by
Cissy Lujan-Pincomb
Newspapers in the classroom have generally depicted current events, recent projects, field trips, etc. A real stretch is to integrate the subject matter with technology and other disciplines as well.
I have a weekly newsletter for parents, and so we began with the introduction of newspapers. In this unit, we integrated Social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Research Skills, and technology.
Our theme revolved around the colonial period. The students had just simulated the trip on the Mayflower and the Jamestown colony. The students were divided into 4 "colonies", which they named and began researching and reading about that time period. The colonies they chose were: Bristol, Scooby, London, and Devon. While the students were researching the time period, we were also reading trade books that depicted the colonial period. The task for each was to write their own newspaper of the "goings on" during that time period. First, we took a current newspaper and looked at the different sections in our own hometown newspaper and compared and contrasted what a current newspaper would contain versus an old colonial newspaper. We also searched the internet for old newspapers and found that Editorials, Editorial Cartoons, Marriages and Obituaries were a major part of the newspaper, due to the concentration of local news rather than our more global current newspapers.
After all the research was complete, the news articles were written and using the Bilingual Writing Center the students learned how to integrate graphics and text, learn how to layout a newspaper, learn about deadlines, editors, and everything else a current newspaper contains. The four newspapers that were created were: The London Times, The Bristol Chronicle, The Devon Daily, and The Scooby News.
The activity was successful because it was different from the current newspaper writing they were used to, it integrated many subject areas and it made that particular period in time more meaningful to the students.
|
|
|
|
| |
| ||
