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Rationale:

A newspaper can support literacy, build fluency, develop critical thinking, and build character. It is a rich source of data used to inform citizens and students of the world around them as they grow to become independent thinkers in our society. Newspaper reading can stimulate an interest in politics and current events, and can provide a source of entertainment in teaching students to become pleasure readers. The newspaper can provide relevance to content that is covered in each of the academic areas of a public school. Therefore it is important that students can see the relevance of content covered and find personally relevant information easily and efficiently. By having the students write their own newspaper they are seeing the relevance of the writing process and literacy.

Learner Outcomes

1.     The students will be able to link life skills to the newspaper

2.     The students will be able to: Follow complex directions

3.     Practicing Editing and proofreading skills

4.     Use a computer to produce a newspaper

5.     Students will practice using the writing process

My Interest

          As a teacher who will be teaching socially maladapted students with disabilities, I see a need to teach students practical, functional life skills that can be useful to them during independent living.

Lesson Plan Goal: The students will be able to write their own newspaper in accordance to 7^th grade state standards by using the writing process.

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to write paragraphs with a clearly stated main idea and supporting details.
2. Students will be able to write titles to their essays/ articles in proper form.
3. Students will be able to write descriptive essays and display their writing in a class made newspaper.
4. Students will be able to write persuasive essays and document the web pages which support their opinion.
5. Students will write stories and articles using the writing process
6. Students will meet issue deadlines
7. Students will have equal to or less than 2 out of 10 grammatical or punctuation errors in their writing.
8. The students will compare chart numbers and prices of grocery items to help budget money necessary for community living.
9. The students will be able to link daily living skills to a community newspaper.
10. The students will be able to use various software programs, which will help them write their own newspaper.
11. The students will use the World Wide Web to find information on job listings, health facts, current events…

12. The students will review the computer word processing program.

Lesson Plan Annotations:

Lesson 1: Newspapers and Computers - The students will become familiar with newspapers and Microsoft Word as part of the coping skills curriculum.

Lesson 2: Readplease - The students will work on their reading skills by placing their repeated readings in one of their articles named, What I Can Read. They will be given a Curriculum Based Measure of their progress and then be shown how to use Readplease to read along with the voice on their repeated reading.

Lesson 3: Current Events - The students will write a descriptive essay/ article of a current event that will be obtained from teacher led discussion. The teacher will show the students how to find a current event from a news search engine and will have them do their own search and write the essay.

Lesson 4: Trackstar - The students will use Trackstar to do a search of newspaper headlines. The student will choose a name for their own newspaper using a website on Trackstar.

Lesson 5: Inspiration - The teacher will have the students use inspiration to find out what type of things they can do by using the newspaper. The students will cut out examples of different parts of the newspaper.

Lesson 6: Find a Job - The students will do a WebQuest that will help them find available job listings in the community. They will then put this in a Word table under the topic of classified ads that will be integrated into their own personal newspaper.

Lesson 7: Grocery List - The teacher will show the students pictures in which they have to find the price of the food item in the advertisements. The students will also have to use the coupons in the teacher made newspaper to show the real price on an excel document. The students will transfer the prices into the Excel spreadsheet and use the Excel function that adds the prices up.

Lesson 8: Sports Column - The students will write a column based on games they played in class or based on a recent athletic event that they saw and incorporate it into their sports section.

Lesson 9: Letters to the Editor - The students will write a persuasive essay to the editor. The teacher will show an example of a letter to the editor from the internet.

Lesson 10: Final Production - The students will produce their own newsletter (newspaper).  

Final Assessment:

The entire unit is worth 100 points. The criteria for mastery is to obtain 83 points total. Each individual lesson explains the evaluation used and criteria for mastery.

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