First and second grade students are not yet able to write comprehensive articles but will have fun to put together a newspaper with clippings from other publications. Ask your students to find and take along pieces of news items they find interesting, funny or touching. Divide the class into groups and ask each team to design their own newspaper by making up headlines, and pasting the clippings together with drawings and illustrations made by the students. During the activities, students will learn the composition of newspapers, and realize the importance of making news interesting. The lesson plan for class newspaper in first or second grade can be planned for one to two weeks.
From third grade on students will be more confident with their writing skills and are able to write articles and short essays. In a lesson plan covering four weeks, ask the students to make a newspaper about their school and local community. Divide the class into editorial teams that cover news, politics, sports and entertainment. Each team has to create a page in the newspaper by collecting worthy material which can include interviews with teachers and local historians, reports from school sports events and reviews of cherished books and movies. The teams also have to appoint one editor each who will edit and proofread the materials, and decide on who will be looking for pictures and illustrations. Assemble the newspaper on screen for publishing on paper or online.
To promote thinking skills and make use of the students' imagination, ask your students to watch and read news consistently over the period of a week to get an impression on what makes a good story. Divide the class into teams and ask the students to write the newspaper of their dreams by making up stories that really would interest them to read. The groups will represent editorial teams within news, sports and entertainment, and the students will discuss choice of items, angles, photographs and illustrations before starting to collect materials and starting to write. Also appoint a team that will design the layout. Give the teams three to four weeks within the lesson plan to finish the publication on paper or on the school's homepage.
Students in grades five and six learn about defining moments in U.S. history, including the Civil War and the Declaration of Indepence. Ask your students to prepare the newspaper dated at a historical point in time. Articles can include a report from a frontline, a portrait of a central political character or details about a debate. The lesson plan offers opportunities for cross curriculum research as students can include articles about significant scientific inventions at the time, or describe art and artists. The students also will provide illustrations for the articles and gossip pages or classifieds. A lesson plan for a historical newspaper should be set at four to six weeks to give the students opportunity to research and write.