Call me old fashioned, but I still think newspapers are the best way to get news. There is something about sitting down at the breakfast table, in your housecoat, drinking your coffee and flipping through the paper. Maybe it is just me, but I feel like I can channel my inner old man and grumble under my breath at something that someone did that I deem to be outside of societal norms. You just can’t grumble in the same way when you read the news on your computer!

I wanted my students to channel their inner grumpy old man, and create their own front page of a newspaper… mind you…there are other important reasons I wanted to do this assignment as well, such as the following:

• Understanding the purpose and function of newspapers by writing entertainment, information and persuasive news articles

• Being able to use language associated with newspapers (headline, byline, lead paragraph, body paragraph etc)

• Most importantly though – introducing students to the newspaper and helping appreciate what a great resource the newspaper is

 

I will break each sub-unit down – because if I put it all in here – it will be information overload I fear. Let’s start at the beginning shall we?

Subunit 1: Fake News – Reading Intelligently

Fake news is EVERYWHERE… and although I am kind of sick of the term “fake news” because of President Drumpf it is SO incredibly important that students know how to analyze news stories to deem whether or not they or real, an exaggerated version of the truth or completely bogus (urban dictionary: wiggity-wiggity-whack; bullshit; unfortunate; silly; unbelievable; not genuine; the opposite of excellent).

Step 1: James Nottingham has a fantastic resource to get students talking about fake news on his website Challenging Learning –  https://www.challenginglearning.com/resources/. You have to sign up for an account (it’s free – yay!) and then in resources, you search for Fake News. 

In this lesson plan, it asks students about where they get the majority of their news from, among other really great questions. (He’s all about them in depth questioning). News flash. After talking with these kids, you find out that the majority of them don’t get their news from a newspaper. Shock and horror! My students they read their news on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or even Youtube. (This is actually perfect. Gives even more reasons why we should teach them how to read news intelligently.)

Step 2: After this, I get students to BRAINSTORM the ways they know whether something is fake or real. You can start them small by showing them a picture like this… (which is just… ugh). Is this real? Fake? How do they know? This is just a diagnosis, so it is okay if they say things like, “It looks fake.” (which happens)

Step 3: Take them through this PPT. I didn’t use all of it, because I ran out of time.. but I did teach them tips on how to spot if something is fake or not. There is a video, (for those who like to listen) as well as a list (for those who like reading). Get them to take notes while they listen and read.

Step 4: Students then watch this Youtube video from Buzzfeed (kind of obssessed with Buzzfeed) and as a class you can take a vote on whether or not they think the stories are real or fake. They can use their techniques that they had learned that class.

Stick with me – almost done. 

Finally – to hammer everything home – have the students do a little formative activity. They find either a fake news story or real news story and present it to the class. The class must try and find out if the news story was real or fake. How did you find out? This was probably the most fun out of the whole exercise – they really liked trying to trick their classmates.

They can use the following websites – or the techniques we discussed earlier

Fact Check

Snopes

Hoax-Slayer

Politifact

Happy fake news hunting!