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Analyzing the news (chapter 6 activities)

Page history last edited by Richard Beach 3 years, 3 months ago

CREATE A CLASSROOM OR SCHOOL NEWSPAPER

Students could study their own school newspaper or other on-line school newspapers for either their classroom or for the entire school:

http://directory.google.com/Top/News/Newspapers/Student/High_School/United_States/

They could then analyze these papers in terms of the quality of the design features employed: layout, columns, font size, use of photos, headlines, photo captions, white space, etc. Students could then compare the quality of the layout/design of different school papers based on specific design features. They could then write a series of stories, essays, or even short fiction/poems, and then create a classroom newspaper based on certain design features using software to combine the different texts and adding headlines and photos with captions.

In helping students design a classroom paper, teachers could integrate student production of final projects, reports, or essays into a published classroom paper for peers and parents.

For further activities related to newspaper production:

High School Journalism

http://www.schooljournalism.org/

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Writing the news story

http://www.startribune.com/education/writing.shtml

Unit: creating a school newspaper

http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/letsnet/noframes/bigideas/b6/b6u3.html

Jteacher.com: lots of on-line resources related to school journalism

http://www.jteacher.com/

SNN: Student Magazine: A Canadian Magazine by Student Reporters

http://www.snn-rdr.ca/snn/moned.html

Students could write individual news reports about events in their school or community based on interview data and observations for inclusion into a classroom newspaper to be produced online. Other students could assume the role of editors who must decide on whether they should include or exclude certain stories, how to organize stories in the newspaper, and appropriate headlines for the stories.

New York Times Lesson Plans: “Nothing but the News: Exploring and Creating "Important" News Stories”

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20020405friday.html

ANALYZE LOCAL TELEVISION NEWS

News Literacy Project

Watch an evening local TV news (the 5, 6, or 10 o’clock news on the Monday, the 20th or Tuesday, the 21st—or at another time), keep a viewing log recording the stories covered, types of stories, and the time of stories in number of seconds. Then, identify the types of content in terms of time devoted to “news,” “weather,” “sports,” “consumer/health/entertainment feature stories,” and “ads.” Within the “news” category, characterize the types of stories included. Then reflect on your experience of watching television news: discuss the rhetorical appeals or strategies employed to influence an audience’s beliefs and attitudes; describe the use of techniques and editing (selection versus exclusion of material) designed to influence the audience.

CREATE A TELEVISION NEWS BROADCAST

Create a television news broadcast. As with creating a classroom newspaper, students could also create their own television news broadcast of stories of interest to them and their peers, in which different groups of students cover different types of topics: top stories, human interest, sports, entertainment, weather, etc. Each group could select and write scripts for stories, using visual content to convey their ideas, and editing material to capture primary content. They could video tape their broadcasts or, by creating digital, video-streaming images, they could put clips onto a Web page. They could then reflect on their own and others’ stories in terms of decisions about the newsworthy nature of their stories--the significance, relevance, or value of the story for their intended audiences

Mark Harmon includes specific strategies for analyzing the use of photo composition, motion, sound, lighting, and transitions in television news broadcasts.

For activities involving production of a news broadcast:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20020405friday.html

My Newcast: game on creating a TV news broadcast

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/newscast.html

Current TV: video production guide (for submitting video material to Current TV—about 25%-30% of their content is submitted by viewers).

http://www.currenttv.com/studio/survivalguide/

Webquests: Creating news broadcasts

COMPARE NEWS STORIES ACROSS DIFFERENT MEDIA

Students choose one news story and compare the coverage of that story across different media: radio, Web-based news, television, newspapers, magazines, as well as within different media (tabloid versus mainstream newspapers, Fox versus CNN versus PBS news). In making these comparisons, students analyze the use of different, alternative sources; degree of background context; level of analysis; use of visuals, and instances of bias related to selection and omission, placement, headline, photos, captions and camera angles, names and titles, statistics and crowd counts, source control, and word choice and tone. For further discussion of these criteria

Students could also compare the same story across urban versus suburban or rural news outlets in terms of issues or topics coverage related to regional differences. They could also analysis international media news coverage by going to online international newspapers or television news (BBC) and comparing differences in coverage related to the country from which the news originates. Students could analyze various arrangements of stories and headlines on the front page of papers from around the world using the Newseum site: http://www.newseum.org/cybernewseum/

Other resources

News Literacy Project

Schools Must Include Digital Literacy in their Syllabi to Tackle the Menace of Fake News

These Students Are Learning About Fake News and How to Spot It: Application of The News Literacy Project. The New York Times

Best free documentary websites

News Literacy Project

Why TV News Must Die: A Task for Educators

Finder, A. (2013). Telling bogus from true: A class in reading news. The New York Times.

Accessing world news--map of different news outlets throughout the world

Free MOOC 2015 course on news and media literacy, Arizona State University

KQED DoNow: Inquiry-based questions and related news reports

Analyzing Local News Lesson Plan- Brian Erlich