News Year

All the news that was fit to print.

Your pencil, or your stylus hovers over paper or piece of wet clay. A king has died, an inventor has just made a leap of logic, and you are there to capture it all because you are a reporter in the past.

When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the Law of Gravity, you were there. When Galileo studied Jupiter making his discovery of four moons visible from earth, he let you look through his lens before sprinting for his scientific journal to write an account of the discovery.

Become a beat reporter covering the best events of a profound year in history in science, culture, and politics. Students become motivated writers as they research the memorable newsmakers of a remarkable year in the past.

Personalized for the Student

Because I was learning about a creative personality that lived in the past, it made me consider people that lived more recently such as Steve Jobs. I also decided to learn more about the era in which the discovery was made. The history of invention doesn’t always match with social history. They seem as if they are on two unrelated tracks sometimes. What a revelation!

I think it’s time to start journal writing at home. After learning about the Renaissance, I want to create my own place to be creative. It will be a journal in which I can draw, make observations about the world, and even dream of the world of tomorrow.

While I love to read, most of my energy has been devoted to fiction. I think it’s time for me to read non-fiction books as well.

I now realize that history is made up of people who have ideas, and thoughts that are made from observations, research, and an insatiable need to question.

I took time to reflect in my personal journal, and even drew up a new invention. After seeing how Leonardo examined nature, I went out in the backyard and dreamed up a way for birds to release bird feed. Time to build.

I was scared at first. Calling a college professor seemed daunting, but after I got him on the phone and began asking him questions, I relaxed. He suggested I read a few articles, and I will, but I will also use a direct quote from our interview. Listening and writing is difficult, but I developed a shorthand to get his words down accurately.

As I wrote my editorial, I kept thinking about comic strips like Doonsbury and Dilbert. Aren’t these editorials as well? I even gave myself the goal of creating a comic strip about the Age of Industrialism and a little boy fishing in a small boat. I wonder how many eyes I will draw in the fish?

One of my articles was well-received, but the other one didn’t quite work. I have to decide whether I should rewrite it and do more research, or write a new piece. Back to the drawing board.

Success! I did more research, and knowing more, I rewrote the entire article. My editor loved it, and I can’t wait to read it next week. If first you don’t succeed, try, and try again.

I learned a lot about the past, and think that human beings are quite unique and wonderful. They can be destructive as well. As I have learned, the debate goes on, and there will always be new and exciting innovations and people to write feature articles about.

Reading Material

a reader of primary sources: journal entries and brief histories of inventors, artists, and those on the social avant-garde
an exploration of the illustrations and writing of Leonardo da Vinci
a reader of secondary sources
a reader of newspaper articles highlighting historic events as well as other forms of reporting from secondary sources, and directly from primary sources.
articles from the National Geographic, Mother Jones, and the New York Times
a reader of famous commentaries in a variety of forms including art, comic strips, and sculpture, and poetry
the work of students, writer’s circle, J.K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard about the importance of failure and imagination
A reader of student work

Skills & Activities

exploring a year in the past, examining inventions, comparing and contrasting, creating a timeline of human endeavor and invention
research skills, research using primary sources, sorting through a lot of material to find the necessary information
research using secondary sources, what other people think about a topic
Writing for newspapers (Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?),
quoting using AP style guidelines
text-to-world connections, how do inventions and advancements relate to me
text-to-text connections, writing a feature article for magazines
text-to-self connections, writing editorials
Time to rewrite articles, editorials, and magazine features, and to add details
How to work with an editor with a deadline, practice presentations
Presentation and display of collected art work