After basking in the glories of the Roman empire, our students seized the opportunity to create a newspaper chronicling one year during the decline and fall of the once great empire. They researched the year to find information to write a lead news story, a human interest story, an article based on an "interview" of a key Roman figure of the time as well as writing two editorials that addressed two different causes for the empire's demise. Students wrote, revised, edited, and rewrote their stories before putting them into a Word template created to look like a newspaper. Most of them created publications well beyond what we expected to see! When we displayed the newspapers, the students were pleasantly suprised to see how well they turned out, and they were eager to share their work with the "judges" who chose the "Paw"litzer Prize winners for each house. We received many favorable comments from those who read the students' work. On debriefing day, the students felt that they had indeed learned a great deal about the Roman empire and were pleased with their final products.
These were great! I read many of them on your board and I was impressed at how well the students wrote! What a great final product to showcase all the hard work you and your students are putting in this year!!!! Thanks again for sharing your template with us!!
ReplyDeleteI like the story you told about how you said, "Wait, I forgot to tell you what expository writing is!" And the students replied, "It's okay, we can find out for ourselves--we'll just google it!" I think you've done a great job of making your classroom a place where students are in charge of their own learning!
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