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With Style
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Introduction: It is important for students to learn about and use the stylistic conventions required for journalists. In this lesson, students have the chance to use a style guide to find correct answers for a treasure hunt and to help them correct a poorly written paragraph. |
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Resources: |
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Activities: Task One - Find the Right One |
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Give the students the: Style Guide Treasure Hunt |
| They are asked to choose the correct way to abbreviate, capitalize, etc. 30 different standard writing problems. They are also asked to provide the page reference for each correct answer. This way students will not be able to simply guess which of these is correct. | |
| Want to make this more interesting for students? You might choose to make this a timed contest. Students could work in partners, hand-in one copy per pair and prizes could be handed out for the fastest group to find the correct answers. |
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| Task Two - Rewriting Take a recent story from the newspaper. Retype the story making a series of mistakes in the areas from the treasure hunt. Give students the new, poorly written story. They will need to rewrite the paragraph correctly. Allow students to use their style guides in order to review or learn rules in the following areas: 1. The proper way to use quotations within news stories 2. How to paragraph in a news story (specifically because the rules for this are very different then what they have learned in the past) 3. Capitalization 4. Sentence structure 5. Punctuation 6. Proper abbreviations |
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| Objectives: Students will be able to - quote accurately, paraphrase where appropriate, and use appropriate attribution methods - analyze and evaluate their own and others' writing - use a journalism style guide |
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View other lessons for the main objective. | |
Instructional Strategies: Task 1 - Games (Experiential) Task 2 - Assigned Questions (Independent), Compare and Contrast (Direct) |
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Task Two Continued . . . |
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Remind the students that while there are certain rules for paragraphing, there is not necessarily only one right way to to this. There are, however, very specific rules for punctuation that students should spend time looking up if they consistently made the same errors. | |
The more the students use the style guide, the more familiar they will become with the rules associated with journalistic writing. Their exposure to all of the information in a style guide will help them to see that if there is something they are not sure of, they have a resource they can draw on to find the information. Need a news story?
Here is a copy of a news story with a series of mistakes and the story as it was originally written. Assessment and Evaluation: Task One can be evaluated in one of two ways: As a teacher you can offer the students the option to play the treasure hunt as a contest. You would then check each of the answers allow with the time handed in and give the students prizes for the fastest correct answers. This format would allow you to see all the groups' answers and evaluate specific target areas for further instruction. The other option is that once each student, or pair of students, has completed the work sheet, you could correct as a class and field any questions regarding wrong answers. In either case, no formal grade will be associated with evaluation. Task Two will be self-assessed by the students. |
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Last Updated
May 30, 2005