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WALL NEWSPAPERS. A Project by michelle, September 2001 (see at the bottom of the page for copyright info).

Presentation of the Project
This activity is designed for students to learn about the press and about how journalists work and write. We can have discussions around these issues and also write some pieces for a Wall Newspaper or to publish them on the web.

Some of the activities we can undertake are listed here:
•  Learning about types of papers and the structure of a paper: sections.
•  Learning about the textual structure in different press items: ads, news articles, reports, interviews, cartoons...
•  Practicing procedural skills which facilitate intellectual work, like organizing the contents and lay out of an article, creating and undertaking interviews, doing surveys and arranging its results, classifying information, summarizing, and so on.
•  Developing creativity through creative writing or gathering ideas and team work abilities.
•  Noticing the use of passive and the use of headlines in journalistic language. See Worksheet on breaking news on September 11.

Material: We will read and discuss the Project (see attached handouts) and then produce some items for a Wall Newspaper. Whatever students produce will be published on the web page and can be put up in the corridors of La Escuela in a few meters of brown paper. We would then need markers, staplers, cello tape, scissors. Other: newspapers, magazines or newsletters, brochures, maps, photos, whatever.

NEWSPAPERS: STRUCTURE, PROCESS, CULTURAL POINTS
And some activities

A few ideas to find resources.
Topics: mass media, the press, quality newspapers (full-format papers), the popular press (the gutter press, tabloids, mass-circulation papers), yellow journalism, investigative journalism, literary journalism.

Material easy to find: When we watched the video Stop Bush, Amy Goodman mentioned Murdoch, a powerful business man who is the owner of FOX channel. Download a documentary on Murdoch and Fox Channel: http://www.freedocumentaries.org/downloadOutfoxed.htm

Films like "All the President's Men" illustrate investigative journalism. (See below.)
TV series like "Periodistas" and the Yellow Press could be a subject of discussion.

Read about The World of Newspapers: its people, its types of texts, some cultural info.