Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description

• Grade Level: Upper Elementary, Middle School, High School

• Subject Area: Language Arts

Brief Description

    Students will choose their beats and decide what areas of school and community news they will cover.
Objectives

    Students will:

• Develop their writing skills through journalism.
• Develop their abilities to synthesize information they gather.
• Use a variety of resources to gather information for their newspaper stories.

    In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements: none.
2. Special software requirements: none.
3. Internet access: none.

• Have students examine a local newspaper to see what sections are commonly included. Use these section categories to serve as a basis for outlining several sections that students will create for their school newspaper.

• Once a list has been decided upon have students select a section to work on. Have students meet in section groups and brainstorm possible story ideas.

• Have each student choose one or two stories to research and write-up.

• Once students have completed their rough drafts, ask group members to exchange their papers for peer editing and submit a copy to you for teacher editing.

• Students incorporate the critiques of the teacher and their peer editor to produce final drafts.