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These are the categories I teach in the order in which I teach them. Through each of these articles I am trying to teach: critical thinking skills, listening skills, interviewing skills, notetaking skills, analyzing skills, writing skills, grammar skills, web research skills. Personality feature The reason I do this first is because it is easy for students to find it in the newspaper and it is easy for students to relate to the articles. People like reading about other interesting people. They are required to find three personality features and critique each one. That means go over each paragraph and discuss what kind of information is in each paragraph, discuss the organization of the article and the use of quotes. It is important for student to distinguish between a personality feature and an obituary. They seem to have difficulty so I tell them if the person is dead, it is probably an obituary. Also, I use this assignment as a way for students to get to know each other. They have to interview each other and then write an article about the student they interviewed. In learning about this writing style, personality feature, they also learn other important skills I am trying to teach: One of the critical things they learn in doing this article is that they cannot write a chronological account of a person's life. It just isn't interesting. They need to decide what is important first and then feature it. Deciding what is important is hard for them since it involves critical thinking, not something they are accustomed to doing. It takes a few weeks for this assignment because I am teaching so many skills simultaneously. While the teaching is intense, the interest level is very high because all the articles they are writing are about students in the class and they all want to read them. Movie Review The second article they write is a review, a movie review. The reason I pick this is because all teenagers LOVE movies and I am trying to get them excited about writing so I pick something that they are already excited about. Can you imagine being assigned to go to the movies for your homework?? They all love it and rush out to the movies on Saturday night. What I am really teaching is imbedded in the assignment: critical thinking skills. I don't want a synopsis of the film; I want a review. That is very hard for most of them. They are used to regurgitating. I ask them to review the film based on the following items: plot, acting, cinematography, direction. Each of these is again broken down into subsections. They are to discuss the plot and explain why it is realistic, exciting or not, weaving into their discussion a brief one sentence plot summary. Again, students find three movie reviews in the newspaper which they use as models. They critique these reviews first and then paste them on notebook paper and keep them in their folders. Restaurant Reviews The third article they write is a restaurant review. Why? Because like movies, nothing is nearer and dearer to a teenagers heart than food. In this case, they can go with their friends, their parents, or alone to a restaurant. Then I am asking them to again review the food, not just list what they ate. As I say to them, "This is not a chronological account of your visit to a restaurant. It is a review. The reader wants to know what you thought of the restaurant using your food as an example. He doesn't want a list of your food." Students find three restaurant reviews and critique them and they add them to their notebooks as models for writing restaurant reviews. News leads I teach this next because it is very hard to teach and I am trying to sandwich it between exciting assignments. Students need to learn how to write a 35-45 word news lead using most of the important information: who, what, when, where, why and how. They need to learn to write the lead in ONE sentence, or two at most. I give students a list of facts and ask them to order the facts in order of importance. This is hard for them. Then I ask them to take all the facts and write a lead. Again this is very hard for them. It takes days of in class assignments as they struggle to achieve it. They write and rewrite until they get it. When they finally get it, they tend to remember it and can do it in diverse situations. It is just getting it the first time that is hard. It is sort of like learning to ride a bike. After they first learn how, they need to practice. I spend time going over writing styles, conciseness in language, grammar. They need to know the distinction between a run-on sentence, a fragment and a complete sentence or they will never learn to write a lead correctly. The other articles I teach include the following: Opinion Articles |