Noteworthy this week in support of student expression
With Constitution Day (Sept. 17) and its Congressional mandate to teach a lesson on constitutional issues, the press rights commission would like to highlight a couple of points:
• NCTE released a statement, NCTE Beliefs about Students’ Right to Write, that could lead to lessons and discussion.
• Fond du Lac High School in Wisconsin received new guidelines for their Cardinal Columns that allow students, in consultation with the adviser, to decide content without prior review. For more information and how it came about, check jeasprc.org in the next several weeks.
• Later this week, check this blog for the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission Constitution Day teaching lessons and activities. Until then, you can find previous lessons here. We designed our Constitution Day lesson plans to help students celebrate the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as mandated by Congress. Legislation requires schools to offer lessons on the Constitution and how it affects all Americans. Our lesson plans emphasize the First Amendment and particularly the freedoms of speech and the press.
With Constitution Day close, you might want to work our lessons when released Friday into that timeframe. One post will win a $25 gift certificate for the JEA bookstore. It’s easy to enter — just use the #CD2014. The winner will be chosen at random. In order to enter, post either students learning or celebrating Constitution Day by at 9:17 p.m Sept. 17. The winning post will be announced on the listserv.
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New lessons on fairness, crisis coverage,
media literacy and more for NIE Week
March 4-8 marks Newspaper In Education Week, the annual celebration of newspapers as a classroom resource across a variety of subjects.
This year, the American Press Institute and the Newseum have teamed up to deliver a new, three-unit curriculum with six lessons aligned to Common Core State Standards. Lessons focus on the following topics:
- Newspapers in Your Life – What’s News Where? and The First Rough Draft of Histor
- In the Newsroom – The Fairness Formula and Planning for the Unpredictable
- Media Literacy – Where News Comes From and Evaluating the News
If you’re not familiar with API and the Newseum, here’s a little background. In 2012, the former Newspaper Association of America Foundation was merged into the American Press Institute. API, now headquartered at NAA in Arlington, Va., is continuing the NAA Foundation’s long tradition of producing new curriculum materials in honor of NIE Week. The Newseum, the “museum of news” located in Washington, D.C., also has a tradition of providing educational resources for teachers.
“With so many sources of news and information at their disposal, young people more than ever need to be educated media consumers,” API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel said in a news release. “This curriculum is designed to help educators accomplish that. It makes use of original, professional journalism produced by local newspapers and combines it with the Newseum’s educational resources for something that is timely, real and proven in schools.”
Lessons in the NIE Week 2013 curriculum incorporate existing Newseum resources, such as the Today’s Front Pages gallery. They are geared toward middle- and high-school students, but include extension activities for elementary students. Although they are being released for NIE Week, lessons are “evergreen” in terms of subject matter and can be used anytime.
Need more lessons aligned to Common Core? Check out High Five, an integrated, three-unit curriculum that includes reading, writing, journalism, grammar, linguistics and visual literacy. All materials are age-appropriate for middle-school students. The curriculum uses the daily newspaper as a textbook and information source.
Marina Hendricks, a member of the SPRC, is director of communications at NAA and former manager of the NAA Foundation.
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