There are many different writing styles found in any day's newspaper. As a result, students have the opportunity to interact with and learn about a variety of writing styles.
Reacting in writing to what students read in the newspaper is a rewarding way to interact with the interesting material. You may want to invite your students to write in response journals after working with interesting news stories.
Choose a newspaper story that you think will be of interest to students.
- Read the story aloud together or have students read silently.
- Each student can write in a response journal reflecting on the story.
- They can then meet in small groups to discuss what they read and wrote. Instruct them to speak quietly, stay on topic and give everyone a chance to share.
- Found poems:
- Another great writing activity is "found poetry." In this activity, students will take words or phrases from a newspaper story and arrange them into a poem. This activity can be done individually or as a group. It will work very well using an e-edition that is projected for the whole class to see.
- Students should skim an article and collect interesting words and phrases that they think will work well in a poem. After assembling their word list, they should write a poem using those words.
- Ask students to compare and contrast the difference in writing styles in a news story, a feature column and an editorial. Have them choose one and mimic it in a writing assignment.
TipTIP: Newspaper story lengths are varied. That enables teachers to choose the challenge level of any lesson by choosing a story length that matches the ability level of the students.
|