LESSON PLAN4

This lesson plan was pulled from the American Society of Newspaper Editors high school journalism Web site. Sarah Karp, Columbia Links co-director, used this with the reporting academy, and it worked great. The Web site has hundreds of lesson plans there on numerous subjects.

Activity 1: Students are asked to close their eyes and envision the most interesting thing they experienced over the weekend or summer vacation. Allow about 5-10 minutes of absolute quiet while students work. No talking allowed. This is an individual exercise. The only person allowed to talk is teacher. (It might be a nice touch to add classical background music)

Activity 2: Divide students into small groups and ask each member of group to describe their "interesting thing" to others in the group. Each person is limited to speaking for no more than five minutes. A timer will sound at five-minute intervals, signaling change in speakers. (This should take at least 20-30 minutes)

Activity 3: Students return to their desks and are instructed to now put that description in writing. They have 15 minutes to do so.

Activity 4: Students return to the small group they were in for Activity 2 and take turns reading their descriptions to group members. When finished they return to their seats.

Activity 5: Class discussion on how many stories sounded the same orally and in writing. What, if any, were the differences between the two? Teacher will guide discussion and incorporate points about the naturalness of story telling. How we tell the story is what sets us apart stylistically. It is what gives us our own unique voices.

Were students more natural when speaking about their experiences than when writing about them?

Why did some feel the need to tell the story differently in print? (Take remainder of period to do this and could possibly continue at beginning of second day if necessary.)