify the main ideas and author's intent. They also utilize an information...
Curated OER
Better Vocabulary Through Derivatives
Learners create a word tree poster that illustrates the way a root word can serve as the basis for many related terms. Although designed for a Latin language class, the concepts here could be used with any class study of Latin or Greek...
Curated OER
All the News That's Fit to Click: Analyzing New York Times Design
Explore the New York Times, online and in print. Partners take the roles of reader and monitor while each peruses the newspaper. Discussion questions compare the online version to a hard copy print edition. Links provide comparison of...
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...
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...
Library Sparks
Reference Tools Vocabulary Challenge
Young scholars 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...
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...
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 lesson 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 Article Rubric.