Day Three
Session 1
Introduce the students to a piece of research per group. I did this by visiting a local museum and asking the students to choose an aspect to research and then write about in more depth later (the adaptation for the lower level group was that each student worked in a group that corresponded to their travel groups from the previous weekend and they were asked to write a report of their visit, including photographs).
Session 2
Return to the classroom to follow up on the groups’ choices and begin the online research. The group will need to decide on individual responsibilities for writing, researching and editing of the article and the teacher can set a word limit depending on the group’s capability. A number of the groups will have begun writing their article by the end of this session.
Day Four
Session 1
During this session you may wish to concentrate on headline-writing. This is not an easy aspect to cover, but there are a few course-book and online lesson suggestions to make it accessible for upper-intermediate learners.
Session 2
An interesting addition at this stage (if you feel the groups are on track) is to teach a lesson on advertising. There are a variety of fun activities on advertising and marketing to be found in coursebooks and online. To make the week feel rounded skills-wise, you may wish to include a listening exercise. Ideally, the students should feel inspired to create an advert or two for their newspaper. You may wish to incorporate that into this session or leave the decision to them.
Day Five
Session 1
Students will be working in groups to write, edit each others’ work and find photos for their newspaper. The teacher simply facilitates as required. If any students have finished their work, you may wish to have a few extra options for articles that they research and write under time pressure (great for differentiation). You could choose topics such as local events, up-coming festivals or major world current affairs.
Session 2
The newsroom deadline day. All students should be working individually and as a group to pull the final newspaper together. It is quite fun to create a slightly manic feel to this session as the deadline draws closer!
After the Project
Following the final session, you will want to print off copies for the students (a lovely memento of their studies if they are only with you and their group for a short time) and perhaps a larger colour version for the classroom wall.
Feedback on the quality of writing produced may be a very personal consideration. My opinion is that the feedback should be almost wholly positive, with perhaps only recurring issues and major issues leading to communicative breakdown being dealt with, especially given the many opportunities for peer-teaching offered throughout the project.
I believe that the value of this project lies in allowing the students a lot of free reign in terms of what they choose to write about and how they write it, hopefully giving them “an understanding of their capacity to write, motivation, self-confidence and courage” (Cimcoz, 1999). I hope you may find the same with your classes.