"And That's The Way It Is..." Today in History

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Students create a nightly-news broadcast for a special time/date in history.

Subjects: Language Arts, Social Studies, Educational Technology

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Objectives
Students will:

• learn about a period/event in history by researching it from different perspectives,
• analyze the elements of nightly-news broadcasts seen on local TV stations,
• write and produce a news broadcast for a date/period in history, and
• work cooperatively as a member of a group or broadcast team.

Keywords
news, broadcast, video, TV news, TV, Civil War, American Revolution, Roaring Twenties

Materials Needed

• research materials (from the library and/or Internet)
• video recorder
• a list of significant periods or dates in history (if you choose to focus more broadly than on a single event/period)
• art supplies
• technology tools for creating graphics (optional)

Procedure
What period or events in history are you studying this year? The format of a nightly-news broadcast could be a fun way to get students excited about learning about a period in history. In addition, the news broadcast is an excellent format for

• reviewing content taught;
• creating a culminating activity to a unit of study; or
• building the "core teaching" unit for any period in history.

The project might be approached in any number of ways. For example...

Small groups of students might work together to create a nightly-news broadcast for an "average" day during the Civil War or some other period in history. The broadcast will include both hard news and feature reports that present facts and interesting information about the period. All groups might work to create a news broadcasts from the same historic period, or each group might work on a broadcast from a different period such as...

• Colonial Times,
• the Revolutionary War,
• Westward Migration,
• the Civil War,
• the Industrial Revolution,
• Immigration of the Late Nineteenth Century,
• World War I,
• the Roaring Twenties,
• the Great Depression,
• World War II, or
• the Korean and Vietnam Wars

Alternatively, you might assign to individual students or small teams an important date or a specific decade in history. The students will create the nightly-news show that conveys the true significance of that date or decade in history.

Before setting students loose to create a news broadcast, you might first assign viewing the nightly TV news as homework. You might ask students to watch a different nightly-news broadcast at least three nights over a weeklong period. Challenge them to create a list of the kinds of news features (for example, hard news, opinion, consumer/economy features, up-close-and-personal features that focus on a single person, "style" features that examine a hot trend?) that they saw on the different news shows they viewed. At the end of the week, you might create a class list possible features that students can refer to as they "build" their broadcasts.

Of course this news-broadcast activity includes research. Strong research will be key to creating a broadcast that is accurate. Every student might be responsible for being a news editor; each will write one of the stories/features that comprise their broadcast.

Students might observe the credits at the end of a news broadcast to draw up a list of potential "jobs." They might assign roles to the members in their groups. Some of those roles might include

• researcher,
• on-air anchor,
• on-camera feature reporters,
• videographer,
• graphics producer, and
• director.

Beyond that, students will want to draw on the talents of the peers in their group as they create their broadcast. For example, the artist in the group might create the graphics, a person with strong geography skills might create a map, a person who plays a musical instrument might select (or compose) the broadcast's theme music...

When completed, students will share their news broadcasts with their classmates and lead a discussion afterward. The broadcasts can also be used at a parents' night event where parents are able to view all the broadcasts and maybe even talk with the reporters about what they learned from the activity.

Assessment
You will want to create a rubric that details your expectations for the project. You might use a cooperative group rubric too; you might use some elements of these cooperative-group rubrics as part of the one you create:

• Rubric for Cooperative Groups
• Cooperative Group Work Rubric
• Cooperative Group Rubric
• Cooperative Learning Project Rubric

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