Classroom Gazette

Introduction

This web quest was developed as part of the Oak Lawn - Hometown School District 123's Millennium Technology Mini Grant Engaged Learning Project 2000.

The Classroom Gazette is a very in-depth newspaper writing unit.  It engages children in the writing and publishing of four different kinds of newspaper articles into a newspaper format.  The four kinds of articles focused on for this unit are front page news article, editorial, interview, and advice column.  The students will use a desktop publishing program to publish their final product, a newspaper that includes the four kinds of articles.

This unit was developed with fourth graders in mind.  However, it can be adapted to other grade levels.  It integrates language arts, math, science, and social studies.

Below are a list of the Illinois State Standards that are targeted during this unit.  Besides these content area objectives, the students will also learn teamwork, critical thinking, inference making, and problem solving.  Math standards were not specified here because the math editorial the students will be writing causes them to think about why math concepts are important to learn for life.  It does not require students to do actual math skills, but rather to write a persuasive essay about the importance of learning math which would fall in the writing standards.

Writing:

• 3.B.2a  Generate and organize ideas using a variety of planning strategies.
• 3.C.2a  Write for a variety of purposes and for specified audiences in a variety of forms.
• 3.C.2b  Produce and format compositions for specified audiences using available technology.
• 3.A.2    Write paragraphs that include a variety of sentence types; appropriate use of the eight       parts of speech; and accurate spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

• 5.A.2b  Organize and integrate information from a variety of sources.
• 5.C.2a  Create a variety of print and non print documents to communicate acquired information for specific audiences and purposes.

• 16.D.2c  Describe the influence of key individuals and groups in the historical eras of Illinois and the U.S.

• 11.A.2b  Collect data for investigations using scientific process skills including observing, estimating, and measuring.
• 11.A.2d  Use the data to produce reasonable explanations.
• 11.A.2c  Report and display the results of individual and group investigations.

This multidisciplinary unit could be done throughout the year when the teacher sees opportunities to incorporate writing with the other subject areas.  For example, when the students get to one particular concept in science and are conducting an experiment or doing a project, the teacher may decide at that point to have them write the front page news article on the experiment or project.  Likewise, when the students begin to study the American Revolutionary War, the teacher may decide to have the students pick an important historical figure of this war to write their interviews about.  Each article can be done at different parts of the year and put together on the desktop publishing program that is used.

• math, science, and social studies textbooks
• newspaper clippings
• research tool:  World Book
• Classroom Newspaper Workshop by Tom Snyder Productions
• TimeLiner 4.0 by Tom Snyder Productions
• Create Your Own Class Newspaper by Diane Crosby
• at least a four or five computers for the class
• aides to assist the teacher if possible

The students will need to know how to write for different purposes (to persuade, to inform, and so on).  They should be at their grade level for writing skills like sentence structure, paragraphing, length of sentences, and variety of sentences used.  Furthermore, the students should be at their grade level for spelling, grammar, and mechanics.

The students should be experienced at researching on the Internet.  They should also have a solid understanding of the scientific method and the science concepts that will be the basis of their front page news article.  They should also be knowledgeable about the portion of the social studies curriculum that will be the basis of the interview and advice column portions of the project.

In order to assess the students on this unit, the teacher will see how the students progress through the researching, writing, and publishing process and critique the final product which is each group's published newspaper.  On the student page, there is a checklist that the students can use to see how well they are doing and to make sure that they have not forgotten to include any required information.  The teacher can construct rubrics on their own or with the input of the students based on the requirements listed in this student checklist.  The teacher may also want to modify or add certain requirements based on the abilities of the students.  The teacher will need to make sure that all of the information included in the articles is accurate and that the students wrote each kind of article with the correct purpose in mind.

If you would like your students to experience writing even more kinds of articles, you could have them write sports features, comic strips, survey reports, birth announcements, advertisements, and recipes.  These are just some other fun newspaper writing activities that can incorporate all of the various subjects.

You and your students will find this to be a very worthwhile and exciting unit.  It helps the students to make meaningful connections between all of the subjects, and it provides authentic and engaging learning experiences for them.  It will also instill in your students an appreciation for journalism and what it involves that will stay with them for a lifetime.

Make some kind of summary statement here about the worthiness of this lesson and the importance of what it will teach.