journalism assignments

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Exercises, Assignments, and More

The activities below explore key principles and practices of community-centered journalism. they’re all designed to foster a spirit of playful experimentation in students— from this will emerge new and better ways of empowering communities through journalism..

These exercises and assignments can be used with any level of journalism student. Educators should feel free to tweak the specifics of the assignment while making use of the playful structure upon which they are built.

Resource Type

These exercises can be used with any level of journalism student. Educators should feel free to tweak the specifics of the assignment while making use of the playful structure upon which they are built.

Fairy Tale Ledes

Theme: journalism basics, type: exercises, interviewing 102: the transcript, layouts and wireframes, theme: design, jacob’s ladder ledes, mind-mapping and storyboarding, theme: general, mapping and observing, theme: general, design, empower the audience, theme: community news, meet the audience, the elevator pitch, theme: general, journalism basics, story development: look, listen, map, interviewing 101: the vox pop, style guide, style hunt, interviewing 101: the sit-down, what is news, questions to ask + habits to build, theme: systems thinking, uncover assumptions + beliefs driving the system, uncover patterns in your story, map your story as a system, identify key stakeholders + information needs, visualize the systems in your reporting, create a guiding vision for your reporting, journalism ethics, newspapers and community, developing community agreements, theme: general, community news, what’s at stake and how to address it, develop a north star, community engagement, theme: community news, systems thinking, surfacing underlying patterns in a system, longreads analysis, stakeholder mapping, capture, cluster, connect, activity cards, type: cards.

Below is a sampling of syllabi used in actual undergraduate Journalism + Design courses at The New School since the program began in Fall 2014. Some of these courses have been taught many times by multiple instructors, who continue to iterate as they teach them again. Others were one-time experiments. Whatever the case, each syllabus reflects events that were current at the time as well as the perspective and passions of the instructor. The syllabi also reflect access to New York’s rich professional communities of journalists and designers.

Designing Digital Communities

Theme: experimental, community news, type: syllabi, news, narrative & design i, visualizing data, theme: design, data, podcasting & audio narratives, theme: multimedia, expanding your audience: designing for accessibility, news, narrative & design ii, engagement journalism, reporting for visuals, interaction design for news apps, designing news games, theme: systems thinking, design, journalism design toolkit, theme: code, general, design for journalists, data journalism bootcamp, theme: data, news, narrative & design iii, facts/alternative facts, theme: general, experimental, race & ethnicity in journalism, feature writing for the 21st century, theme: experimental, product design strategy for news organizations, web fundamentals, theme: code, evaluation rubrics.

These evaluation tools can help assess student understanding of design processes and how they are applied to journalism practice. Use them at the end of a project as a tool for assessment or reflection.

Journalism + Design Process Rubric

Type: evaluation rubrics, questions or feedback.

We’d love to hear about your experiences using these resources. Let us know how we can improve! Email  [email protected]  or complete our Feedback Form

10 News Writing Exercises for Journalism Students

Test your ability to produce well written news stories on deadline

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• M.S., Journalism, Columbia University
• B.A., Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Looking for a way to hone your news writing skills ? Try these news writing exercises. Each provides a set of facts or a scenario, and it's up to you to produce a story from it. You'll have to fill in the blanks with imaginary but logical information that you compile. To get the maximum benefit, force yourself to do these on a tight deadline:

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It's 10:30 p.m. You're on the night shift at the Centerville Gazette and hear some chatter on the police scanner about a car crash out on Highway 32, a road that runs through a rural area of town. It sounds like a big crash, so you head to the scene.

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You're on the night shift again at the Centerville Gazette. You phone the cops to see if anything's going on. Lt. Jane Ortlieb of the Centerville Police Department tells you there was a shooting tonight at the Fandango Bar & Grill on Wilson Street in the Grungeville section of the city.

Shooting Follow-Up No. 1

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You're back at the Centerville Gazette on the day after the shooting outside the Fandango Bar & Grill on Wilson Street in the Grungeville section of town. You phone the cops to see if they have anything new on the case. Lt. Jane Ortlieb tells you that early this morning they arrested an ex-con named Frederick Johnson, 32, in connection with the shooting.

Shooting Follow-Up No. 2

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It's the day after police arrested Frederick Johnson in connection with the shooting death of Peter Wickham outside the Fandango Bar & Grill. You call Lt. Jane Ortlieb of the Centerville Police Department. She tells you that cops are having a perp walk today to take Johnson to the Centerville District Courthouse for his arraignment. She says to be outside the courthouse at 10 a.m. sharp.

It's Tuesday morning at the Centerville Gazette. Making your usual phone checks, you get word from the fire department about a house fire early this morning. Deputy Fire Marshal Larry Johnson tells you the blaze was in a row house in the Cedar Glen section of the city.

School Board Meeting

You’re covering a 7 p.m. meeting of the Centerville School Board. The meeting is being held in the auditorium of Centerville High School. The board begins with a discussion of ongoing cleanup at McKinley Elementary School, which experienced water damage during heavy rains and flooding  two weeks ago in the city’s Parksburg section, near the Root River.

Plane Crash

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It’s 9:30 p.m. You're on the night shift at the Centerville Gazette. You hear some chatter on the police scanner and call the cops. Lt. Jack Feldman says he’s not sure what’s happening but he thinks a plane crashed near Centerville Airport, a small facility used mostly by private pilots flying single-engine craft. Your editor tells you to get over there as fast as you can.

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You're on the day shift at the Centerville Gazette. The city editor gives you some information on a teacher who has died and tells you to bang out an obit. Here's the information: Evelyn Jackson, a retired teacher, died yesterday at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home, where she had lived for the past five years. She was 79 and died of natural causes. Jackson had worked for 43 years as an English teacher at Centerville High School before retiring in her late 60s. She taught classes in composition, ​ American literature , and poetry.

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The Centerville Chamber of Commerce is holding its monthly luncheon at the Hotel Luxe. An audience of about 100, mostly local ​businessmen and women, is in attendance. The guest speaker today is Alex Weddell, CEO of Weddell Widgets, a local, family-owned manufacturing firm and one of the city’s largest employers.

Soccer Game

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You're a sportswriter for the Centerville Gazette. You’re covering a soccer game between the Centerville Community College Eagles and the Ipswich Community College Spartans. The game is for the state conference title.

• 7 Copy-Editing Exercises for Journalism Students
• 15 News Writing Rules for Beginning Journalism Students
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• Here's How to Cover a Journalism Beat Effectively
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15 Journalism Activities For Elementary Students: Writing, Reporting, Pitching, And More

November 8, 2023 //  by  Lauren Du Plessis

Our fun list of 15 investigative activities is all you need to get started presenting the concept of journalism to school students. Not only will the journalistic skills employed by these activities aid students who have a dream of pursuing this career path, but they will also benefit all learners from various walks of life. By including journalism activities in your lesson plans, you’ll teach your pupils how to analyze information, ask the right questions and develop a good understanding of the world around them. 

1. Analyze The News

One of the key roles of a journalist is to analyze and report on current affairs. This activity requires learners to locate assorted news sources, list them in order of reliability- explaining why in the process, and lastly, select a handful of news items and stipulate what exactly classifies them as news. 

Learn More: Worksheet Place

2. Journalism Crossword

This crossword is a wonderful activity for testing learners’ understanding of assorted journalism vocabulary in the field. It’s the perfect tie-in to your next journalism teaching unit and we guarantee that your students will want to complete a whole heap more!  

Learn More: Word Mint

3. Brainstorm

Brainstorming the concepts of reporting and the press is a stellar introduction to journalism. Complete this activity as a class by analyzing news in different locations. To help get you started we’d recommend taking a look at the following; news at school, local news, and even global stories! 

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

4. Take A Quiz

Investigative journalism relies on a few important features in order to produce good and accurate content. This fun quiz will help you as a teacher test students’ knowledge of these features and ensure that they come to grips with the importance of these elements. 

Learn More: Study

5. Conduct An Interview

One of the more predominant aspects of journalism is interviewing. By pairing up and conducting a simple interview, pupils come to understand the significance of asking the right questions when it comes to gathering information and conducting research in the field. 

6. Fairy Tale Newspaper Reporting

Who would’ve thought that fairy tales could be linked to a journalism unit? Well, they certainly can and they create the perfect way to explore the correct format of a newspaper article. Using this resource, your students will also come to understand the importance of ordering their information correctly as well as reporting relevant facts and remaining unbiased. 

7. Story Development

Story development is crucial for investigative journalists. This activity requires students to walk around a particular location- gathering information by recording their surroundings either in written, audio, or video format. They’ll then regroup and share their findings for discussion and analysis before devising a compelling story. 

Learn More: Google Docs

8. The Elevator Pitch

Similar to someone presenting an elevator pitch, credible journalists should be able to piece together a compelling body of information. This activity requires students to come up with a short yet persuasive speech in order to pique the interest of an assigned organization or news team. 

Learn More: Wyoming Department of Education

9. Write A News Story

Infamous journalists are renowned for reporting harsh realities and may even be rather grueling in their interviews. This activity calls for students to observe an event, question someone who was directly involved, and then write out a news story- ensuring that they include at least one direct quote from the interviewee and bringing all separate pieces of a story together. 

Learn More: Resilient Educator

10. Play A Current Events Game

Staying on top of current events is one of the leading career roles that a journalist undertakes. As a class, decide on 5 categories that one might find in a newspaper before asking your students to search through a newspaper to find one article relevant to each category. 

Learn More: Education World

11. The Inverted Pyramid

The inverted pyramid activity is the perfect model to demonstrate to your class how to structure a news article. The activity also gives them an opportunity to practice one of the key skills a good journalist must possess- the ability to listen and record accurate information. 

Learn More: American English

12. Celebrity Interview

Journalism students often have the opportunity to work with people from all walks of life. Of course, this dictates that the type of questions one will ask will differ from one interview to the next. This activity encourages students to put together questions that are suited to interviewing a celebrity. 

13. Record A Radio Program

Community journalism takes shape in a number of ways. One of the ways that local news is reported is via the radio. In order to record a radio program students will need to develop the skill of consolidating large bodies of information and practice reporting only the key facts of assorted stories. 

Learn More: Paths To Literacy

14. Analyze Features Of Journalistic Writing

To develop a decent journalist profile, learners should learn the key features of journalistic intake, writing, and reporting. As a class, discuss the features together- prompting your learners to think deeper about the features by proposing simple questions about them. 

Learn More: Twinkl

15. Read The Newspaper Together

This is an awesome follow on activity from the one above as it allows you to check your student’s understanding of the features of journalistic writing. Pull an extract from the newspaper to analyze together and ask your students to identify various features by either highlighting or circling them before labeling them. 

Learn More: Secondary English Coffeeshop Blogspot

Worksheetplace.com For Great Educators

Journalism Teaching Activities

An introduction to journalism and news teaching activities. This is a free teaching unit that requires critical thinking and exposes students to news, news sources and how to write the news. Writing a good news lead and using the inverted pyramid structure to learn how to write news for both print and televised. A grades 7-10 teaching unit aligned to the ELA standards. These free journalism and media teaching activities are available in both google apps and print format.

All worksheets are created by experienced and qualified teachers. Send your suggestions or comments .

Teaching Journalism: 5 Journalism Lessons and Activities

You and your students will absolutely love these journalism lessons! The beginning of a new school year can be hectic for journalism teachers who are tasked with simultaneously teaching new journalism students who don’t have any journalism experience while also planning and publishing content for the school newspaper.

If your class is anything like mine, it is a mix of returning and new students. This year, I only have three returning students, so it is almost like I am starting entirely from scratch.

Here are 5 journalism lessons to teach at the beginning of the year

1. staff interview activity.

One of the very first assignments I have my students do is partner up with a fellow staff member that they don’t know and interview them. This activity works on two things: first, it helps the class get to know one another. Secondly, it helps students proactive their interviewing skills in a low-stakes environment.

For this activity, I have students come up with 10 interview questions, interview one another and do a quick write-up so that students can have practice recording their interviews.

Before this activity, I go over interviewing skills with my students. We discuss the dos and don’ts of interviewing, we brainstorm good interviewing questions, and we talk about the need to go beyond simple answer questions.

2. Staff Bio

Another great activity for the beginning of the year is to have students write their staff bio. This provides students with an opportunity to write in the third person while also providing the most important information.

For my staff bios, I give students 80-100 words. I have them write their bios in the third person and in the present tense.

3. Collaborative News Story

For our first news story of the school year, I like to write one collaboratively as a staff. We go over the basics of journalism writing and then write together in one Google Doc. I do this as a learning activity so that new staff can see how we write journalistically. First, I have students work together in small groups to write the lead. Then, as a class, we craft one together. From there, we move on to building the story.

As we write the story, as a staff, we can then see what kind of information we need. I assign small groups of students to interview people and find quotes. Those groups then add that information to the story.

Once it is written, we edit and review the story together before it is published. This activity is particularly helpful because students get to see how we format quotes in our stories, how we refer to students and teachers in our stories, and how we go about the news-gathering process.

Once our collaborative story is done, new staff then have the green light to begin writing their own stories.

4. The News Determinants

You can also read more in-depth about the news determinants with this blog post about teaching the five news determinants .

5. AP Style Writing

As students are writing their first stories, I like to teach students about AP Style . I use this instructional presentation, and students assemble their AP Style mini flip books that they use as a reference all year long.

The news determinants and AP Style lessons are included in my journalism curriculum with many other resources that will make teaching and advising the middle school or high school newspaper much easier.

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Expert Commentary

Basic newswriting: Learn how to originate, research and write breaking-news stories

Syllabus for semester-long course on the fundamentals of covering and writing the news, including how identify a story, gather information efficiently and place it in a meaningful context.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource January 22, 2010

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/syllabus-covering-the-news/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This course introduces tomorrow’s journalists to the fundamentals of covering and writing news. Mastering these skills is no simple task. In an Internet age of instantaneous access, demand for high-quality accounts of fast-breaking news has never been greater. Nor has the temptation to cut corners and deliver something less.

To resist this temptation, reporters must acquire skills to identify a story and its essential elements, gather information efficiently, place it in a meaningful context, and write concise and compelling accounts, sometimes at breathtaking speed. The readings, discussions, exercises and assignments of this course are designed to help students acquire such skills and understand how to exercise them wisely.

Photo: Memorial to four slain Lakewood, Wash., police officers. The Seattle Times earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the crime.

Course objective

To give students the background and skills needed to originate, research, focus and craft clear, compelling and contextual accounts of breaking news in a deadline environment.

Learning objectives

• Build an understanding of the role news plays in American democracy.
• Discuss basic journalistic principles such as accuracy, integrity and fairness.
• Evaluate how practices such as rooting and stereotyping can undermine them.
• Analyze what kinds of information make news and why.
• Evaluate the elements of news by deconstructing award-winning stories.
• Evaluate the sources and resources from which news content is drawn.
• Analyze how information is attributed, quoted and paraphrased in news.
• Gain competence in focusing a story’s dominant theme in a single sentence.
• Introduce the structure, style and language of basic news writing.
• Gain competence in building basic news stories, from lead through their close.
• Gain confidence and competence in writing under deadline pressure.
• Practice how to identify, background and contact appropriate sources.
• Discuss and apply the skills needed to interview effectively.
• Analyze data and how it is used and abused in news coverage.
• Review basic math skills needed to evaluate and use statistics in news.
• Report and write basic stories about news events on deadline.

Suggested reading

• A standard textbook of the instructor’s choosing.
• America ‘s Best Newspaper Writing , Roy Peter Clark and Christopher Scanlan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006
• The Elements of Journalism , Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Three Rivers Press, 2001.
• Talk Straight, Listen Carefully: The Art of Interviewing , M.L. Stein and Susan E. Paterno, Iowa State University Press, 2001
• Math Tools for Journalists , Kathleen Woodruff Wickham, Marion Street Press, Inc., 2002
• On Writing Well: 30th Anniversary Edition , William Zinsser, Collins, 2006
• Associated Press Stylebook 2009 , Associated Press, Basic Books, 2009

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)

We encourage faculty to assign students to read on their own Kovach and Rosentiel’s The Elements of Journalism in its entirety during the early phase of the course. Only a few chapters of their book are explicitly assigned for the class sessions listed below.

The assumption for this syllabus is that the class meets twice weekly.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Weeks 13/14

Week 1: Why journalism matters

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: The role of journalism in society

The word journalism elicits considerable confusion in contemporary American society. Citizens often confuse the role of reporting with that of advocacy. They mistake those who promote opinions or push their personal agendas on cable news or in the blogosphere for those who report. But reporters play a different role: that of gatherer of evidence, unbiased and unvarnished, placed in a context of past events that gives current events weight beyond the ways opinion leaders or propagandists might misinterpret or exploit them.

This session’s discussion will focus on the traditional role of journalism eloquently summarized by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism . The class will then examine whether they believe that the journalist’s role has changed or needs to change in today’s news environment. What is the reporter’s role in contemporary society? Is objectivity, sometimes called fairness, an antiquated concept or an essential one, as the authors argue, for maintaining a democratic society? How has the term been subverted? What are the reporter’s fundamental responsibilities? This discussion will touch on such fundamental issues as journalists’ obligation to the truth, their loyalty to the citizens who are their audience and the demands of their discipline to verify information, act independently, provide a forum for public discourse and seek not only competing viewpoints but carefully vetted facts that help establish which viewpoints are grounded in evidence.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 1, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignments:

• Students should compare the news reporting on a breaking political story in The Wall Street Journal , considered editorially conservative, and The New York Times , considered editorially liberal. They should write a two-page memo that considers the following questions: Do the stories emphasize the same information? Does either story appear to slant the news toward a particular perspective? How? Do the stories support the notion of fact-based journalism and unbiased reporting or do they appear to infuse opinion into news? Students should provide specific examples that support their conclusions.
• Students should look for an example of reporting in any medium in which reporters appear have compromised the notion of fairness to intentionally or inadvertently espouse a point of view. What impact did the incorporation of such material have on the story? Did its inclusion have any effect on the reader’s perception of the story?

Class 2: Objectivity, fairness and contemporary confusion about both

In his book Discovering the News , Michael Schudson traced the roots of objectivity to the era following World War I and a desire by journalists to guard against the rapid growth of public relations practitioners intent on spinning the news. Objectivity was, and remains, an ideal, a method for guarding against spin and personal bias by examining all sides of a story and testing claims through a process of evidentiary verification. Practiced well, it attempts to find where something approaching truth lies in a sea of conflicting views. Today, objectivity often is mistaken for tit-for-tat journalism, in which the reporters only responsibility is to give equal weight to the conflicting views of different parties without regard for which, if any, are saying something approximating truth. This definition cedes the journalist’s responsibility to seek and verify evidence that informs the citizenry.

Focusing on the “Journalism of Verification” chapter in The Elements of Journalism , this class will review the evolution and transformation of concepts of objectivity and fairness and, using the homework assignment, consider how objectivity is being practiced and sometimes skewed in the contemporary new media.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 4, and relevant pages of the course text.

Assignment: Students should evaluate stories on the front page and metro front of their daily newspaper. In a two-page memo, they should describe what elements of news judgment made the stories worthy of significant coverage and play. Finally, they should analyze whether, based on what else is in the paper, they believe the editors reached the right decision.

Week 2: Where news comes from

Class 1: News judgment

When editors sit down together to choose the top stories, they use experience and intuition. The beginner journalist, however, can acquire a sense of news judgment by evaluating news decisions through the filter of a variety of factors that influence news play. These factors range from traditional measures such as when the story took place and how close it was to the local readership area to more contemporary ones, such as the story’s educational value.

Using the assignment and the reading, students should evaluate what kinds of information make for interesting news stories and why.

In this session, instructors might consider discussing the layers of news from the simplest breaking news event to the purely enterprise investigative story.

Assignment: Students should read and deconstruct coverage of a major news event. One excellent source for quality examples is the site of the Pulitzer Prizes , which has a category for breaking news reporting. All students should read the same article (assigned by the instructor), and write a two- or three-page memo that describes how the story is organized, what information it contains and what sources of information it uses, both human and digital. Among the questions they should ask are:

• Does the first (or lead) paragraph summarize the dominant point?
• What specific information does the lead include?
• What does it leave out?
• How do the second and third paragraphs relate to the first paragraph and the information it contains? Do they give unrelated information, information that provides further details about what’s established in the lead paragraph or both?
• Does the story at any time place the news into a broader context of similar events or past events? If so, when and how?
• What information in the story is attributed , specifically tied to an individual or to documentary information from which it was taken? What information is not attributed? Where does the information appear in the sentence? Give examples of some of the ways the sources of information are identified? Give examples of the verbs of attribution that are chosen.
• Where and how often in the story are people quoted, their exact words placed in quotation marks? What kind of information tends to be quoted — basic facts or more colorful commentary? What information that’s attributed is paraphrased , summing up what someone said but not in their exact words.
• How is the story organized — by theme, by geography, by chronology (time) or by some other means?
• What human sources are used in the story? Are some authorities? Are some experts? Are some ordinary people affected by the event? Who are some of the people in each category? What do they contribute to the story? Does the reporter (or reporters) rely on a single source or a wide range? Why do you think that’s the case?
• What specific facts and details make the story more vivid to you? How do you think the reporter was able to gather those details?
• What documents (paper or digital) are detailed in the story? Do they lend authority to the story? Why or why not?
• Is any specific data (numbers, statistics) used in the story? What does it lend to the story? Would you be satisfied substituting words such as “many” or “few” for the specific numbers and statistics used? Why or why not?

Class 2: Deconstructing the story

By carefully deconstructing major news stories, students will begin to internalize some of the major principles of this course, from crafting and supporting the lead of a story to spreading a wide and authoritative net for information. This class will focus on the lessons of a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Reading: Clark/Scanlan, Pages 287-294

Assignment: Writers typically draft a focus statement after conceiving an idea and conducting preliminary research or reporting. This focus statement helps to set the direction of reporting and writing. Sometimes reporting dictates a change of direction. But the statement itself keeps the reporter from getting off course. Focus statements typically are 50 words or less and summarize the story’s central point. They work best when driven by a strong, active verb and written after preliminary reporting.

• Students should write a focus statement that encapsulates the news of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporting the class critiqued.

Week 3: Finding the focus, building the lead

Class 1: News writing as a process

Student reporters often conceive of writing as something that begins only after all their reporting is finished. Such an approach often leaves gaps in information and leads the reporter to search broadly instead of with targeted depth. The best reporters begin thinking about story the minute they get an assignment. The approach they envision for telling the story informs their choice of whom they seek interviews with and what information they gather. This class will introduce students to writing as a process that begins with story concept and continues through initial research, focus, reporting, organizing and outlining, drafting and revising.

During this session, the class will review the focus statements written for homework in small breakout groups and then as a class. Professors are encouraged to draft and hand out a mock or real press release or hold a mock press conference from which students can draft a focus statement.

Reading: Zinsser, pages 1-45, Clark/Scanlan, pages 294-302, and relevant pages of the course text

Class 2: The language of news

Newswriting has its own sentence structure and syntax. Most sentences branch rightward, following a pattern of subject/active verb/object. Reporters choose simple, familiar words. They write spare, concise sentences. They try to make a single point in each. But journalistic writing is specific and concrete. While reporters generally avoid formal or fancy word choices and complex sentence structures, they do not write in generalities. They convey information. Each sentence builds on what came before. This class will center on the language of news, evaluating the language in selections from America’s Best Newspaper Writing , local newspapers or the Pulitzers.

Reading: Relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should choose a traditional news lead they like and one they do not like from a local or national newspaper. In a one- or two-page memo, they should print the leads, summarize the stories and evaluate why they believe the leads were effective or not.

Week 4: Crafting the first sentence

Class 1: The lead

No sentence counts more than a story’s first sentence. In most direct news stories, it stands alone as the story’s lead. It must summarize the news, establish the storyline, convey specific information and do all this simply and succinctly. Readers confused or bored by the lead read no further. It takes practice to craft clear, concise and conversational leads. This week will be devoted to that practice.

Students should discuss the assigned leads in groups of three or four, with each group choosing one lead to read to the entire class. The class should then discuss the elements of effective leads (active voice; active verb; single, dominant theme; simple sentences) and write leads in practice exercises.

Assignment: Have students revise the leads they wrote in class and craft a second lead from fact patterns.

Class 2: The lead continued

Some leads snap or entice instead of summarize. When the news is neither urgent nor earnest, these can work well. Though this class will introduce students to other kinds of leads, instructors should continue to emphasize traditional leads, typically found atop breaking news stories.

Class time should largely be devoted to writing traditional news leads under a 15-minute deadline pressure. Students should then be encouraged to read their own leads aloud and critique classmates’ leads. At least one such exercise might focus on students writing a traditional lead and a less traditional lead from the same information.

Assignment: Students should find a political or international story that includes various types (direct and indirect) and levels (on-the-record, not for attribution and deep background) of attribution. They should write a one- or two-page memo describing and evaluating the attribution. Did the reporter make clear the affiliation of those who expressed opinions? Is information attributed to specific people by name? Are anonymous figures given the opportunity to criticize others by name? Is that fair?

Week 5: Establishing the credibility of news

Class 1: Attribution

All news is based on information, painstakingly gathered, verified and checked again. Even so, “truth” is an elusive concept. What reporters cobble together instead are facts and assertions drawn from interviews and documentary evidence.

To lend authority to this information and tell readers from where it comes, reporters attribute all information that is not established fact. It is neither necessary, for example, to attribute that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected president in 1932 nor that he was elected four times. On the other hand, it would be necessary to attribute, at least indirectly, the claim that he was one of America’s best presidents. Why? Because that assertion is a matter of opinion.

In this session, students should learn about different levels of attribution, where attribution is best placed in a sentence, and why it can be crucial for the protection of the accused, the credibility of reporters and the authoritativeness of the story.

Assignment: Working from a fact pattern, students should write a lead that demands attribution.

Class 2: Quoting and paraphrasing

“Great quote,” ranks closely behind “great lead” in the pecking order of journalistic praise. Reporters listen for great quotes as intensely as piano tuners listen for the perfect pitch of middle C. But what makes a great quote? And when should reporters paraphrase instead?

This class should cover a range of issues surrounding the quoted word from what it is used to convey (color and emotion, not basic information) to how frequently quotes should be used and how long they should run on. Other issues include the use and abuse of partial quotes, when a quote is not a quote, and how to deal with rambling and ungrammatical subjects.

As an exercise, students might either interview the instructor or a classmate about an exciting personal experience. After their interviews, they should review their notes choose what they consider the three best quotes to include a story on the subject. They should then discuss why they chose them.

Assignment: After completing the reading, students should analyze a summary news story no more than 15 paragraphs long. In a two- or three-page memo, they should reprint the story and then evaluate whether the lead summarizes the news, whether the subsequent paragraphs elaborate on or “support” the lead, whether the story has a lead quote, whether it attributes effectively, whether it provides any context for the news and whether and how it incorporates secondary themes.

Week 6: The building blocks of basic stories

Class 1: Supporting the lead

Unlike stories told around a campfire or dinner table, news stories front load information. Such a structure delivers the most important information first and the least important last. If a news lead summarizes, the subsequent few paragraphs support or elaborate by providing details the lead may have merely suggested. So, for example, a story might lead with news that a 27-year-old unemployed chef has been arrested on charges of robbing the desk clerk of an upscale hotel near closing time. The second paragraph would “support” this lead with detail. It would name the arrested chef, identify the hotel and its address, elaborate on the charges and, perhaps, say exactly when the robbery took place and how. (It would not immediately name the desk clerk; too many specifics at once clutter the story.)

Wire service stories use a standard structure in building their stories. First comes the lead sentence. Then comes a sentence or two of lead support. Then comes a lead quote — spoken words that reinforce the story’s direction, emphasize the main theme and add color. During this class students should practice writing the lead through the lead quote on deadline. They should then read assignments aloud for critique by classmates and the professor.

Assignment: Using a fact pattern assigned by the instructor or taken from a text, students should write a story from the lead through the lead quote. They should determine whether the story needs context to support the lead and, if so, include it.

Class 2: When context matters

Sometimes a story’s importance rests on what came before. If one fancy restaurant closes its doors in the face of the faltering economy, it may warrant a few paragraphs mention. If it’s the fourth restaurant to close on the same block in the last two weeks, that’s likely front-page news. If two other restaurants closed last year, that might be worth noting in the story’s last sentence. It is far less important. Patterns provide context and, when significant, generally are mentioned either as part of the lead or in the support paragraph that immediately follows. This class will look at the difference between context — information needed near the top of a story to establish its significance as part of a broader pattern, and background — information that gives historical perspective but doesn’t define the news at hand.

Assignment: The course to this point has focused on writing the news. But reporters, of course, usually can’t write until they’ve reported. This typically starts with background research to establish what has come before, what hasn’t been covered well and who speaks with authority on an issue. Using databases such as Lexis/Nexis, students should background or read specific articles about an issue in science or policy that either is highlighted in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website or is currently being researched on your campus. They should engage in this assignment knowing that a new development on the topic will be brought to light when they arrive at the next class.

Week 7: The reporter at work

Class 1: Research

Discuss the homework assignment. Where do reporters look to background an issue? How do they find documents, sources and resources that enable them to gather good information or identify key people who can help provide it? After the discussion, students should be given a study from the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website related to the subject they’ve been asked to explore.

The instructor should use this study to evaluate the nature structure of government/scientific reports. After giving students 15 minutes to scan the report, ask students to identify its most newsworthy point. Discuss what context might be needed to write a story about the study or report. Discuss what concepts or language students are having difficulty understanding.

Reading: Clark, Scanlan, pages 305-313, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should (a) write a lead for a story based exclusively on the report (b) do additional background work related to the study in preparation for writing a full story on deadline. (c) translate at least one term used in the study that is not familiar to a lay audience.

Class 2: Writing the basic story on deadline

This class should begin with a discussion of the challenges of translating jargon and the importance of such translation in news reporting. Reporters translate by substituting a simple definition or, generally with the help of experts, comparing the unfamiliar to the familiar through use of analogy.

The remainder of the class should be devoted to writing a 15- to 20-line news report, based on the study, background research and, if one is available, a press release.

Reading: Pages 1-47 of Stein/Paterno, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Prepare a list of questions that you would ask either the lead author of the study you wrote about on deadline or an expert who might offer an outside perspective.

Week 8: Effective interviewing

Class 1: Preparing and getting the interview

Successful interviews build from strong preparation. Reporters need to identify the right interview subjects, know what they’ve said before, interview them in a setting that makes them comfortable and ask questions that elicit interesting answers. Each step requires thought.

The professor should begin this class by critiquing some of the questions students drew up for homework. Are they open-ended or close-ended? Do they push beyond the obvious? Do they seek specific examples that explain the importance of the research or its applications? Do they probe the study’s potential weaknesses? Do they explore what directions the researcher might take next?

Discuss the readings and what steps reporters can take to background for an interview, track down a subject and prepare and rehearse questions in advance.

Reading: Stein/Paterno, pages 47-146, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should prepare to interview their professor about his or her approach to and philosophy of teaching. Before crafting their questions, the students should background the instructor’s syllabi, public course evaluations and any pertinent writings.

Class 2: The interview and its aftermath

The interview, says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jacqui Banaszynski, is a dance which the reporter leads but does so to music the interview subject chooses. Though reporters prepare and rehearse their interviews, they should never read the questions they’ve considered in advance and always be prepared to change directions. To hear the subject’s music, reporters must be more focused on the answers than their next question. Good listeners make good interviewers — good listeners, that is, who don’t forget that it is also their responsibility to also lead.

Divide the class. As a team, five students should interview the professor about his/her approach to teaching. Each of these five should build on the focus and question of the previous questioner. The rest of the class should critique the questions, their clarity and their focus. Are the questioners listening? Are they maintaining control? Are they following up? The class also should discuss the reading, paying particularly close attention to the dynamics of an interview, the pace of questions, the nature of questions, its close and the reporter’s responsibility once an interview ends.

Assignment: Students should be assigned to small groups and asked to critique the news stories classmates wrote on deadline during the previous class.

Week 9: Building the story

Class 1: Critiquing the story

The instructor should separate students into groups of two or three and tell them to read their news stories to one another aloud. After each reading, the listeners should discuss what they liked and struggled with as the story audience. The reader in each case should reflect on what he or she learned from the process of reading the story aloud.

The instructor then should distribute one or two of the class stories that provide good and bad examples of story structure, information selection, content, organization and writing. These should be critiqued as a class.

Assignment: Students, working in teams, should develop an angle for a news follow to the study or report they covered on deadline. Each team should write a focus statement for the story it is proposing.

Class 2: Following the news

The instructor should lead a discussion about how reporters “enterprise,” or find original angles or approaches, by looking to the corners of news, identifying patterns of news, establishing who is affected by news, investigating the “why” of news, and examining what comes next.

Students should be asked to discuss the ideas they’ve developed to follow the news story. These can be assigned as longer-term team final projects for the semester. As part of this discussion, the instructor can help students map their next steps.

Reading: Wickham, Chapters 1-4 and 7, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should find a news report that uses data to support or develop its main point. They should consider what and how much data is used, whether it is clear, whether it’s cluttered and whether it answers their questions. They should bring the article and a brief memo analyzing it to class.

Week 10: Making sense of data and statistics

Class 1: Basic math and the journalist’s job

Many reporters don’t like math. But in their jobs, it is everywhere. Reporters must interpret political polls, calculate percentage change in everything from property taxes to real estate values, make sense of municipal bids and municipal budgets, and divine data in government reports.

First discuss some of the examples of good and bad use of data that students found in their homework. Then, using examples from Journalist’s Resource website, discuss good and poor use of data in news reporting. (Reporters, for example, should not overwhelm readers with paragraphs stuffed with statistics.) Finally lead students through some of the basic skills sets outlined in Wickham’s book, using her exercises to practice everything from calculating percentage change to interpreting polls.

Assignment: Give students a report or study linked to the Journalist’s Resource website that requires some degree of statistical evaluation or interpretation. Have students read the report and compile a list of questions they would ask to help them understand and interpret this data.

Class 2: The use and abuse of statistics

Discuss the students’ questions. Then evaluate one or more articles drawn from the report they’ve analyzed that attempt to make sense of the data in the study. Discuss what these articles do well and what they do poorly.

Reading: Zinsser, Chapter 13, “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” Dan Barry, The New York Times

Week 11: The reporter as observer

Class 1: Using the senses

Veteran reporters covering an event don’t only return with facts, quotes and documents that support them. They fill their notebooks with details that capture what they’ve witnessed. They use all their senses, listening for telling snippets of conversation and dialogue, watching for images, details and actions that help bring readers to the scene. Details that develop character and place breathe vitality into news. But description for description’s sake merely clutters and obscures the news. Using the senses takes practice.

The class should deconstruct “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” a remarkable journey around New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. The story starts with one corpse, left to rot on a once-busy street and then pans the city as a camera might. The dead body serves as a metaphor for the rotting city, largely abandoned and without order.

Assignment: This is an exercise in observation. Students may not ask questions. Their task is to observe, listen and describe a short scene, a serendipitous vignette of day-to-day life. They should take up a perch in a lively location of their choosing — a student dining hall or gym, a street corner, a pool hall or bus stop or beauty salon, to name a few — wait and watch. When a small scene unfolds, one with beginning, middle and end, students should record it. They then should write a brief story describing the scene that unfolded, taking care to leave themselves and their opinions out of the story. This is pure observation, designed to build the tools of observation and description. These stories should be no longer than 200 words.

Class 2: Sharpening the story

Students should read their observation pieces aloud to a classmate. Both students should consider these questions: Do the words describe or characterize? Which words show and which words tell? What words are extraneous? Does the piece convey character through action? Does it have a clear beginning, middle and end? Students then should revise, shortening the original scene to no longer than 150 words. After the revision, the instructor should critique some of the students’ efforts.

Assignment: Using campus, governmental or media calendars, students should identify, background and prepare to cover a speech, press conference or other news event, preferably on a topic related to one of the research-based areas covered in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website. Students should write a focus statement (50 words or less) for their story and draw up a list of some of the questions they intend to ask.

Week 12: Reporting on deadline

Class 1: Coaching the story

Meetings, press conferences and speeches serve as a staple for much news reporting. Reporters should arrive at such events knowledgeable about the key players, their past positions or research, and the issues these sources are likely discuss. Reporters can discover this information in various ways. They can research topic and speaker online and in journalistic databases, peruse past correspondence sent to public offices, and review the writings and statements of key speakers with the help of their assistants or secretaries.

In this class, the instructor should discuss the nature of event coverage, review students’ focus statements and questions, and offer suggestions about how they cover the events.

Assignment: Cover the event proposed in the class above and draft a 600-word story, double-spaced, based on its news and any context needed to understand it.

Class 2: Critiquing and revising the story

Students should exchange story drafts and suggest changes. After students revise, the instructor should lead a discussion about the challenges of reporting and writing live on deadline. These likely will include issues of access and understanding and challenges of writing around and through gaps of information.

Weeks 13/14: Coaching the final project

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The final week or two of the class is reserved for drill in areas needing further development and for coaching students through the final reporting, drafting and revision of the enterprise stories off the study or report they covered in class.

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About The Author

The Journalist's Resource

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Missouri School of Journalism

University of missouri, resources for high school teachers.

Missouri School of Journalism high school journalism project: Free, online teaching resources for scholastic journalism teachers.

Choose from 25 modules to help you teach skills used in journalism, yearbook and related topics.

Individual module landing pages set you up with an overview of the lesson’s activities:

• Complete lesson plan
• “Do” activities
• Worksheets, examples and answer keys to support activities
• Readings and resources
• Various types of formative assessment
• A summative assessment at the end of each lesson in the form of a 10-question multiple choice quiz with feedback on correct and incorrect answers
• The plans also state the learning objectives to which those activities and readings are aligned and sets the expectations.

Please contact Professor Amy Simons at  [email protected]

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This resource describes some steps you can take to better understand the requirements of your writing assignments. This resource works for either in-class, teacher-led discussion or for personal use.

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Lesson Plan November 17, 2017

The Paradise Papers: A Lesson in Investigative Journalism

Printable PDFs/Word Documents for this Lesson:

• Full lesson for students [PDF] [Word]
• Project Description for the Paradise Papers [PDF]

Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• Describe the process, identify the purpose, and evaluate the impact of investigative journalism
• Evaluate the use of different types of media in acheiving particular aims
• Create a resource that clearly and engagingly conveys information about the Paradise Papers

BREAKING NEWS! On your desk, you will find an envelope with a number written on it and a note card inside. On that note card, there is a tip —a piece of news about your school, neighborhood, or community that someone powerful doesn't want you to know. Your source (the person who left the envelope for you) has chosen to remain anonymous, meaning you don't know who they are. Your source's information might be true or untrue.

1. Brainstorm on your own:

• What steps could you take to determine whether this information is true and what the fuller story behind it is?
• What would be the benefits and drawbacks of keeping this information secret while you investigated it further?
• If you shared this information, who would be affected and how?

2. Find a partner who has an envelope with the same number as your own. Take 3 minutes to merge the steps you brainstormed into a single action plan, and discuss how you can most effectively work together. Then, take another two minutes to discuss what you will do with the information once you have thoroughly investigated it.

3. Discuss as a class:

• What advantages and disadvantages can you see to working with a partner on your investigation?

A few students should share their tip, plan for investigation, and plan for distributing information. The class can then discuss the potential impact of that story.

Introducing the Lesson:

UNESCO defines investigative journalism as "the unveiling of matters that are concealed either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances - and the analysis and exposure of all relevant facts to the public."

Investigative reporting projects can begin in many ways. Sometimes, a journalist notices a problem or something suspicious themselves and decides to research it some more. Other times, they receive a tip from a source and work to determine whether it is true and what the full story is. In still other cases, a source might provide a leak (send secret information), supplying all the necessary documentation, but requiring the journalist to piece together a narrative from the information and find a way to present it to the public.

• Are you familiar with any investigative journalism stories?
• What do you think is the difference between investigative journalism and other types of journalism?

Today, we are going to learn more about investigative journalists and their work by examining the Paradise Papers, a project from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This project exposes how political leaders, businesspeople, and the wealthy elite around the world use offshore entities to avoid taxes and cover up wrongdoing. With about 400 journalists working on 6 continents and in 30 languages to examine 13.4 million files for nearly an entire year, it is one of the largest investigative journalism projects in history.

Following this lesson, you will create a resource to clearly and engagingly convey information you have learned from the Paradise Papers to a lay audience, a vital part of investigative journalism.

Introducing Resource 1: " The True Story Behind the Secret Nine-Month Paradise Papers Investigation "

1. After watching the video, work individually or with a partner to create a short summary of what the Paradise Papers are and why they matter.

2. In the video,  ICIJ Deputy Director Marina Walker says, "At ICIJ, the mission is to uncover those urgent stories of public interest that go beyond what any particular journalist or media organization can accomplish on his or her own." Consider:

• What is the ICIJ? How does it differ from other news outlets/organizations you are familiar with?
• How would you define a "story of public interest"?
• Why does the ICIJ work with journalists based all over the world?

3. This video introduces many reporters and shows them doing the behind-the-scenes work of investigative journalism. Discuss as a class:

• How would you describe the day-to-day work of an investigative journalist, based on what the video showed? What are their workplaces like? Did anything surprise you?
• What skills do you think are essential for an investigative journalist to have, and why?
• How does the job differ for journalists in different countries?
• What are some of the dangers of investigative journalism, and how do journalists cope with them?
• Investigative journalist Will Fitzgibbon mentions ICIJ's emphasis on releasing all information simultaneously as a team. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages to reporting this way?

Introducing Resource 2: Paradise Papers

1. Read the project description of the Paradise Papers on the Pulitzer Center website. Discuss: how do the summary and statement of import you wrote with your partner compare?

2. Next, explore the interactive within the project, " Paradise Papers: The Influencers ."

• What is your initial reaction to the interactive? How does it make you feel?
• Click through to read the stories about Wilbur Ross. What sections are included in the story, and what purpose do they serve? Do you find the information convincing? Easy to understand? Interesting?
• Take a look at one of the supporting documents . What is your initial reaction? How does it make you feel?
• What do you think the purpose of this interactive is? How effective is it in serving this purpose?

Activity and Discussion:

1. Summarize each of the following political cartoons in your own words:

It's unlikely that any private citizen is going to sit down and read 13.4 million files, no matter how significant their value. As such, it is the job of the investigative reporters involved to mine that data for digestible, engaging stories that the public needs and wants to hear.

2. Explore the Paradise Papers investigation on the Pulitzer Center and ICIJ websites. Make a list of the different ways the ICIJ has found to tell this story.

3. In small groups, compare your lists. Consider:

• For each item on your list, who do you think the target audience is?
• What do you think are the most effective ways in which the stories of the Paradise Papers have been told thus far?
• Can you identify any audience(s) these stories are unlikely to reach as a result of the ways it is currently being told?
• What additional ways would it be possible to tell these stories?
• What impacts have the Paradise Papers had already, and what further impact can you foresee?

4. Each group should share their main takeaway(s) from their conversation with the class.

Extension Activity:

1. Building on your final discussion, identify a target audience that you think should know about the Paradise Papers investigation. Create a resource that summarizes the following in a way that will resonate with your target audience:

• What are the Paradise Papers?
• Why are they important?
• How did journalists investigate the story?

You can create a video, infographic, lesson plan, or any other resource. You may alternatively plan a large-scale resource (for example, a museum installation or a play) that you describe in detail but do not execute.

2. Present your resource to the class. Following your presentation, discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and possible impact of such a resource.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7

Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Examples of tips you can write in students’ envelopes include:

• The company that supplies your school cafeteria with vegetables has continued selling spinach that might be contaminated with E. coli bacteria despite a recent recall.
• The recycling at the biggest company in your town does not actually get recycled at all; instead, the company sends it off to the landfill while claiming state tax benefits on the recycling equipment and process costs they don’t, in reality, have.
• Maintenance staff at your school is being paid less than minimum wage.

Ensure that students know these are hypothetical examples and not real tips.

To better understand the purpose/impact of this type of reporting and to contextualize the Paradise Papers, it may be useful for students to have some background in U.S. investigative journalism history. To assign as homework or review as a class, this list of noteworthy moments for investigative reporting in the U.S. from the Brookings Institution is one starting place.

Introducing Resource 1: “The True Story Behind the Secret Nine-Month Paradise Papers Investigation”

Depending on time constraints, students can be assigned to watch this video before class, or an excerpt (i.e. 0:00-12:50) can be screened.

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REPORTING FEATURED IN THIS LESSON PLAN

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Paradise Papers

ICIJ's global investigation that reveals the offshore activities of some of the world’s most...

Paradise Papers: The Influencers

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Extracurriculars.

7 Journalism Extracurriculars for High Schoolers

What’s covered:, extracurricular activities for aspiring journalism majors, how do extracurriculars impact your college chances.

If you’re a high school student who plans to go into journalism, there are many opportunities available for you to pursue your interest. Obvious choices include joining your school’s newspaper or volunteering at a local news organization. But what if your school doesn’t have a newspaper or your local news team isn’t interested in help from a high school student?

Niche interests like journalism might seem difficult to pursue at first glance, but rest assured, there are many extracurricular activities out there that will improve your skills and increase your experience to help prepare you for your future journalism pursuits.

Some of these opportunities are facilitated by your school, while others are independently run. To learn more about how to explore the field of journalism, read on.

1. Student Newspaper

This is the most obvious option for students who are interested in journalism. Many schools already have a school newspaper, and getting involved is usually as simple as talking to the editor or faculty advisor.

You may have to start in an entry-level role taking assigned stories, but you can think of this as good training for an actual career in journalism, where you’ll likely have a similar start. Over time you may be able to work towards a leadership position or at least start to source and pitch your own stories.

If your school doesn’t have a student newspaper, you might want to start one. Begin by finding a group of interested and skilled students. Choose a teacher as a potential faculty advisor. This should be someone who has taught you in the past and who has some kind of expertise in writing or publishing. Meet with that teacher to request advice and guidance.

Once you have the ball rolling, create a proposal for your school. Include any operating costs and details about how you plan to raise the funds needed to run the paper. While printing actual hard copies can be the most expensive part of operations, publishing online is a less expensive alternative that is becoming quite legitimate in the Information Age. Starting a student newspaper will allow you to pursue your interests while demonstrating your initiative and leadership skills.

2. Other Clubs

If you aren’t interested in writing for your school’s newspaper for whatever reason, bear in mind that there are other school clubs and organizations that can help you improve your journalism skills.

If you’re interested in broadcast journalism, you should consider organizations that emphasize technology and communications methods, as well as organizations that emphasize verbal presentation. These include:

• Radio Station
• Debate Club
• Model United Nations

If you have an interest in print journalism, you should consider organizations that emphasize writing skills and effective formatting. These include:

• Writer’s Group/Workshop
• Literary Magazine
• Poetry Club
• Quill and Scroll
• Journalism Club
• School Yearbook
• School Magazine

3. Volunteer Your Writing Skills

Any organization that produces written communications needs strong writers. Consider reaching out to local organizations that could use volunteers. These include:

• Animal shelters
• Food pantries
• Retirement homes
• Community centers
• Youth groups
• Your local church

These types of organizations generally welcome any publicity they can get, so they would likely be very happy to have your help. Offer to write a newsletter outlining recent changes or developments in the organization. Ask leaders for stories they would like to see highlighted or propose your own if you’re familiar with the organization.

Volunteering your writing services is a good way to build a portfolio. As you progress to more professional roles, you’ll be asked for samples of your work. Be sure to keep copies of everything you’ve written, especially when it has been formatted and printed as part of any professional copy.

Additionally, you could be a communications, social media, or public relations manager for any club on your school’s campus. Student government, service leagues, and activist organizations are often looking for help with outreach.

4. Enter a Writing Contest

There is a huge variety of writing contests available to high school students. If you want to gain some recognition or to win cash or scholarship prizes, entering one of these contests would be a good choice for you. Some writing contests even focus explicitly on journalistic writing.

For a complete list of some of the most respected writing contests open to high schoolers, check out The CollegeVine Ultimate Guide to High School Writing Contests .

5. Get Published

Similarly, you can submit your work to be published in existing journals or magazines. Many online news sites rely on submissions from freelance writers. Even if they don’t specifically seek work from high school students, they won’t necessarily know your age when you submit a piece of writing.

At some publications, you will only get one chance to be considered seriously. If you submit something that is not polished, they are unlikely to take your submissions seriously in the future. Proofread carefully and get constructive criticism from a teacher or peer before sending in your work.

Some online publications that might be good to start with include:

• jGirls+ Magazine (focus on Jewish girls)
• iGeneration Youth Magazine
• Affinity Magazine
• Cripple Media (focus on disabled communities)
• Ms. Magazine (focus on intersectional feminism)
• GeneseeSun.com (focus on upstate New York)
• BRIDGE: The Blufton University Literary Journal (focus on literature)
• Adolescent (focus on content creation)

Be sure to select carefully and keep in mind that publications that pay for submissions are likely to be more competitive and to hold you to higher standards overall. Consider submitting to smaller local or regional publications first.

6. Enroll in a Summer Program

Academic and extracurricular summer programs are becoming a more and more common way to pass the summer break. Many of these programs exist just for students interested in pursuing journalism. In these programs, you can expect to develop your journalistic skills, build important connections, and gain a better understanding of the field of journalism.

Some of the most renowned programs include:

1. National Student Leadership Conference’s Journalism, Film & Media Arts Summer Program

Location: Washington, D.C.

Duration: 9 days (sessions available in mid-June and early July)

Cost: $3,895

During this program, students travel to Washington, D.C., where they have the opportunity to explore the inner workings of important media outlets. Additionally, students get familiar with professional studio equipment and the methods of high-level journalism. Two tracks are offered—Newswriting & Investigative Reporting and Broadcast Journalism.

2. International Summer Schools (ISSOS) Journalism Programs

Location: Cambridge University

Duration: 3 weeks (July 12 – August 2, 2023)

Cost: $8,616 – $11,114

Through seminars and practical assignments, students attending ISSOS programs learn research skills, writing skills, and formatting skills. Students choose one Academic course and one Elective course, then supplement their learning through hands-on experiences outside of the classroom.

3. Cronkite Institute for High School Journalism

Location: Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Phoenix, AZ)

Duration: 1 week (June 11-17, 2023)

Camp Cronkite offers students three different tracks to pursue their journalistic interests—digital journalism, broadcast journalism, and sports media. Through the camp, students get exposed to the various elements and voices that go into the journalistic craft. 25-30 students are selected for the program each year.

4. AAJA JCamp Summer Program

Duration: 6 days

JCamp is a multicultural journalism program. The program focuses on the value of cross-cultural communication skills, the fundamentals of leadership, the importance of diversity in the newsroom and media, journalistic ethics, and the value of networking and career mapping.

While the programs above vary greatly in price, many of them offer need-based financial aid or scholarships. Be sure to research these options before dismissing a program.

You should also consider summer journalism programs available at colleges or universities. Through these programs, you can network with faculty and students who might ultimately be able to help you with the application process.

Some popular college programs include:

• Northwestern University Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute
• Emerson College Journalism Institute
• Princeton University Summer Journalism Program
• Boston University Summer Journalism Academy

7. Start Your Own Online Publication

It’s important to have writing samples to show for yourself as you apply to college journalism programs. Starting your own online publication is a great way to produce this content. You can start a blog for free on many different platforms, including WordPress , Blogger , LiveJournal , or Weebly .

First, choose an angle to focus your writing on. You could focus on local news, arts and culture, sports, entertainment news, opinion pieces, travel, etc. Once you’ve chosen a focus, create a content schedule and publish articles regularly. After you’ve done this for a while, you will have an informal portfolio of your work that will be marketable during college admissions.

Once your blog is up and running, use email, social media, and word of mouth to let friends and family know about it. As with any other time that you add to your online presence, be sure to discuss your plans with a parent or guardian beforehand. It’s also a good idea to limit commenting on your posts to filter out spam or unwanted attention.

Grades and test scores are important in the college admissions process, but admissions officers also want to see who you are beyond the numbers. Through extracurriculars, you can show admissions officers your interests and, more importantly, your commitment to your interests.

Our CollegeVine team recommends that you focus on 2-3 extracurricular activities that you care deeply about. If your extracurricular list shows breadth rather than depth, your admissions officer might not understand how truly dedicated you are to a future in journalism.

Additionally, admissions officers often group activities into one of the four tiers of extracurricular activities . The highest tiers—Tiers 1 and 2—heavily influence college admissions and are reserved for rare extracurriculars where students show extraordinary skill or leadership. Lower-tier activities—those in Tiers 3 and 4—are less distinguished, and thus, have less of an impact on college admissions.

For example, an admissions officer is going to be more drawn to a student who started their own school newspaper that went on to win a national high school journalism competition—an activity in Tier 1—than a student who was a general member of their school’s yearbook committee—an activity in Tier 4.

As you choose your extracurriculars, think about what will stand out to admissions officers. Additionally, put your extracurriculars into CollegeVine’s free chancing engine , which will tell you how your extracurriculars will affect your admissions chances at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country!

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Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing: Foundational Skills for a Digital Age

Student resources, newswriting assignments.

Assignment 1: Storify it

Description of Assignment: Social media has forced journalists to rethink how they approach their jobs. The writing and reading now happen on both sides of the conversation, with readers and journalists often discussing issues through Twitter exchanges and Facebook posts.

There is a tool to help journalists tell compelling stories by putting social media posts into order and context. Turn what people post on social media into compelling stories. It’s called Storify.

Sign up for a free Storify account at storify.com. Then pick any event where you know people were microblogging or sharing to social media. It could be the fire department’s dramatic rescue of a cat in a tree, or it could be an outdoor music festival. Whatever--use keyword searches to identify and collect the posts and then use Storify to stitch them together with your own narrative.

Public Domain Source Material: https://storify.com/  

Assignment 2: Twitterstorm--A class assignment

Description of Assignment: Of all of the microblogging platforms, Twitter has become the dominant force for both disseminating and receiving short bits of information. Each tweet is sent to a group of followers the user has established.

Your assignment will take a few weeks to complete. The first step is creating a Twitter handle for a small group of newsgatherers, or one for the whole class. Give yourself a descriptive and accurate name, for example: Truman State News Group. Over several days, use that account to follow all of the movers and shakers in your community--the college administration, any professional journalists, or other prominent people. Chances are they will follow back.

When you finally have a healthy following of at least a few dozen, it’s time to report a story. Use a smartphone to cover a contentious city council meeting, or a football game. Share photos, short videos, and brief descriptions of what you experience. It’s OK to be somewhat informal, but write with a professional tone and steer clear of silliness or opinion. Follow the principles described in the textbook.

When you get back to class, use Storify (see above) to collect the tweets into a social media story.

Public Domain Source Material: Twitter.com  

Assignment 3: Blog it

Description of Assignment: The term “blog” is short for ‘web log.” In its purest form, a blog takes on a diary-style approach that demonstrates the writing style and mindset of the author in a way that is more personal than a traditional news article could. The most effective blogs are written in the first person, and loaded with insights into the author’s life and belief system. But an effective blogger cannot rely simply on personality. The best blogs have great reporting in them as well.

Here are four popular blogs:

• Gary Vaynerchuk’s blog about wine: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/blog/
• Pat Flynn’s blog about online money making: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/blog/
• The TechCrunch blog on all things tech: https://techcrunch.com
• Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician (a Syracuse University sports blog): https://www.nunesmagician.com/

What about the writing style and reporting in these blogs (or others) appeals to you?

Now take what you’ve learned from your text and work on a blog in a small group of classmates. You can either work separately or together. The blog item should be written as if it were to appear in a blog about campus life, with the audience being other students at your college or university.

Public Domain Source Material:  (See above.)

Assignment 4: IG me

Description of Assignment: Instagram is a visually-based social networking tool that gives people the space to share photos from their phones or other mobile devices. Unlike other forms of social media, Instagram is almost entirely designed for mobile use--you can’t even post to Instagram from a PC.

Instagram is a place where words take a backseat to images, but captions are still important and help provide important context for the photo.

It’s a great tool for primarily print reporters to hone their photography skills. Using the principles behind the “rule of 3”--skim ahead in your textbook--spend 30 min out of class documenting campus life, finding beautiful or hidden scenes on campus that your audience will find interesting. Don’t forget to use the principles of interviewing you’ve already learned--make sure the people in your photos are identified in your captions and try to get a great quote for every picture.

Post three images and come back to class and compare you work with that of other students’. Which images were the most appealing?

If you have enough good images to document a day in the life of your college, feel free to use Storify to collect them all--and then use Twitter to tweet out the link to your Storify story.

Public Domain Source Material:

instagram.com

twitter.com

storify.com

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One of the best ways for students to determine what they know, think, and believe about a given subject is to write about it. To support students in their writing, it is important to provide them with a meaningful writing task, one that has an authentic purpose, clear guidelines, and engages students in their learning. In this section, you can read about key principles of assignment design, review examples of effective writing assignments, and use a checklist to guide your own designs. You can also consult with a Writing Across the Curriculum Program team member . We’re happy to think with you about your writing assignment, whether it is in the inkling stage or undergoing a few minor tweaks.

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Meaningful tasks. A task is given meaning by its relevance to and alignment with the learning aims in the course. What counts as meaningful in one course context might not be meaningful in another. As Eodice, Geller, and Lerner (2016) have shown, meaningful writing assignments do occur across all disciplines and they are typically ones that “offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities.”

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Logical sequencing. A writing task that includes discrete stages (research, drafting, review, revising, etc.) is more likely to be an effective learning experience than one that only specifies the final product. Furthermore, these stages are more effective when they are scaffolded so simpler tasks precede more complex tasks. For example, a well-sequenced 10-12 page essay assignment might involve discrete segments where students generate a central inquiry question, draft and workshop a thesis statement, produce a first draft of the essay, give and receive feedback on drafts, and submit a revision. Read more about sequencing assignments . 

Clear criteria will help students connect an assignment’s relevance to larger scale course outcomes. The literature on assignment design strongly encourages instructors to make the grading criteria explicit to students before the assignment is collected and assessed. A grading scheme or rubric that is handed out along with the assignment can provide students with a clear understanding of the weighted expectations and, thus help them decide what to focus on in the assignment. It becomes a teaching tool, not just an assessment tool.

Forward-thinking activities more than backward-thinking activities. Forward-thinking activities and assignments ask students to apply their learning rather than simply repeat it. The orientation of many writing prompts is often backward, asking students to show they learned X, Y, and Z. As L. Dee Fink (2013) points out, forward-thinking assignments and activities look ahead to what students will be able to do in the future having learned about X, Y, and Z. Such assignments often utilize real-world and scenario-based problems, requiring students to apply their learning to a new situation. For Grant Wiggins (1998) , questions, problems, tests, and assignments that are forward-thinking often:

• Require judgment and innovation. Students have to use knowledge and skills to solve unstructured problems, not just plug in a routine.
• Ask students to do the subject. Beyond recitation and replication, these tasks require students to carry out explorations, inquiry, and work within specific disciplines.
• Replicate workplace and civic contexts. These tasks provide specific constraints, purposes, and audiences that students will face in work and societal contexts.
• Involve a repertoire of skills and abilities rather than the isolation of individual skills. 

Feel free to use this assignment checklist , which draws on the principles and research described on this page.

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Table of Contents

In this week’s Teacher’s Corner, students will work on understanding the parts of a news story. This week’s activity uses a graphic organizer about the inverted pyramid . The inverted pyramid is a journalistic writing style that places the important information at the beginning of the news story and more general information at the end of the story.

Intermediate to Advanced

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Reading, speaking (primary focus); listening (secondary focus)

During this activity students will:

• learn the structure of a news article
• practice listening and note-taking skills
• Teacher: whiteboard/chalkboard, markers or chalk, computer with speakers, printer  
• Students: pencils or pens, notebooks or writing paper

PREPARATION

• Read through all the materials carefully.
• Read the article Experimental School in California Has No Homework and listen to the audio version of the story.
• Print out the Inverted Pyramid worksheet in Appendix 1. Make enough copies so that each pair of students in class has a worksheet.
• Print out the news article Experimental School in California Has No Homework in Appendix 2. Make enough copies so that each pair of students has a copy.

ACTIVITY PART ONE: PRE-READING ACTIVITY

• Have the students think about their own answer to the question. (2 minutes)
• Next, have them form pairs. Students should share their answer with their partner. (2 minutes)
• Finally, call on pairs to share their answers with the entire class. (4 minutes)
• Next, instruct the students to get out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Play the audio version of the article Experimental School in California Has No Homework . As the students listen to the article, have them take notes on the information in the article.
• After listening to the article, have the students form pairs. In pairs, have the students compare the notes they took about the article.

Have the pairs share their notes with the class. The goal in this part of the activity is to understand what details the students understood in the article, so answers may differ among the pairs. This is okay.

ACTIVITY PART TWO: READING THE STORY

• Begin this section of the activity by having the students form pairs.

Next, give each pair a copy of the article Experimental School in California Has No Homework found in Appendix 1.

Have the pairs read the article. As students read, circulate around the room to help students with any vocabulary questions they may have.

ACTIVITY PART THREE: UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE

• Once the students have completed the reading, give each pair a copy of the Inverted Pyramid worksheet in Appendix 2.
• The lead : This is the text between the main title and the first subtitle.
• The Facts : Most of the major facts of the story can be found under the subtitle No Homework .
• Important Details : The subheading Personalized learning contains the important details of the story that explain the information in the facts section of the story.
• General Information : The subheading Work in progress contains the general information about the story. This information adds extra details, which are not critical to understanding the story.
• Once the pairs have completed the worksheet, have them join another pair to form a small group. Have the pairs compare their answers to the worksheet questions. Once all the small groups have compared their answers, have them share their answers with the entire class.

For more on journalism vocabulary, check out The Lighter Side – Journalism Crossword !

Appendix 1: News Story

Experimental School in California Has No Homework

Khan Lab School is bringing back the one-room model to teach young students in Mountain View, California.

The school is a laboratory for an experimental kind of learning.

Silicon Valley, known for its technology companies, is also the birthplace of the school.

Twelve-year-old Mishal Junaid loves the Khan Lab School’s untraditional methods.

“When I wake up in the morning, I want to wake up, unlike my last school where I want to sleep in and not go to school...”

Junaid and her sister’s reactions to the school surprise their parents.

The girls’ father, Junaid Qurashi, told VOA: “Our children, they love going to school, to the point that even if they are tired or sick or have the flu ,” they will not stay home from school. “To the point that we worry why kids come home so happy. Are they really learning things?”

No homework

Students ages 5 to 15 attend the experimental Khan Lab School. It has no grade levels and no homework. The students are in school from 8:30 in the morning until six o’clock at night. And, the school is open all year long, with small breaks here and there.

Nine-year-old Holly Thompson enjoys going there.

"You get to choose what you learn, and it's not just a teacher hands you a worksheet and tells you what to do. You get to set your own goals. You have a schedule. You go to different classes."

The school is the idea of Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy — famous for its educational videos. The videos are available on the internet free of charge and have millions of users around the world.

Khan said he started Khan Lab School because he thinks the current education system has problems. He hopes to create a better learning model.

“Where I see the future going is somewhat revisiting the past. There’s a lot of really good things about the one-room schoolhouse that you might have had in the rural areas that you still have today in a lot of places where you have mixed-age classrooms...”

He said this system lets the older students take responsibility and help younger students. That means the younger children get a lot of help. They get the help of the teacher and the older students.

Personalized learning

Khan said students also learn the study material at their own speed through videos. And, they get more attention through one-on-one discussions with teachers. They also learn by doing projects.

Malika Junaid noted a change in her daughters after they began attending the school. She said that, after six months, they seemed sure of their abilities. They are now not afraid to talk to adults and other students and now they always want to help.

The school’s director, Dominic Liechti, said this way of learning better prepares students for the future. He said the duties of a teacher need to change from leading the class to being someone who guides students in their learning, and provides individual support. A teacher is also a life-long learner, he said, not just someone who gives presentations.

Leichti also said the role of students is becoming more creative.

Work in progress

Salman Khan describes his Khan Lab School as a work in progress.

“Like a R-and-D lab [research and development lab], the first time that you make the drug or the first time that you make the material,” Khan said. “It’s not scalable yet, but you need to make it the first time and say 'that’s a pretty strong material.' And then you can think about how do you make it so that it’s more affordable and more scalable.”

Dominic Liechti says the community in the Mountain View area has been open to this new method to educating students.

“Especially in Silicon Valley because that’s the culture that you can start something,” he said. “You can pioneer something, and people join that movement, and I feel that amongst my staff.”

Liechti says he has that same feeling amongst his students and members of the community.

Elizabeth Lee wrote this story for VOANews.com. Alice Bryant adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

Words in This Story

flu - n. the flu, also called influenza, is common disease that is used by a virus. It causes high body temperature, weakness, and breathing problems

grade - n. a level of study that is completed by a student during one year

scalable - adj. easy to make larger or more powerful

pioneer - n. a person who helps create or develop new ideas or methods

Appendix 2: Inverted Pyramid

Directions : Read the article Experimental School in California Has No Homework . After reading the article, answer the questions in the graphic organizer below.

inverted_pyramid.jpg

Skateboarding involves riding and performing tricks on a small oval board attached to four wheels. It can be considered a recreational activity, an art form, or a method of transportation.

Neftalie Williams says skateboarding is his passion.

“When I'm skateboarding, I feel free. It gives me the space to do what I want to do and sort of tune out the rest of the world. All I do is what feels good to me, what feels great under my feet and it lets me belong to a larger community. So I feel it all, all at the same time.”

As a young adult, Williams gained a larger view on skateboarding.

“Right when I got to be about 20 years old, that's when I decided that not only was skateboarding important, but it's something that I should really, really be involved in --- not just working on being an amateur sponsor skater, but that skateboarding meant more to more people and it was a way to sort of connect communities everywhere.

"So, for me, I started thinking about skating in a broader context. I ended up putting together my own skateboarding camp for kids in New England, because that was me wanting to give back to the sport that gave me so much life. And a lot of my good friends have now become pro skaters and they were counselors at my camp at that time. So, that was my first foray into making things bigger for skateboarding as a whole.”

Neftalie Williams is a researcher and lecturer with the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). He teaches a course called “Skateboarding and Action Sports in Business Media and Culture.” Williams studied skateboarding in college and received a master’s degree in Public Diplomacy from USC. He is the first professor in the United States to teach the sport. “I am the first professor of skateboarding and action sports here in the U.S., especially at a major university, USC. I've been looking at how skateboarding can be used as a tool for cultural diplomacy. So, when it came time to bring the class together, they knew that I'd been working out in the field in Cuba and Brazil and South Africa and that we were trying to find new ways to engage youth all over the world. "So, when it came time to propose having a class that talked about it, they looked at the fact that I had the experience, that I also had all the ties within the skateboarding network to bring in great people -- leaders in the field -- and that we were really also looking at the role of gender in new sports and how to actually make inroads and communicate with our youth. They thought it was a really great idea and we went forward.” The course has proven to be popular among students. But Williams has kept the class size small, permitting just 25 students to officially register for the course.

Examining skating as a tool for cultural diplomacy worldwide, Williams joined forces with the U.S. State Department, becoming the first skateboarding and academic sports envoy in U.S. history. “One of the things I'm the most proud of is being the first skateboarding envoy for the U.S. government. We worked with the embassy in the Netherlands to engage the Syrian refugees who'd been granted asylum in the Netherlands. It was an amazing project. And, not only was it engaging the Syrian refugees, but it was also engaging the youth of the Netherlands. Both of those groups are going to be the future of the Netherlands populace. "So, by having them both together they got to know one another, be totally engaged with each other and to spend time knowing what the future of the Netherlands was going to look like. And it wasn't just, 'this is a project for those kids' or 'this is just something for the elite.' For some of those kids it was the first time they ever got to see skateboarding up close. And they all became immediate parts of the skateboarding community.” Because the skateboarding diplomacy project was so successful in the Netherlands, the State Department has asked for Williams’s help in creating skateboarding projects in other countries. “So we're creating a plan right now to take skateboarding globally as an envoy. Some of the other countries that the U.S. government would like to engage using skateboarding as a tool for cultural diplomacy are Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia.”

In addition to his work empowering and uniting skateboarding communities, Neftalie Williams is chairman of Cuba Skate, designed to create people-to-people exchange between communities in Cuba and the U.S. “Cuba Skate is our nonprofit that's based in D.C. and here in L.A. and what we do is we bring boards back and forth to the kids that are in Cuba and we also promote educational exchange between the skaters that are here, skaters globally and the skaters that are in Cuba. "So one of the main things that are important with our working with Cuba Skate is that there are no skate shops on the island. So, what we want to do is foster entrepreneurship in the youth so that they can create their own skate shops, their own cooperatives, give them a blueprint to look at how businesses are run here in skateboarding, [and] how they can run their own educational facilities there in Cuba.” A major issue in the Cuban skateboarding community is its growing female membership. “Cuba has a very large skate population and it's growing all the time. With skateboarding being moved to the Olympics hopefully in the future, it's nice to see that so many women are starting to take up skateboarding there and that there is no disparity between the men and women on the island.”

However, Williams says there are a few barriers Cuba Skate faces. "The biggest obstacles that we face in Cuba skate is that we still have travel restrictions, there's still an embargo in place and that makes our work a little difficult. The good thing, though, is that we have our hearts in a light place because we know that progress is being made on both sides.” Neftalie Williams believe skateboarding teaches self-expression, among other things. “One of the most amazing thing that skateboarding teaches you is how to re-imagine yourself and the world around you. That’s very important because we have skaters all over the world who, particularly in Cuba, don't have access to resources. So, they've got to now look at themselves and figure out, 'how do I exist in this space?' "[What] skateboarding also teaches you is how to persevere. Because there aren't people to teach you how to do tricks or having large teams involved in the skate, you learn how to do it on your own. The other thing is skateboarding teaches you is to build a family and to build a community. That's amazing because most sports don't do that. This is something that's just inherent in skateboarding.”

Neftalie started in skateboarding as a teenager. He says he, and other neighborhood kids, chose skateboarding because bicycles were too costly. “Skateboarding was something that all the kids in my building started doing after we looked at how expensive it was to get bikes and so it was really something great to be involved in. So it didn’t matter what part of town you were from; skateboarding was something that everyone got into.” Williams says the sport has given him so much. He says he hopes his work in skateboarding and the community will help ensure that the next generation of leaders is smarter and more culturally aware. “Skateboarding to me is freedom. It's family. It’s education. It's transportation. It's really the most amazing thing in the whole wide world. It gives us the freedom to do whatever we want anywhere. And that's something that...that's the most important thing to me. That freedom and that ability to communicate globally.”

This week’s Teacher’s Corner provides students with the opportunity to practice using reported speech as part of an exercise on writing a newspaper article about a celebrity interview.

Listening, writing (primary focus); speaking (secondary focus).            

• Practice asking and answering questions as part of an interview news story.
• Print copies of the This Week’s Schedule worksheet in Appendix 1. Print one copy for each student.
• Print copies of the Reporter’s Notes worksheet in Appendix 2. Print one copy for each student.

Activity Part One: Celebrity Schedule

• Begin the class by asking students who their favorite famous person is. This could include athletes, movie stars, authors, politicians, or scientists.
• Think – First have the students work alone and think about their answer. (1 minute)
• Pair – When all students have an answer, have them pair up with a classmate and discuss their answers. Students should state who their favorite famous person is and why. (2 minutes)
• Share – After the students have worked in pairs, have them share their answer with the class. For added speaking and listening practice, have students share with the class the answer of their partner. (2 minutes)
• Next, give each student a copy of the This Week’s Schedule worksheet in Appendix 1.
• Encourage the students to be creative and provide as many details as they can to their schedule.
• Once all the students have completed their schedule, move to Part 2 of the activity.

Activity Part Two: Reporter's Notes

• Begin this part of the activity by having the students put away the This Week’s Schedule worksheet they just completed. It will be used in Part 3 of the activity.
• Next, ask the class, “If you interviewed someone famous, what questions would you ask?” Have the students do another think, pair, share. 
• As students share their questions with the class, write the questions on the board to generate a list of interview questions.
• Note: The term follow-up question means a question asked in response to an answer. For example: Reporter: Why are you visiting New York City this week? Celebrity: I am here to promote my new movie. Reporter: A new movie? What is it about?
• Note: Students may be unsure what follow-up questions to ask. Encourage them to think of as many as they can. They may not use them all, but that is okay. One of a reporter’s most important jobs is to be prepared. 

Activity Part Three: Celebrity Interview

• Begin this part of the activity by having the students form pairs. Decide which student in each pair will be student A and which student in the pair will be student B.
• Have student A be the celebrity and instruct them to take out the This Week’s Schedule worksheet and fill out in Part 1 of the activity.
• Student B in the pair will be the reporter. Instruct these students to take out their Reporter’s Notes worksheet from Part 2 of the activity. Student B should also have a pen or pencil to take notes during the interview. 
• Remind the students that they will be writing a news story for homework so the reporter should get as many details from their partner as they can!
• After the pairs have completed the interview, have them switch roles. Student A should now be the reporter and interview Student B.

Have the students take their Reporter’s Notes worksheet home and write up a short news story about the famous person they interviewed. Encourage students to use direct quotes and reported speech in their news story. 

Appendix 1: This Week’s Schedule

Directions: Fill out your schedule with your plan for each day. Include what you will do, when you will do it, where it will occur, and why you need to do this activity.

     Where:

Appendix 2: Reporter’s Notes Worksheet

Directions: A reporter’s job is to ask specific questions to get informative answers for newspaper stories. You are about to interview a famous person. What questions can you ask? What possible follow-up questions might be helpful during the interview?

Question 1:

                  Possible Follow-up Questions:

Question 2:

Question 3:

Question 4:

Question 5:

Reading, writing (primary focus); listening, speaking (secondary focus)

• Practice writing news stories
• Record a news radio program
• Teacher: whiteboard/chalkboard, markers or chalk
• Read all of the materials carefully before starting the activity.

Note: Idioms/slang related to newspapers and news radio have a long tradition in American culture. In news slang, to scoop (v.) means to publish information or a news story before other newspapers. Scoop can be used as a noun as well. The title of part three of this activity “Over to You” is a phrase used to transition between news stories on television or radio. For example: a news story may end with “and that is the local news today. Coming up next we have the weather with Eddie. Over to you Eddie.”

Activity Part One: The Classroom News

• Begin the activity by having students form small groups of 3 to 4 students. Each small group will form a news team. For the remainder of the activity, students will work in these news teams. Each news team will produce one radio broadcast.
• In their news teams, have the students brainstorm the types of stories they read in the news or listen to on the radio, such as international news, local news, sports, movie reviews, etc.
• After the news teams have brainstormed ideas, have them share their ideas with the class. As groups announce their list to the class, write them on the chalkboard.
• Once of all the ideas have been listed on the board, ask the news teams which of the types of news stories they find the most interesting. Inform the students that these news stories will be the ones they include in a radio broadcast. Topics could include international news, the economy, entertainment, sports, weather, etc.
• Have each news team vote on the news stories they want to include in their radio program.

Note : Some topics of the news can be more challenging for students to write about than others, such as international news or business news. If these topics are too difficult for the students’ language level, the radio broadcast can be created with smaller topics. For example, instead of one story within the topic of entertainment, the radio broadcast can have two, such as movie news and music news.

• Once the news teams decide which topics to include in their radio broadcast, have them select a producer. The producer is responsible for organizing the radio broadcast and making sure the stories are written and submitted on time. The producer will act as the team leader for his/her news team.

Activity Part Two: What’s the scoop

• Once the news teams have decided which topics to include in the radio broadcast, have the news teams decide which student will write which topic.
• Once students know the topic they will write about, have them get out paper and a pencil or pen and begin brainstorming possible ideas for a news story. Encourage the students to write down a general idea at the top of their paper. Below this they should write down the “5 Ws and H” questions of a newspaper story: Who, What, When, Where, Why , and How . Each of these should be included in each story.

Note : This brainstorming activity will vary depending on the topics of the radio broadcast students decided to include. Be sure to circulate around the room and help students brainstorm ideas. The news topics easiest to write will probably be local news, entertainment, sports, and weather. These topics are all common parts of American news radio broadcasts.

• In the entertainment section, possible story ideas are a review of a new movie or music album, a local performance occurring in town, or a story about the life of a famous celebrity.

Note : For lower-level classes, students can work in pairs to write a story together.

• Instruct the students to continue the story-writing exercise at home as a homework assignment. For this activity, be sure to set a longer than normal homework deadline, such as one week. After you give the homework assignment and the due date, it will be the responsibility of the news team producers to make sure students complete the homework!

Activity Part Three: Over to You

After the students have completed their homework, begin this section of the activity. In this part of the activity, the students will organize their radio broadcast, practice reading it, and record it for a homework assignment.

• Begin this section of the activity by having the student gather into their news teams.
• In their news teams, students should read the news stories written by their classmates in their news team. They should then select the order in which the stories will be read during the broadcast.
• Remind students that they want to choose an interesting or exciting story for their lead . In American journalism, the lead is the first and most important story in a newspaper or on a radio broadcast.
• Once the news teams have selected their lead, have them decide the order of the remaining stories for the radio broadcast.

Note : Many American radio broadcasts follow a similar pattern; they begin with local news, then international news, then weather, and conclude with sports. If teams are having trouble organizing their radio broadcast, suggest they follow that pattern.

• Once the news teams have decided the order of their stories, have them practice reading their stories out loud. Each student in the news team should read one news story in the radio broadcast.

Note : Remind students to include transitions in their news stories. Usually, a news story will end with a transition to the next story. For example, a news story may end with, “…and that is the local news today. Coming up next we have the weather with Eddie. Over to you Eddie.”

Homework Activity: For homework, have students record their radio broadcast. If students are feeling creative, encourage them to record and edit their radio broadcast using a free audio editing tool such as Audacity.

Optional Activity: Once each news team has recorded their radio broadcast, have them share their recording with the rest of class for other students to listen to for extra listening practice.

For more information on using Audacity for recording, check out: Audacity: Audio Recording Software For more ideas on creating audio recordings for the classroom, check out the webinar: Podcasting in the Classroom .

For more ideas on using news in the classroom, check out the March 2016 Teacher’s Corner .

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Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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