Computer Lab Assignment: YOU Are the Reporter

Welcome to the computer lab, boys and girls,

  Today's assignment has you becoming a news reporter! 

  Click on the "articles" label either at the bottom of this post or on the right-hand side of the blog to see all the different articles available to you.

  Read the headlines and the articles. See which one seems the most compelling to you.

  Read the article again and make sure you understand the main idea and the details of it.

  Once you have selected an article and have read it twice, take out your "Reporter's Notebook" (which you have brought up to the lab with you) and take notes on the article. You are NOT copying the article word for word. The notes will be in your own words and will form a summary.

  Here is one way you can write your summary: List the 5 ws and one h. This is a great reporter's tool. Write the answers to who, what, where, when, why and how. You can select an interesting order to answer those questions in. If you answer all of those, your summary will be quite complete.

  Can you come up with any other ways to write a concise summary? 

   After you have written a summary, write an attention-grabbing headline. Your article already has one, but you need to write a new one. Try to out-do the original author of the article by coming up with an even more compelling headline!

  After each of your classmates has finished this assignment, we will host a news show in our classroom and hear all the news reports!

Important Vocabulary 

compelling - something that pops, that is interesting

concise - short and accurate

reporter - someone who shares news with people (through newspaper or on TV or radio)

article - chunk of writing telling you a news story

headline - attention grabbing phrase to describe an article

summary - recap of a story