Journalism co-op ideas

[Calizzy]

I’m trying to think through how to teach a journalism/newspaper co-op class. The kids would be 8th and 9th grade. My thougts were to break out different newspaper sections: co-op news, local news, world news, sports, etc. Give 1 section to each student. Take 3 weeks per paper (class meets 1x/week). Week 1 hand out assignments and brainstorm ideas. Write at home. Week 2 peer edit with a partner?  Class is 45 minutes so this wouldn’t take that long? Homework- everyone put their portion in a shared google doc. Week 3, I bring in printed copies for everyone to review then we print and hand out end of day.

Any thoughts about this format? Anything to add? Perhaps a week or 2 teaching how to write a news article? Any resources for this?

[SoCal_Bear]

What about Cover Story or Byline from Clearwater Press?

https://clearwaterpress.com/coverstory/

https://clearwaterpress.com/byline/

 

 

[Lori D.]

Some possible resources:

text/program
- K-12 ENG010: Journalism
- High School Journalism by Homer & Hall
- Byline (gr. 9-12)
- Journalism Basics (Cathy Duffy review) and, link to the Book (gr. 9-12)

Do-It-Yourself
- School Journalism -- free articles & lesson plans (looks like middle/high school)
- Journalism Curriculum for Homeschoolers -- Five J's blog on how to DIY course
- Teachers Pay Teachers: Journalism Bundle

re: teaching journalism
Three weeks is an extremely short period of time to teach journalism, which includes the actual process of putting together a newspaper: elements that help "pay" for a newspaper such as collecting/writing ads and classifieds; headline writing; layout; actual publishing, etc. OR... did you mean that you'll spend the whole semester or year on journalism, and publish a paper once every 3 weeks?

If the latter, then I'd recommend starting off by spending 1-2 weeks EACH on how to write a news article, a sports piece, a feature, and an op-ed piece. Because each is very different in approach, language use, structure, and purpose. I'd suggest that you cover one type of newspaper article (news, sports, feature, op-ed), and then all students produce an article in that style

re: teaching news article writing
In my co-op classes, when I have touched on journalism, it has been to focus just on news article writing, which we do in 2-3 weeks. For my class, the news article assignment is within the greater context of the overall writing process -- specifically, the news article helps us learn:
- how to add details/flesh out paragraphs through the "5W+H" questions that are used in interviewing sources for an article
- how to embed quotations in your writing (how to blend it in, and how to punctuate
- how to write a title for your piece of writing (here, writing a headline)

So what I am doing is different from what you will be doing with teaching full-on journalism. However, in case it helps, for teaching how to write a news article, we cover:
- using the 5Ws + H questions for interviewing
- notetaking in interviewing
- the inverted pyramid structure of a news article (which is VERY different from essay structure)
- what the 5 stages of the writing process look like when creating a news article (e.g.: interviewing, embedding quotations)
- headline writing

We also spend time in class examining some news articles together to see how they are put together (headlines, inverted pyramid structure, embedded quotations), and also the language/tone of the writing for news articles (which is different than the language/tone used in features, op-ed, and sports articles).

These websites have some good news articles for 8th/9th graders:
News For Kids
DoGo News
Smithsonian Tween Tribune
Inside Science
BBC News Round


Sounds like a very fun semester! BEST of luck in finding what works best for teaching this class. Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Lori D.