Microsoft Publisher
Project Name
Henley’s Happenings—A Classroom Newsletter
Description of Learning Goals and Standards
The learning goals are multifaceted in this lesson. Working on a project from start to finish helps children process, organize and prioritize new information. Transforming students into reporters and editors causes them to become effective users of technology in order to publish their own class newspaper. Additionally, editing articles to be published incorporates critical thinking skills as well as reading and writing proficiency. The Standards that are met for this lesson are:
· 4—Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
· 5—Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
· 6—Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
· 8—Students use a variety of technological and information resources (libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
· 11—Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
Rationale for Technology
Even though my lesson plan calls for the ReadWriteThink Printing Press publishing program, Microsoft Publisher works just as well for creating a newspaper for a class and would cut down on incremental costs of buying that program. I think the ReadWriteThink Printing Press may actually have a newspaper format for the project but this may not be worth the extra cost if the school keeps Publisher on their network. This technology is great for students to learn to work on a project from beginning to end. It helps with organization skills, editing proficiency, working as a team to put together a newsletter. The technology provides a fun way for students to learn reporting skills and the fact that their work will be shown in a professional manner using Publisher should make them want to work hard on their articles and the actual layout to produce a high quality final product. It is great to have a computer program that allows the students to take their hard work and format it into a professional looking product.
Description of Lesson Implementation
This plan follows Days 8 & 9 of the Lesson Plan I- Creating a Newspaper-where the students take the articles that they have written and edit and format them for a newspaper. They will layout the articles, insert pictures, make sure their headlines grab a reader’s attention and that their articles adhere to the reporting lessons that were learned in previous weeks.
This newsletter would become a monthly project in the classroom. Students would rotate staff positions to increase their proficiency in different types of news reporting. Students would learn to take other articles and reports that they have written and summarize them for a news report. Students would take turns being on the publishing staff that actually formats the articles for the paper. Rotation of positions should allow all students to understand the entire process of news reporting. It also allows the newspaper format to vary from month to month based on the creativity of the staff.
Assessment
Microsoft Publisher is a great computer program for school and is a very powerful tool for language arts as well as other subjects. Students should take pride in having a polished finished product and should want to work hard to make sure their published product (that will be seen by other students and classes) is their best work. It should help them improve their editing and vocabulary skills. The word processing portion makes it so much easier to do this. Researching articles on a monthly basis should increase their research skills. Using the computer program Publisher helps hone their technological abilities while having fun on the computer.
While I would use a rubric to grade individual articles, I think peer pressure to produce the best newspaper would be enough feedback for the students. The actual formatting of the paper should be a fun activity and not one to be graded. Sometimes the less academic students can shine in this area and knowing that they are not going to be graded on this part of the project could allow them to be more creative. If the finished product fell off in quality, I of course, would institute some sort of evaluation system. I would probably individually meet with the staff and talk about how they could improve their product. I would still not want this part of the project to be graded--some things need to exist for a student's own personal satisfaction and not for comparison purposes.
Other Places to Use this Solution
Publisher can be used across the curriculum as students could use reports they wrote in other subjects such as science or history and summarize them for the newsletter. It, of course, could also be used as a teacher tool to send newsletters to parents. It can be used as a web page so that parents can get weekly updates on what is happening in the class. The uses for this program are endless.
What I Learned and What I Would Improve Next
Time
I learned that Publisher is a very easy computer program to use. While formatting my “newspaper”, I realized that this is a very powerful tool for teaching Language Arts and for keeping students interested in writing.
I did have some problem with the columns and I would have to use this a lot before I had students format their own layout. A template is the best way to go at first.
I never could get a caption inserted next to a picture but other people were also having the same problem. I need to experiment with that part further. I think this is a great program that should be on every school’s network.
References/Resources Used
Microsoft Publisher computer program
http://www.msn.com--online/ news service
Various photos found on internet
Henley’s Happenings—A Classroom Newsletter
Description of Learning Goals and Standards
The learning goals are multifaceted in this lesson. Working on a project from start to finish helps children process, organize and prioritize new information. Transforming students into reporters and editors causes them to become effective users of technology in order to publish their own class newspaper. Additionally, editing articles to be published incorporates critical thinking skills as well as reading and writing proficiency. The Standards that are met for this lesson are:
· 4—Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
· 5—Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
· 6—Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
· 8—Students use a variety of technological and information resources (libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
· 11—Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
Rationale for Technology
Even though my lesson plan calls for the ReadWriteThink Printing Press publishing program, Microsoft Publisher works just as well for creating a newspaper for a class and would cut down on incremental costs of buying that program. I think the ReadWriteThink Printing Press may actually have a newspaper format for the project but this may not be worth the extra cost if the school keeps Publisher on their network. This technology is great for students to learn to work on a project from beginning to end. It helps with organization skills, editing proficiency, working as a team to put together a newsletter. The technology provides a fun way for students to learn reporting skills and the fact that their work will be shown in a professional manner using Publisher should make them want to work hard on their articles and the actual layout to produce a high quality final product. It is great to have a computer program that allows the students to take their hard work and format it into a professional looking product.
Description of Lesson Implementation
This plan follows Days 8 & 9 of the Lesson Plan I- Creating a Newspaper-where the students take the articles that they have written and edit and format them for a newspaper. They will layout the articles, insert pictures, make sure their headlines grab a reader’s attention and that their articles adhere to the reporting lessons that were learned in previous weeks.
This newsletter would become a monthly project in the classroom. Students would rotate staff positions to increase their proficiency in different types of news reporting. Students would learn to take other articles and reports that they have written and summarize them for a news report. Students would take turns being on the publishing staff that actually formats the articles for the paper. Rotation of positions should allow all students to understand the entire process of news reporting. It also allows the newspaper format to vary from month to month based on the creativity of the staff.
Assessment
Microsoft Publisher is a great computer program for school and is a very powerful tool for language arts as well as other subjects. Students should take pride in having a polished finished product and should want to work hard to make sure their published product (that will be seen by other students and classes) is their best work. It should help them improve their editing and vocabulary skills. The word processing portion makes it so much easier to do this. Researching articles on a monthly basis should increase their research skills. Using the computer program Publisher helps hone their technological abilities while having fun on the computer.
While I would use a rubric to grade individual articles, I think peer pressure to produce the best newspaper would be enough feedback for the students. The actual formatting of the paper should be a fun activity and not one to be graded. Sometimes the less academic students can shine in this area and knowing that they are not going to be graded on this part of the project could allow them to be more creative. If the finished product fell off in quality, I of course, would institute some sort of evaluation system. I would probably individually meet with the staff and talk about how they could improve their product. I would still not want this part of the project to be graded--some things need to exist for a student's own personal satisfaction and not for comparison purposes.
Other Places to Use this Solution
Publisher can be used across the curriculum as students could use reports they wrote in other subjects such as science or history and summarize them for the newsletter. It, of course, could also be used as a teacher tool to send newsletters to parents. It can be used as a web page so that parents can get weekly updates on what is happening in the class. The uses for this program are endless.
What I Learned and What I Would Improve Next
Time
I learned that Publisher is a very easy computer program to use. While formatting my “newspaper”, I realized that this is a very powerful tool for teaching Language Arts and for keeping students interested in writing.
I did have some problem with the columns and I would have to use this a lot before I had students format their own layout. A template is the best way to go at first.
I never could get a caption inserted next to a picture but other people were also having the same problem. I need to experiment with that part further. I think this is a great program that should be on every school’s network.
References/Resources Used
Microsoft Publisher computer program
http://www.msn.com--online/ news service
Various photos found on internet
posted by Jane at 9:15 AM
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