News Reporting
Created By:
Matt Vongehr
Title/Role:
Teacher Librarian
Organization/School Name:
Tioga Middle School
Location:
California
Grade Level:
8 Type of Lesson:
Lesson in a unit Type of Schedule:
Flexible Collaboration Continuum:
Intensive Content Area:
Educational technology, Social studies Content Topic:
Research and Writing Across the Curriculum Scenario:
Tioga Middle School's staff has identified the critical need for students to develop better reasoning skills and higher level thinking. To help students develop these skills, lessons are designed to integrate research and writing across the curriculum. The teacher librarian collaborates with teachers in each subject area to create units of study, which provide students with focused opportunities to research, pre-write, draft, revise, proofread, and publish.
During each unit, the teacher librarian will work with teachers and students in the Library Media Center Computer Lab. When projects are completed, each team presents its video to the class, and their peers, teacher, and teacher librarian assess each project with a rubric. Then, the work is discussed in reference to the rubric scores. Overview:
Teaching students to brainstorm, create, and present news stories is a powerful and productive way to give them 21st Century Skills, as recognized by AASL and ISTE. Learning the techniques of researching, discussing, collaborating, writing, video recording, and reporting are important skills, which help students learn to study subjects in greater depth, which results in greater understanding.
Student pairs will research a topic, which they believe will be of interest to their peers. Final Product:
Each team will complete an historical multimedia news story. Library Lesson:
Students will create a video using images, sound, and words to tell an historical news story to their peers. Student teams will present their stories in class and the teacher librarian will publish the stories on the Library Media Center website. Estimated Lesson Time:
120 minutes Have you taught this lesson before:
No Strategies for differentiation:
The teachers will assure all students that they will be given appropriate time and help to complete the assignment. Students will be paired to support their learning. As necessary, the teacher librarian will show students how to use the Gale audio reading features: download MP3 or ReadSpeak.