Newspaper Lesson Plan

Summary

This lesson helps students create a newspaper that will demonstrate their understanding of the processes of revolution, representative people in a revolution, winners and losers in a revolution, and the impact on the future. This lesson plan integrates social studies, language arts, art, and technology. Teachers can determine how expansive this task will be. What is essential to the assignment is that students demonstrate an understanding of the standard.

Materials

• 18 X 11 papers for each student
• Resources for revolutions
• Pens, makers, rulers, colored pencils
• Access to computers is optional
• Newspapers for each student

Background for Teachers

This works well as a cumulative assignment after the Revolution Jigsaw Lesson and the Revolution Matrix Activity. This URL specifically is a lesson about newspapers.

Instructional Procedures

1. Begin by handing out a newspaper to everyone in the class. Give the students 5 to 10 minutes to look at the newspaper and find the sections that are interesting to them.
2. Make a list on the board of all the components of a newspaper: front page news, editorials, editorial cartoons, ads, help wanted, obituaries, sports page, comics, want ads, classified, local, national, and world news.
3. Next, discuss the language style of the newspaper and the genre. Newspaper articles need to answer the; who, what, when, where, and how of a subject.
4. The students will make a newspaper about a revolution of their choice. The newspaper must answer the essential questions of standard three.
   1. What is the process of revolution?
   2. Name the components of status quo, unrest, need for change, revolution, need for change, new order.
   3. Who are the winners and losers of each revolution?
   4. Who are the representative people of the revolution?
   5. What is the impact of the revolution on the modern world?
5. Give the students some examples of how they could answer these questions in their newspaper. For example: You could write a sports page about who the winner and loses of the revolution are (e.g. Lenin's team vs. the Royal family). You could do help wanted ads for people to fight in the army. The obituaries could discuss who died in the revolution. They could write editorials about the different issues of the revolution. The front page could announce the revolution answering the: who, what, when, where, and how demonstrating student understanding of the process of revolution.
6. Allow the students to be creative as they produce their paper. The paper should look like a newspaper. We will keep the newspapers as a resource for other students to read.

Assessment Plan

You may use the general rubric or the Newspaper Rubric to assess the project.