It is 8 o'clock at night and I still feel like I am on a high from today. I can't wait for school to start in August to put what we learned today into practice. Two of the sessions we had today will definitely be used in my classes.
First, the story mapping. My newspaper editor took a session on this topic at a conference we attended in April and we tried it for our last issue but since I hadn't been in the session with her I was foggy on the way it worked. After today I am so gung ho about it. My kids are always throwing out random topics or really broad ideas and this is a very detailed way to break them down into smaller, more manageable stories. It would also be great if you wanted to cover a larger topic in individual stories. Our center spread is always about one topic but we have multiple articles on the spread so this story mapping idea would be great to get really good coverage.
The other exercise that has my mind working overtime was the group reporting exercise. I loved the mystery of it and I can see my kids really getting behind the role-playing and the secrecy. The drama room is right next to mine so I might see if I can recruit some of the advanced theatre kids to play the characters. It is an exercise that could be used for interviewing, question writing, note taking and lead writing. I like exercises that cover more than one lesson, and this could be done more than once during the year to give them practice but also to see how they've grown as journalists.
If every day is going to be this jam packed my mind is going to overflow and my kids are going to be in for a whole new program in the fall.
Emily Miller
Arlington High School
Arlington, Texas
I am disappointed that I have to wait the remainder of summer for school to resume. There is going to be so much for us to take in these two weeks and I am excited about restructuring my journalism curriculum to fit in all these cool ideas.
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