Wall Street Journal

Each week, groups will be given a small writing project outside of the basic tools we’re using this year in 3^rd Year Language Arts. I had intended to start this next week to give students some time to become acclimated to the tools they will be using. However, our C1 group has taken so well to the tools that I have decided to give them a small project for this week.

Students were given a copy of the Wall Street Journal for Students and asked to read through the articles to find one that they found interesting. They are to read the article, briefly summarize it, verify the information from another source, and then write an editorial to be published on KidBlog. Here's an example of an editorial from the Today's News-Herald to give students an idea of what an editorial is.

Tuesday, students took the newspapers home with the assignment of reading the article and summarizing it in one or two paragraphs. On Wednesday, during class, they will be given some time to do some “fact checking” about the article. They will be expected to write a paragraph explaining where they found verification and what that article said either supporting or disagreeing with the story from the Wall Street Journal.

With these two pieces of writing, students will write an editorial on Thursday for publishing in KidBlog.

This is a pretty big opening step, but I’m confident students will be able to meet the challenge. Look for an editorial or two on our Language Arts Blog next week.