Spedwards Times Double Class Paper

Introduction:In the real world,people have ways of communicating important news. We are doing great things in our classrooms and we want to figure out a way to let people know about it. How can we communicate what we are learning to our parents and friends?

Task:Newspapers are one way of communicating. Develop a class newspaper to communicate with parents, friends and other classes. The topic for this newspaper will be the season, fall.

Process:

1. Research the parts of existing newspapers by having a newspaper treasure hunt. Look for: headlines, book reviews, editorials, word searches, weather, dot-to-dots, pictures, sports, food, cartoons and real estate sections. (Classes had a newspaper treasure hunt during which they located, cut out and sorted parts of a newspaper using a variety of real newspapers. They glued what they found on pieces of posterboard with the headings on them.)
2. Meet and interview a newspaper reporter. (The classes were fortunate to know a newspaper reporter that was willing to come and share her experiences. She talked about how newspaper are produced and also about the editing procedure.)
3. Learn about printing. (In art class students used brayers and made print plates to create leaf prints.)
4. Create a name and masthead for the newspaper. (Students voted on a name for the paper and then visited the computer lab to play with fonts and sizes using their newspaper name. They printed out their selections and then took them to art class where they worked on adding illustrations around the words. The favorite one was chosen and scanned in to create the mastehead.)
5. While learning about the newspaper, students were simultaneously studying fall topics (trees, pumpkins, apples, mushrooms, leaves and weather.) There were many different activities that went along with each topic. (Teachers: Visit the unit plan to view ideas for some of these activties.)
6. After the fall study is completed, decide what components of a newspaper you will use in your class newspaper. (This group chose various types of articles, a food section, poetry, comic strips, book reviews, weather graphs, dot-to-dot, word search, and artwork. Many digital pictures would also be included.)
7. Break up into interest groups and work on your portion of the newspaper. (As sections were completed class photographers that were trained in the use of the digital camera took pictures and saved them in a central folder to be used later.)
8. Using the computer lab, add captions to the pictures that were taken.
9. Your teacher will put together all of the sections of the newspaper.

Opportunities to share:

1. Students bring home the newspaper for their families to enjoy.
2. A class meeting is held to discuss the process and what the students found fun or difficult.
3. Newspaper is shared with reading buddies.
4. Newspaper is available for purchase at the newstand in the classroom.

Assessment: A student survey is conducted after the unit is completed. Anecdotal notes are used for daily assessment. Science journal entries provide opportunity for teachers to see what students are gaining from the experience. The FCPS Learning Through Nature Evaluation Rubrics for trees, leaves and mushrooms is used.

To see pictures from the unit, click on the newspaper.
To see the unit design click here.

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Unit created by Roxanne Edwards and Nancy Spaulding
Page created byBrooks Widmaier
March 25, 2002