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Teacher Resources by Grade
|1st - 2nd||3rd - 4th|
|5th - 6th||7th - 8th|
|9th - 10th||11th - 12th|
Book Report Alternative: Sharing Info from Informational Reading
|Grades||5 – 8|
|Lesson Plan Type||Standard Lesson|
|Estimated Time||Five 50-minute sessions|
MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
- Newspapers for student examination
- Classroom with LCD projector and whiteboard/interactive whiteboard
- Books from Suggested Informational Books
- Computers with Internet capabilities and the optional possibility of printing
Grades K – 12 | Student Interactive | Writing & Publishing Prose
The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers.
- Suggested Informational Books
- Informational Text Notes
- Inverted Pyramid Format
- Newspaper Story Format
- What Will I Read Next?
- Internet Public Library
This link will provide access to newspapers worldwide.
- Test the Printing Press on your computers to familiarize yourself with the interactive and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.
- Reserve time in your school’s computer lab or library for sessions four and five that will occur after students completed reading their informational text and writing their articles.
- If possible, have the Printing Press bookmarked on the computers. If that is not feasible, you can sign up for a wiki at Wikispaces where you can create a class page for the link or you can simply tell the students the address of the printing press.
- Find books from the Suggested Informational Books printout, and consult with your school librarian for additional informational books for the students.
- For session one, students will examine the newspapers in groups of three to four, so secure newspapers for this activity. Make one copy per student of the printout Informational Text Notes for this session.
- For Session Two, find a recent news article to share with students that illustrates using the six questions reporters answer: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How? You can use the Internet Public Library to find articles from newspaper around the world or choose to use an article from a hard copy. Make one copy for every two students. Also, make one copy per every two students of the printout Newspaper Story Format for students to utilize as they examine this article.
- For session three, make one copy for every student of the Newspaper Story Format printout to peer edit each other’s articles.
- For session six, make one copy per student of the printout What Will I Read Next?