An Educator's Reference Desk Lesson Plan
Submitted by: Thad Baker
Date: May 25, 1998
Subject(s):
Description:
This activity will give the students a chance to express their creativity through giving an actual news broadcast. The students will be in groups of three or four and will each be doing a segment of the broadcast. This can include local news, state news, national news, sports and weather or even school news. After researching their news material and practicing their broadcast the students will video tape their final product.
Goal:
The students will become actively involved with events surrounding their lives.
Objectives:
1. Students will create a new broadcast which includes a variety of different segments.
2. Students will gather information from news papers, local and national televised news, Internet and from personal interviews.
Background Information:
The students will have to be given the resources to collect their information. Not all families get the morning newspaper. You may also want to record the news off of T.V. so you can view this in your classroom and talk about how the reporters conduct their broadcast. Be sure the school has a video recorder or if you can borrow one from elsewhere.
Concepts:
Students will have to stay informed about current events happening around them and be able to report them in a creative way.
Steer the students away from only watching cartoons and sitcoms on T.V.
Materials:
1. Introduce what you plan on doing the Friday before you are going to start.
This will give the students some time to be looking for and listening for news in the paper, on T.V. or on the radio.
2. View a portion of a news broadcast and have a discussion about the order of segments and how the reporters conduct themselves. (Is it always serious or is it all right to add some humor?)
3. Divide the class into groups of three or four yourself. This will be their news team. If you decide on groups of four, have four different news segment names on pieces of paper for the students to draw out. This will be the part they will do their segment on.
4. Assign the students to collect worthy information for the next three days. Remind them to write important items down and write a few sentences about each event to help to remember what the story was about.
5. On Thursday, each of the groups will practice their broadcast in front of the class. No camera that day.
6. Friday, you will record the students broadcast. If you can record each news teams broadcast on a separate tape.
This will allow them to take the tape home and show it to their parents more quickly than the whole class sharing the tape.
7. Encourage students to add late breaking news which could have occurred on Thursday or Friday morning into their news report.
Assessment: You can assess the students on:
1. how well they covered the events they reported on,
2. how they conducted themselves in front of the camera, and most important,
3. how much creativity they put into the broadcast to entertain the viewers.