Project: news stories

Last week, we started working on a new project in my 4º ESO class. In this project, the students have to research a journalistic style and report three news stories according to their chosen style.

Here you have the presentation I used in class:

First of all, the students got into groups, and before choosing a style, we discussed some common characteristics of each of them together. We discussed things such as bias, neutrality, focus, the importance given to personal commentary by the person reporting the news, the general tone, the role of the audience, and some other generalities. Then, each group chose a style and they started working on their scripts. 

Although I have given them three stories to report and examples of raw news to my students, I've actually given them the freedom to develop their stories as they like. In other words, they all have to talk about an oil spill, a new vaccine and a celeb becoming a mother, but the stories described by each group can differ. 

I am really excited about this project because, although we are working on fictional news, the students will gain a deeper understanding of the role of the media in news reporting, and hopefully, this will make my students a little more critical when they read or hear the news, by asking themselves the same questions we discussed at the beginning of the project: is this biased? What political agenda does it have, if any? Is this news or opinion? ... 

All the groups have decided to record a video, and one of them has asked to use Touchcast. As I write these lines, however, we're still at the script-writing stage of the project. I shall update again in a few days. 

Thanks for reading!

Project: a survey (2)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the surveys on role models, which my 4º ESO students had made. These surveys were filled out by other students at school. Once enough responses had been received, the authors collated and analysed the data and presented the results to the class. 

Google Forms is great because it simplifies this job for you. It makes pie charts and and bar charts, so it makes the job of interpreting data easier. The open questions (short or long answers) yielded different results, sometimes unexpected or even wasteful, as the students who took the surveys didn't always take the questions seriously. I think my students learned a lesson there. 

Finally, the results were interpreted and analysed. My students used Google Slides to make their presentations, using some of the graphs provided by Google Forms, and conclusions were drawn in insightful ways, which made this part of the project meaningful and informative. 

The general feedback from the class was positive. They had never done a project like this and they relished the challenge. It was nice to create a questionnaire that was treated like a real one (by most people, anyway), and not like a classroom activity that stays within the same four walls where it was created. 

They did say that making three different surveys about the same topic (role models) was a bit samey, though, and that it would have been better to have used different topics instead. I have to say that I agree with this, and for next year I will probably ask my students to make surveys about a few different topics, such as stereotypes, independence, the rights of young people, and so on.  

The next step is to do a writing on the back of this. We're working on reports and proposals at the moment. I'll write a post about this once we get there. 

Thanks for checking in!