imitating a newspaper's voice with a funny and original idea
This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. Check out all of Corbett's on-line lessons by clicking here.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Fairytale News by Colin and Jacqui Hawkins. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this books' authors.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Step one (sharing the published model):Colin and Jaqui Hawkins' Fairytale News is a clever look at how journalism is important everywhere...even in Fairytale Land. After reading this picture book, one must then ask, "If they have legitimate newspapers, mustn't they also have tabloid newspapers?"
Ask students to explain the difference between real newspapers and tabloid papers.
Print and share an example tabloid article from The Weekly World News Online. Print and share an example of a real journalism article from your local newspaper; in Northern Nevada, ours is The Reno-Gazette Journal. Obviously, many tabloid articles are based on loose truths, and students will easily point that out as an important difference between the two articles. Acknowledge that, then ask students to think deeper. Ask, "Stylistically, how is the writing similar and different?" Create a venn diagram on the board that records their observations on the two articles' voices."
Tell students they will be using the voice qualities of tabloid journalism to write a newspaper article for the imaginary tabloid Fairytale newspaper.
Step two (introducing models of writing): In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups should certainly talk about the voice, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's idea development as well.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Step one is to have students create their tabloid headlines. They can easily do this on their own, but the the interactive button game on the student instruction page has enough options so that a class full of students might all end up with a completely different headline, which should be encouraged.
For pre-writing, ask students to brainstorm people that might be interviewed by a reporter covering this incident. As part of their brainstorms, have students write one or two quotes for each of those people. Tell students they must select only their two or three best interviewees to include in the article.
As students begin drafting their articles based on their headlines, be sure they keep looking back at the examples you have shown them. Encourage them to borrow style and techniques from the examples, but also encourage them to adapt others' techniques into their own.
If some students finish their tabloid article drafts quickly, encourage them to create a second article or to create an article from a more legitimate newspaper that is reporting on the same thing as their tabloid article. Ask, "How would they differ?"
Step four (revising with specific trait language): Two tools for revision are provided below. You can use one or both, depending on how much time you have to spend on this assignment.
To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step five (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it. The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.
Step six (publishing for the portfolio): When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.
Interested in publishing student work on-line? We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers. This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.
Learn more about Jacqui and Colin Hawkins' books
by clicking here!
