This Week’s Anton Lesson Plan
Communication is at the heart of what makes newspapers such an important medium. The job of journalists is to write stories, convey messages and attempt to make sure they make a connection with their clients (in this case subscribers/readers). The ability to deliver a coherent piece that flows and, more importantly, makes sense is what hopefully has people returning day after day (or week after week depending on how often your newspaper gets published).
The following are exercises students can do to get a taste of the role secondary language arts play in your newspaper.
• Create for the index of your newspaper a sentence summary of five news and/or feature stories you think would be of special interest to readers.
• Imagine you are the main character in the novel you are currently reading. As the character, place a classified ad, write a letter to the editor and write a news story. All should reflect the character’s point of view or bias.
• Choose a news or feature photo and pretend that it’s the year 2500. Try to explain the contents of the picture and what ideas it gives you about society from the early 2000s.
