Create a Newspaper Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan #: AELP-WCP0041
Submitted by: Amanda Richardson
Endorsed by: P. Sean Smith, Ph. D., Berea College, Berea, KY Date: January 31st, 1998

Grade Level(s): 3, 4, 5

Subject(s):

Language Arts/Writing (composition)
Language Arts/Journalism

Objectives: Students use what they already know to acquire new knowledge, develop new skills, or interpret new experiences.

Overview/Rationale:

Children possess the common nature of needing to be independent. They like to produce things on their own, and when the product is finished, they feel confident from their personal achievement. By creating their own newspaper and having it published on the web, children will build pride and confidence in themselves.

In this lesson, children will create a newspaper on the web. They can choose their own links to news sources, comics, local events, etc. They will be able to modify the paper whenever they like. The students may add their own links and can use their paper as a personalized homepage.

Learner Outcomes

After this lesson, students will:

create their own newspaper on the web
access their paper so they may read or modify it
understand how the resources from newspapers will help them find useful information (such as the local weather and news, school information, newspaper articles, etc.)
understand how important organization is to a project like creating a newspaper

Procedure

(Notes: (1) All students participating in this lesson must have their own e-mail account and address. (2) This lesson could be the start of an ongoing lesson each week where the children can modify their own newspapers.)

Before accessing the beginning site on the internet, students should make a list of their favorite sites to include as source links in their newspaper. They may want to make links to cartoon sites, TV shows, etc.

All students should enter Netscape and click on Open Location. They should type in the URL for Create Your Own Newspaper : http://www.crayon.net/

If the students would like to see a newspaper example before creating theirs, click on example Crayon newspaper.

After returning to the Crayon page, have all students click on create your free newspaper.

Ask all students to read the directions. Have each student fill in his/her e-mail address and password in the lines provided, then click the ok button. Make sure they use a different password than their e-mail account password.

On the Your Paper’s Settings page, students name and choose the layout of their newspaper. After they have made choices and filled everything in, have them click the advanced settings button. In this window, they can choose how many headlines of each section will be displayed and what color they would like their highlights to be.

After returning to the paper settings page, all students should click on the next> > button to choose which links they would like to include in each section of their paper.

After choosing all their links (and possibly adding links of their own), the student should click on the Save Changes and Read My Newspaper button. This will show a page titled Section Order. On this page, students choose in what order the sections of their newspaper will be arranged.

From the You’re All Set! page, have students write down their newspaper URL.

All students can click on the URL to display their newly created newspapers on screen.

** Extra: Students could add their school or personal homepage links to their newspaper.

Extensions:

Students could show their newspapers to the class, one at a time, and share their favorite link with the class.

Assessment:

The students can be observed while they are creating their newspapers. After completion, have all students submit their newspaper URLs and passwords to you, so you can determine if their work was satisfactory (they carefully chose links and added links of their own) or unsatisfactory (a lot of nonsense links and no links of their own). You can determine if the students have followed your directions if you are able to access their papers and see what they have done.

Resources:

Students’ personal e-mail account addresses

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