Jackson Public Schools
Summer Reading Activities
Provide parents with the tools they need to bridge the summer learning gap with this collection of fun activities. Whether it's creating an alphabet poster with illustrations for each letter, playing a game of sight word concentration,...
American Press Institute
High Five: Media Literacy and Newspapers
Teach the five different types of media with the first of three in a media literacy unit. Learners create and propose a final newspaper project, which must address information covered throughout the unit.
Curated OER
Strong Convictions
How can the rhetorical structure of an editorial help to develop its argument? Use this New York Times editorial to emphasize the importance of structure in a piece of informational text. Adolescent writers then use the editorial as a...
Media Smarts
Fact versus Opinion
Part of a series aimed at breaking down cultural bias from the Canadian Media Awareness Network, this activity identifies where opinions do and don't belong in a newspaper. Pupils review handouts about the purpose of editorial comments...
E Reading Worksheets
Comprehension and Inference Question Creator
Encourage learners to ask questions about what they read with a activity about comprehension and inference questions. The resource provides directions and examples that guide kids through crafting their own questions.
Simon & Schuster
Curriculum Guide to: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities is the core text for five lessons in a Curriculum Guide for Charles Dickens' famous novel. To begin, scholars examine Dickens' use of anaphora in the first line of the novel. Next, they compare the point of view in a...
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Newspaper Reporting and Writing
Middle schoolers will examine advertisements, explore ways to inform, locate pictures of Hemingway, read sports articles, and follow directions to create a finished project - a newspaper. their newspapers are multifaceted with not only...
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Newspaper Poems
Ninth graders appreciate the value of words, review the parts of speech, create original poetry, shape the poem, and write an explanation of the images he/she has created.
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A Newspaper?
Sixth graders use newspapers to investigate fractions. They work in small groups to categorize articles, measure them with the grid transparency, and calculate the values represented. Afterward, they write a reflective essay on the role...
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Write Picture Captions
Students notice and investigate a large range of devices for presenting texts-captions. Students write original captions for several audiences. Students write a fictional news story based around a certain caption.
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Football game seating: Security or Restriction?
High schoolers write an article or an editorial about the situation of Cleveland-area schools instituting policies to restrict seating at night football games. Students research their own school policy, as well as other school policies.
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Costco and Zoning
Learners research zoning laws in the community. They interview city planners to find out necessary steps for approval. Students collect information about facilities being proposed. They write an article on their findings.
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Author's Purpose
A simple activity for young readers, this introduces the idea of author purpose. Learners analyze various types of texts (newspaper articles, magazines, books, advertisements, etc.) and determine if the author's purpose for writing was...
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Commemorating a Tragedy
Students read newspaper articles and watch segments on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. In groups, they discuss how each media outlet presented the material and decide which one was more productive. As a class, they discuss...
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Revolutionary Newspaper
Fifth graders write a newspaper article about an important event or cause of the Revolutionary War. In small groups they participate in a jigsaw activity, and return to their original group to report on their new information. Students...
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Critical Thinking & Writing: Brainstorming
Have your young writers organize their thoughts before writing. They generate ideas through various brainstorming activities prior to writing a mock feature news story for USA Today. A series of USA Today articles debating the level of...
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Labor Day Newspaper
Students examine the history of the Labor Day holiday and write a newspaper article about it. They practice using new vocabulary words and discover the layout of a newspaper.
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Un-Presidented Election
Students explore the results of the 2000 presidential election. They look back at important issues in the campaign and write newspaper articles which cover specific angles on the election.
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Wounded Knee Massacre
Middle schoolers interpret historical evidence presented in primary and secondary resources. In this Westward Expansion lesson, students examine sources regarding the Battle of Wounded Knee from the perspective of Lakota...
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Effective Letter Writing
Students explore letter writing. In this persuasive writing lesson, students write a letter to a local organization based on a topic of their choice. Students employ the correct letter writing procedure as outlined in the...
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Hey There, Sports Fans!
Young scholars discuss the impact that fans have on a sports team. After reading an article, they identify how Chicago Cubs fans are responding to their loss in the playoffs. With a partner, they develop surveys in which they give to...
Curated OER
Nellie Bly's Newspaper Club: Introducing the Art of Writing
Students use video and the Internet to research the life of Nellie Bly, a famous female reporter from the 19th century. They research a writer and present their information to the class in the style of a news reporter.
Balanced Assessment
Presidential Popularity
Media often misrepresent data and statistics to their advantage. This lesson asks scholars to analyze an article with misleading statistics. They use margin of error and mean data in their studies. Once they complete their analysis,...
Alabama Department of Archives and History
World War II Home Front - Mobilization in Alabama
Ships, tanks, and planes—what does a military need to fight a war? An interesting lesson explains the government's military mobilization efforts in Alabama during WWII. Class members look at a PowerPoint presentation and discuss how the...