Give Teachers Lesson Ideas to Increase Readers

I can't remember what day and during what conversation, but at some point during this crazy blur of a week we talked about how to increase readership and how to get students to look at your website, read your paper, or check out your product.  I created the below handout and gave it out to my faculty.  My colleagues appreciated the activities already thought out a bit for them and many times throughout the year I would get feedback from them after they had their students do this on a story or my whole website.  

I didn't tell the teachers in my school they HAD to do this or that it HAD to be done at any given time and they appreciated having it as an option.  There were teachers that promptly through it in the garbage and did nothing with it, but there were lots of them that put it in their substitute lessons folder and it gave a good, effective option for days when they needed a last minute sub.

Using the School Media to Develop Better Citizens

davishighnews.com and D-TV Advisory Activities

• Have students log into the davishighnews.com website or watch the D-TV broadcast during your advisory.  Have the students choose 1 article or story that they are interested in and then write a 1-page written response to the article.  Students could choose to agree or disagree with the article or simply comment on what they learned.

• Ask students to choose an article from the website or a broadcast package and revise and edit all mistakes that they find in the story.

• Choose any story or package from D-TV and have the students read or watch the story and identify on a separate piece of paper the following questions:  Who? What? When? Where? Why?  Which of these is the most important?

• Choose an article or story from the opinion and editorial section and identify if the information in the article is fact or opinion.  Have the students circle the facts or label them with an F and underline the opinion or label them with an O.

• Go through the website and make a “survival vocabulary list” of words that a person would need to know to be a good responsible citizen in today’s world. Be sure to list the legal terms you find that we assume all people understand.

• Agree or Disagree.  Go through all of the articles in one section and write a big A or a D over any complete story, paragraph or quote that you agree or disagree with.  For each A write why you agree with the statement or quote and what makes it believable, and for each D write why you disagree with the statement and what makes it not believable.

• Write a journal about why a society should be encouraged and allowed to have a free media and whether they think that should apply to high schools as well.

• Discuss the First Amendment of the Constitution and ask students to identify which of the 5 freedoms they feel is most important.  Either have a class discussion about all 5 freedoms or ask students to write their reasoning for feeling the way they do.

• Ask the students to write an editorial about any issue that they think is important within their community.  Collect all editorials and submit them to the school newspaper.

•  Share the school media’s Statement of Purpose (below) with your class.  Ask them to write what they think about the statement and what stands out as being important to them as a member of the student body that the paper and D-TV represent.

Davishighnews.com and Davis Television (D-TV) will be referred to together as The Davis High Media.  Both media programs serve the community, faculty and student body of Davis High School as an Open Public Forum for freedom of expression as established by the First Amendment.  The adviser and staff members strive to report school news and issues professionally and with a focus on journalistic integrity and credibility while maintaining concordance with the Davis High School Mission Statement.  Davishighnews.com will be updated daily throughout the school year, and the D-TV broadcasts will be aired once a week during the advisory/tutorial class period.

Terri Hall
Davis High School
Kaysville, Utah