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Teachers in Canadian schools are constantly being challenged to keep up with an ever- changing educational and social environment. They must tackle the traditional curriculum, ensuring that their students leave their classroom with a solid understanding of the core subjects. Plus, they must give their students the skills and knowledge they need to function in a complex and technologically-advanced world. To do this, teachers must find new ways to capture their students' attention and engage them in the learning process. That includes using innovative teaching methods and integrating lively, relevant materials into the classroom. The SNN website can be a valuable tool for educators and it offers young people an exciting learning experience. Our classroom projects allow teachers to initiate thoughtful discussions among their students on the news media and its impact on society. And reporting and writing for SNN gives students a chance to learn how the media operates. Whether they're writing about a sports star at their school or researching the prevalence of drug abuse among teens, student reporters are learning about their peers and their community. They are learning to think critically, to assess complex and sometimes contradictory information, to express their thoughts in writing, and to use technology as a tool for communicating ideas and news. Here are some ideas for collaborative projects that the teacher can integrate into class activities. If you have a project or an idea that you would like listed here, please send a note to the SchoolNet News Coordinator. Keep checking this spot for new project ideas. The SNN in the Classroom program offers something for teachers and students at all levels. It also features several elements:
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Grades K-3: Search for key words Start with the basics and use your local newspaper as a language arts teaching tool. Come up with a list of ten words in your students' existing vocabulary. Ask them to look through newspapers and try to find those words in newspaper headlines. Or use the newspaper as a way to introduce new words. Take the exercise a step further by asking your students to write their own stories, featuring some of the vocabulary they've recognized or learned through this exercise. They may all be using the words "police", "city" and "dog" but they are likely to come up with completely different stories! Grades K-3: Do a Mock T.V. Broadcast Get younger students involved in media studies by imitating a television news broadcast. You could have students taking turns being the news anchors behind the desk to read make-believe news stories. For example, you could make it fun by making news stories out of nursery rhymes, fairy tales or any of the stories your students are reading in their language arts classes. You could even have them act out live interviews by having several children play the part of reporters and having others play the characters in the story. Remember the ‘News Flash' segments on Sesame Street with Kermit the Frog? He'd interview the King's horses and King's men from Humpty Dumpty, the Old Woman who lived in a shoe, or just a regular guy who works in a mine - mining the letter 'J.' Let them have fun with it. They'll improve their reading skills, communicate better with others, and learn better, all because they did it themselves. Grades 4-8: Compare T.V. News Broadcasts Videotape the first ten minutes of a television news broadcasts from two or more local stations or from the CTV and CBC national broadcasts. Let the students watch them in class and ask them to compare what each newscast did differently. Here are some questions to consider in the class discussion, depending on the age of your students and their level of media awareness: Look at the order in which stories were read, keeping in mind that more important stories are usually read first. What did each station feature as its top story? Was it the same? Ask a couple of students to make a list of the stories that appeared in each newscast. Do you see the same stories on each list? Are there major differences? How long did the stories run? Ask one of your students to time the stories with a stop-watch or the classroom clock. Did some stories last for 25 seconds while others ran for three minutes? Ask your students to discuss why they think some stories get more air time than others. Look at the stories that were featured on the newscast. Is there one type of story that comes up more often than others? Crime, politics, business, human interest stories? Ask your students what they think of these choices? Are they interested in the stories? Would they rather see stories about other subjects? Ask your students to keep track of the type of people who are featured in news stories. Are they mostly politicians, officials, celebrities, and other well-known people? Do regular citizens make it into the news very often? If they do, how and when do they appear? Encourage your students to act as the producer of a newscast. How would they organize the newscast? What's their top story? What would they cut out? Is there a story they would add? At the end of your discussion, ask your students to decide which newscast best reflects what was going on in their community or their country on that day. Hold a vote!
Grades 9-12: Take on the job of editor If you had the chance to write a newspaper, how would you do it differently? Bring a newspaper into your class and have the students analyze it by
going through the different Would they change any of that? Would they place these things in different spots? Have them examine the leads of the stories and the structure of the stories, would they change any of this? What about the pictures and headlines? What would they do with these? Using the same stories from the newspaper you brought in, have them recreate the paper placing the stories and sections wherever they feel is appropriate. This exercise would help students understand how a newspaper works and the daily decisions that go along with it. Grades 9-12: Using news releases as source material A news release (also known as a press release) is a printed statement issued by a government, a politician, a company, an organization or a public figure. Sometimes it serves to publicize a new program, product or activity. Other times, a news release publicizes a person or group's point of view on an issue. In any case, a release usually represents the point of view of one party. Other groups with an interest in a subject may issue their own new releases in response to an announcement or a decision. These days, many groups use the Internet to send their news releases. Your students can easily find a few releases on current topics and use them for a classroom exercise. Here's a classroom project recommended by Globe and Mail reporter, Lawrence Surtees: Pick a provincial or federal government site on the World Wide Web and find a recent speech or news release about a topic that received wide coverage in the media. Make a copy and identify what you think the single-most important point is -- find the angle -- and then write a one-sentence lead. Then compare your lead with those in several published stories from local, national or out-of-town newspapers from the following day. Two good sites on the web with easy access to lots of current news are: the Government of Canada's primary web site (http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html) and click on "What's New" the White House electronic briefing room, which contains presidential
news and speeches
Your students can take this process on step further by writing their own news stories from a news release. The students can start by locating a release on a topic that's been in the news recently. Do additional research on the Internet by looking for related news releases, responses from other groups and announcements. Some research in the library may be required in order to understand the background of a certain story. Once they've gathered the information they need, students can write their own version of the story. Finally, students can pull published versions of the story from various online newspapers and compare their work. Encourage the class to discuss the differences and similarities in their own stories and how they compare with those of working journalists. What are the common themes? Did the journalists have different elements in their stories because of the people they interviewed — in addition to using the new release? |
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Grades K-3: A profile from your family Show and Tell is a regular event in most primary school classrooms. Here's a journalism-inspired variation on the theme: the interview. Encourage your students to go home after school and interview someone in their family. The goal is to have them ask the questions and collect the information they'll need to tell their classmates a story. The questions could be geared to their age and ability to record information. For younger students, the questions could include: What's your mother's (father, sister or brother) favorite color? For older students, they could be expanded to included: What's your father's (mother, sister or brother) clearest memory from
when he was in school? The students can take turns telling the class about what they found out through their interviews. The stories can be told from memory or the students can write down as much as they can on paper. Grade K-3: What's the news from your neighborhood? Ask your students to write a story about what happened in their neighborhood this week. It could be the birth of a litter of kittens, a soccer tournament that had all the local kids involved, or a birthday party that featured a new game or activity. The news in the neighborhood may be of a more weighty nature. Perhaps someone has lost their home to a fire. Or a child may have had an illness in the family or lost a favorite pet. Grades 4-8: Profiles in courage and character Newspapers, magazines, television shows and radio programs often do stories known as "profiles". The stories take an in-depth look at the life of one person. It could be a newsmaker, a person who has a high profile in their community or their country, or someone who's know throughout the world. Or it could be someone who's relatively unknown but who has an interesting life and story to share. Invite your students to research and write a profile of a person that inspires them. It could be someone from the world of sports, entertainment, politics, science, technology, business, health, community activism, education, the military, the fine arts or any other field that interests them. Encourage them to use the resources that exist on the Web and in printed form in the library. Here are some guidelines for students: Choose your subject — explain why you're interested in that person and what you'd like to know about them. Start your research by doing a web search in your favorite search engines. (See the section on Web searches to find out how to make the most of your computer time) What have you learned so far? Are there any surprises? Is there an area of this person's life or work that you would now like to focus on? Find out what other newspapers and new media have written about this person. What do they say about themselves? What do friends and enemies say? What about their family? Co-workers? Write your profile by telling your readers the facts of this person's life — while adding the color and details that make them unique. Make sure that students show where they've found their information — whether it's in a encyclopedia in the library, a book at home or an article on a web site. Grades 9-12: Analyze coverage of current events The World Wide Web is like a giant news stand that features countless newspapers and magazines from around the world. And it doesn't stop with printed materials published online — there's also continuous feeds from radio and television news outlets and written versions of broadcast stories. Given the number of sources that are out there, it's easy for students to search the Web and get numerous accounts of the same story or issue. Select several major issues that are in the news. Ask your students to search for various columns, opinion pieces, editorials and letters to the editor that discuss the issue. Write a piece that surveys the points of view. Is there a consensus? Or is the opinion split? How does opinion vary from one part of the country to another? Is there a trend? Compare the way different news outlets report on the same story. Have the students use the Internet to search the news sections of daily newspapers. How is the story placed in the paper? Up front or inside the news section? What's the lede — the opening line of the story? Does it vary in tone or focus? |
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The SchoolNet News Network is a national online journalism project, developed by STEM~Net and sponsored by Canada's SchoolNet. Since 1996, SNN -- and its French counterpart Rédaction de Rescol -- has been giving students a chance to share their ideas with an unlimited audience via the Internet. SNN teaches students how the media works, gets them writing in a journalistic style and lets them publish their work in an emerging media form. The Internet is the only form of publishing that allows a journalist to incorporate everything from text and graphics to sound and movie pictures, as long as they have the right accessories. This year, SNN journalists have unlimited options. The web page has been re-designed to add sound bites and video clips. Now, student journalists can write a story for SNN, take photos to go with it, interview people on audio tape or videotape news events. A new edition of SNN is published each month on the Web. But the site is continually updated as new stories, photos, video and audio segments come in from reporters across the country. Your students can get involved in SNN by becoming regular contributors. Encourage interested students to form a SNN news team. Each month, one student can lead the group in discussions of story ideas and current issues in their school or community. The students can come up with ideas for stories and let the SNN coordinator know they're working on them. The student reporters can decide for themselves who will do a story in any given month. With help from the SNN coordinator and the SNN journalism mentors, they can do research and interviews and write stories for publication on the SNN site. Now that SNN is a multi-media site, students have the option of sending in video or audio segments to go along with their written material. And there's also room for still photos. Reporters can work in teams to produce multi-media stories. For example, one person can record video while the other does an interview. Together, they can write a story and include a 30-second segment of their taped interview. Teachers aren't expected to put in a lot of extra time to coach student journalists working on SNN. Just get in touch with the SNN coordinator, Beth Ryan, and she'll help the students get started and line them up with mentors from the journalism community who can read and critique their work throughout the process.
For more information on how SNN works, see the Sign on with SNN section. |
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CBC for Kids — http://cbc4kids.ca CBC for Schools — http://radio.cbc.ca/~schools/ The Halifax Chronicle Herald Kids Page Time Magazine for Kids — http://www/timeforkids.com Sports Illustrated for Kids -- http://www.sikids.com Owl Magazine online -- http://www.owl.on.ca
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