journalism lesson plans for high school

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Lesson plans archive.

Advertising

• Advertising sales Teaching students that advertising is an important community service; explaining that both businesses and customers benefit and that designing and selling ads requires professional knowledge and personal preparation.D
• Preparing Students as Sales Professionals: Steps for Selling Advertising Space Professionally Students generally have no idea how to sell advertising. This lesson gives them ideas on how to market their paper, what techniques to use in identifying advertisers and selling them advertising.
• Selling Advertising A short lesson plan to start students off selling advertising for the newspaper, including what to wear, what to say, etc.

Copy Editing

• Caption Writing Activity Good caption writing does more than repeat the story; it adds depth. Students will learn that it takes creativity and is more difficult than it looks.
• Captions: A picture is worth a thousand words A lesson about what makes a great caption from the ground up. This lesson could be taught concurrent to a layout and design lesson using pictures and other artwork as points of interest on a newspaper page.
• Fitting ideas to the space: Writing headlines A lesson that assigns students actual layouts and asks them to write heads to fit in that space. Drives home the point that you need to read and understand the story as well as understanding that some layouts make headline-writing impossible.
• Headline Writing is Hard! Students will understand that headline writing is a difficult art. Besides space limitations, it is full of pitfalls that can make the newspaper look foolish. In addition, students will learn to write headlines with these pitfalls in mind.
• Writing the Perfect Cutline A single-day lesson that instructs students how to writing photo cutlines (captions).

Decision making

• Journalistic Scenarios Would you run these stories? Some scenarios student journalists might encounter.
• Understanding What Makes a Good News Story A plan and chart to help students think about what makes a good news story in addition to examining who such a story would assist and who it would harm.
• An Introduction to Newspaper Design An exploration of what good design looks like — and what it used to look like — as students prepare to redesign their own publication.
• Laying Out the High School Paper Modular layout is the standard for most publications. This lesson asks students to identify part of modular page layout and then design their own in groups, comparing and contrasting to a known standard.
• Photojournalism and Creating a Layout This unit explores photography and design, asking students why photos are important, what makes a good photo story and how one approaches it, and looks at examples of award-winning designs and photos. Has gifted and special education components.
• Redesigning The Wheel A good plan to lay the groundwork for redesiging your school paper. From comparing good publications to yours to eliciting comments to good design elements to use as you go forward.
• Redesigning Your High School Newspaper An extensive plan for redesigning the school paper that could be used at the end of the year during slack time and as a final exam grade. Also great for generating new ideas for the paper.
• Photojournalism and Diversity A photography unit on learning to use the camera by using diversity as a subject. Explores the kinds of diversity, what a photo story is, etc. Has gifted and talented as well as special education components.
• Editing for AP (and Your Newspaper’s) Style A plan that gets to the heart of the matter of newspaper style. A hands-on lesson (with grading sheet!) that asks students to analyze stories for style errors after an explanation of what it is.

Editorial Writing

• Editorial Writing Students often have opinions, but can’t communicate them effectively. This unit plan will help them improve their persuasive writing skills.
• Editorial Writing as a Catalyst for Discussion of Important Issues Kimberly Aleski of New Jersey teaches students editorial-writing by making them decide what’s important.
• Editorial Writing: What’s on your Mind? ! A unit that asks students to express their opinions in editorials. It asks them to interview people, conduct research and to confirm information before writing an editorial in a journalistic form.
• Introduction to the Editorial A well-thought-out unit on editorial writing that covers research, knowing your audience and errors in logic, among other things.
• Learning Types of Editorials — and Writing Some Kim Harris of Maryland defines several types of editorials for her students and then asks them to identify them — and eventually write some.
• Writing Meaningful Editorials How do you write gripping editorials? Make sure the topics are current and that the arguments are compelling. This lesson and exercise will give some other ideas, as well.
• Writing Point-Counterpoint Articles for the Editorial Page This lesson asks kids to critically think about complex issues and formulate point-counterpoint arguments that they can then use on the editorial page.

Entertainment Journalism

• What’s a Good Movie Review? A five-day lesson that explores all reviews with movie reviews as the example. Uses “Absence of Malice” as the movie to review (with the added benefit of teaching about libel). Asks what makes a good review — it’s more than “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down.”
• Feature Writing: Finding Significance in the Lives Around You

First Amendment

•  Celebrating Sunshine Week
• December 15 – Celebrate the Birthday of the First Amendment
• Exploring the First Amendment A two-day plan that looks at the guarantees the First Amendment affords, then asks students to find examples of those guarantees in action.
• Exploring the First Amendment as it Has Been Applied to Teens and Teen Journalists This lesson will gives students the opportunity to learn more about the rights and responsibilities provided by the First Amendment through exploring how teens have successfully and unsuccessfully used it to defend their actions.
• First Amendment Fridays A unit focusing on the First Amendment and its five freedoms. It asks students to explore the freedoms, ask others about them, and see how the First Amendment applies to everyone — even them. A great opportunity to bring outside speakers into class..
• Introduction to the First Amendment Introduces the five freedoms of the First Amendment to students and lets them see the freedoms in action. Asks them to react/create/collaborate to various First Amendment-related topics, compositions, people and events.

Interviewing

• Careers in Journalism A lesson on bringing a guest speaker in journalism into the classroom. It outlines how the students should prepare for the visit, how to prepare the speaker and how to grade students on the visit.
• Effective Interviewing After having students watch television interviews, they are asked to come up with interviews of their own using open-ended questions and a conversational style.
• Generating Open-Ended Interview Questions Open-ended questions force the interviewee to explain and talk more — giving reporters more to quote. This lesson asks students to interview inanimate objects to hone their skills at open-ended questioning.
• Interview Scenario This plan hones your students’ ability to listen and ask the right questions. Seven role-playing scenarios allow them to ask questions about a news event and write stories based on their questions.
• Oral Histories of World War II A unit designed to introduce students to techniques of transcribing and conducting oral interviews. By interviewing people who lived during World War II, students will gain an understanding of this generation.
• Out of Your Comfort Zone Joel Neden of New York trains students to use their innate skills to improve their interviewing and reporting talents.

Journalism Ethics

• Case Studies in Journalistic Ethics No. 1 A one- or two-day lesson (part of a five part unit). This one focuses on a journalist’s responsibility and ethical concerns in reporting on illegal immigration, but could be adapted to other sticky topics.
• Ethics and Hazelwood: What Student Journalists Should and Can Write By examining ethics codes of journalists and — pirates — students will gain an appreciation for ethics in general. Asks them to consider ethics within the Hazelwood/Tinker standards.
• Forming a Code of Ethics Starting up a school paper, Scholz decided to tackle an ethics policy. A great lesson for introducing journalism ethics.
• Sticky Ethics Scenarios Journalists Face Two lesson plans exploring the ethics issues both student and daily newspapers face. Many of the questions are delightfully gray.
• Teaching Ethical Situations A lesson plan for discussing journalism ethics. It includes a set of overall goals for discussion and eight theoretical situations for students to ponder.

Journalism Introduction

• Courage, Risks and Accuracy in Reporting War Stories A plan exploring the history of journalism and the role of the war correspondent. Students construct a War Correspondent’s Notebook, an editorial and a commentary.
• Creating a Broadcast News Package
• Fact-Finding Scavenger Hunt A scavenger hunt that asks students to use research materials properly — from almanacs to the Internet. Can be localized.
• Getting to Know You A good lesson plan for the first few weeks. It asks students to interview fellow students and identify the “false fact” through careful listening and cross-checking.
• Journalism Scavenger Hunt A fun introduction to journalism for students that requires a variety of resources and search techniques.
• Lesson Plan for the First Day of Class A lesson for the first day of class: Don’t give out a syllabus — make ’em interview you for it!
• Libel Laws, Freedom of the Press and Journalistic Ethics A unit designed as a broad introduction to basic newspaper issues. High turnover can cripple institutional memory — this unit is designed to give everyone a good basic understanding.
• News Writing and Copy Editing A brief unit before story assignments are made covering the highlights of reporting, feature-writing, spot news, basic subject-verb-object style, quote attribution. A nuts-and-bolts unit to give a good floor for everyone.
• The Basics of Journalism: A Little Preview A basic, first-of-the-year lesson that asks students what journalism is and asks them write leads based on a list of topics.
• Case Studies in Journalistic Ethics No. 2 A one- or two-day lesson (part of a five part unit). This one focuses on the ethics behind the use of hidden cameras to tape alleged wrongdoing. It also touches on libel.
• Libel and Ethics This unit emphasizes the need to provide complete and truthful accounts of events in student publications. It examines of the consequences of providing false, incomplete, or misleading information.
• Libel and the Student Newspaper: Making Tough Calls Can student publications be sued for libel? You bet they can. This lesson examines three hypothetical cases and asks students what they would and wouldn’t publish.
• Student Press Law and Ethics A lesson to be used near the beginning of the year that touches on ethics, press law, diversity and other fundamental topics in journalism.
• The First Amendment, What It Means and When Libel Comes Into Play Can anyone say anything at any time? Is that what the First Amendment guarantees? Where does libel fall into that? This unit examines libel, free speech and the John Peter Zenger case.
• Maestro Creativity Challenge Mary Mitton of Sunbury Ohio, teaches student to work collaboratively and creatively using maestro teamwork.

Online Journalism

• Check It Out on the Web Students need to know how to find accurate information on the Internet. By giving them the goal of learning about online newspapers, they can research a topic (putting their school newspaper online) as well as use Internet research techniques.
• Spinning a Web A plan to introduce students to Web journalism and how it differs both from print journalism and public relations, with the purpose of creating a school journalism Web site.

Organizing a Journalism Class

• Organizing and Grading the Advanced Journalism Staff More a structural outline than a lesson plan, this gives a grading system and evaluation method for a journalism class.
• The Power of One: Convergence in Scholastic Media Integrating print and broadcast journalism in a high school media class.

Organizing a School Newspaper

• Building a Journalism Team Fun activity to be used with new and returning journalism students at the beginning of the school year to promote teamwork in preparation for producing the school newspaper.

Photography

• Case Studies in Journalistic Ethics No. 3 A one- or two-day lesson (part of a five part unit). This one focuses on the ethical decisions involved in publishing controversial/sensitive photos.
• Effective Photojournalism After having students examine work of professional photographers in newspapers and magazines, basic photographic concepts are explained. Then students are asked to shoot, develop, edit and caption the photos for a portfolio.
• Getting the Picture: Composing and Building, Frame by Frame, Pixel by Pixel Introducing photography by asking these questions and more: How do we build upon a visual foundation with verbal imagery and accurate voices? Are there special techniques that enhance the photo?
• Introduction to Photography An introduction to photography climaxing in a photo contest. Allows intstructor to bring in newspaper or other photographers to share their skills.
• Looking at Photographs from the Other End of the Lens A lesson that aims at answering this: What makes a good photograph and cutline for journalism? Teaches basic critiques of photos for news purposes and what belongs in a good photo caption.
• Making Photo Essays Easy A lesson that asks students to look at photos as a storytelling medium by forcing them to lay out or create photo essays. What are they missing? What do they wish they had? These are the questions they remember the next time they shoot.
• Making Photo Slideshows Andi Mulshine of Wall., N.J., leads her students through the process of posting their slideshows online.
• Moving Beyond the Mug Shot A short, two-day lesson that asks students to look beyond basic “grip and grins” in their photos. Gives them disposable cameras and demands that they be creative.
• Photo Editing and Photo Ethics Katrina Hester of South Carolina teaches students that just because they CAN do something to a photo in Photoshop doesn’t mean it’s RIGHT to do it.
• Photographing High School Sports Photographs are crucial to an interesting newspaper, but interesting photos — or photos that come out at all — can be difficult in a sports situation.
• Photography: Beyond the Snapshot A plan to take student photography to the next level by examining examples of good photos and learning what a good photo is and how to recognize it, and finally, looking at what a student can do to take more interesting photos.
• Photography: Where journalism meets art Looking at photo opportunities as a unified whole that combines subject, background, foreground, action and mood.
• Photojournalism and Composition A beginning photography lesson that delves into the rules of thirds, framing, etc. They should be able to recognize composition principles and their impact on photography.
• Recognizing 4 Major Photojournalism Techniques to Improve Quality and Interest in Pictures A lesson that, after introducing students to various standard photographic techniques, asks them to assess professional photographers work AND shoot photos of their own that fit the models they’re taught.
• The Basics of Photography A lesson that asks students to look beyond the content of a photo and examine it for its quality. Photos shouldn’t be seen as space-filler in the paper. Also looks at daily newspapers that do photography well to see the power of photography.
• The Challenge of Egg Photography Create a composition in which a white chicken egg is distinguishable from a white background by creating and using shadows.
• The Influence of James Nachtwey on the Field of Photojournalism Encourage your students to try photo essays by examining the work of James Nachtwey.
• The Rule of Thirds This lesson introduces the rule of thirds in photography to students and gives them resources to explore it further. They are then assigned to take photos that they think adhere to this rule.
• Through the Viewfinder A two-three class period lesson that asks students to think about photography: What makes a good photo, the difference between chemical and digital photography and more.
• Through the Viewfinder: Learning to Think Like a Professional News Photographer A look at why some photos are good and others aren’t, with an exploration of terms that help describe these aesthetics. Related photo grading sheet will help assess student work.
• Using Photography to Enhance a Story By reading a text and studying examples of good newspaper photography, students will learn to crop photos for maximum storytelling effect.

Plagiarism 

• Plagiarism in the Real World
• Basic Feature Interviewing Teaching student reporters to develop skills to interview for details, anecdotes and quotes for feature stories.
• Basic Interviewing and Reporting Basic skills are the foundation of journalism. Improving writing and reporting will impact the quality of the student newspaper. With a clear understanding of basic interviewing and reporting skills, students will gain confidence in their abilities.
• Basic Writing and Reporting A unit with four individual lesson plans exploring writing style, newspaper beats, coverage and minimum standards of a staffer, and the importance of editing.
• Conducting the “Orchestra:” How to Implement Maestro A three-day unit examining the Maestro Concept, a method of writers, photographers, editors and graphic artists working together on a project to produce a more cohesive result.
• Covering a Presidential Election A multi-day lesson that asks students to look at presidential debates for issues of interest to teens then research and write articles about what they heard.
• Creating Hate: The Power of Words The power of words is considerable; this lesson plan explores that in the context of hate language not only in literature but in everyday culture. Observation is a key activity in this lesson.
• Developing Story Ideas Teaching students how to develop specific and feasible story ideas.
• Effective Reporting: What Is It and How Do You Do It? A plan to take young reporters to the next level by helping them to identify who to talk to and how to talk to them.
• Localizing News for School Newspaper Students will study the local newspaper for stories to be localized and then present their ideas for doing so.
• Mall Trip A role-playing exercise evolves into a news story. Students play roles of mall denizens and interview each other for individual points of view. A teacher-turned-police chief delivers the press conference.
• News: Researching, Interviewing, Reporting and Writing A lesson that gets at the heart of reporting and writing an article and goes through all the steps of doing so. Includes two excellent handouts.
• Observation How to teach students to use all five senses to gather detail for a feature story.
• Story Generators A two-day lesson to get students to think of original and interesting story ideas. First by relating news events to the school, second by asking them to develop questions prior to interviews.
• Straight News A short lesson that asks students to look at an out-of-order news story and put it back in order. Comes with two worksheets on news judgment.
• Thinking Like a Reporter How can story ideas be generated? By training students to think like a reporter — by seeing the potential of stories everywhere and then choosing the most immediate and interesting one.
• Two Sources of Story Ideas for Our Paper Two lessons/handouts for getting students to think like journalists. One asks them to write down quotes — what people are talking about — in notebooks. The other asks them to read newspapers, magazines, etc. for school-specific story ideas.

Social Media

• Taking Ownership: Students Take On Social Networking Use basic journalism concepts toward creating student Blogs for each journalism course.

Story Ideas

• Finding Local Story Ideas
• Generating Feature Ideas Recognizing a feature story isn’t the same as coming up with one. In this lesson, Elinore Kaplan of New York asks students to brainstorm based on the news.
• Bringing It All Together Courtney McGonnell of Massaponax High School in Fredericksburg, Va., uses this exercise to wrap up her journalism I year.
• Categorizing Quotes How do reporters choose the quotes they use? By choosing the ones that move the story forward and convey the most meaning. This lesson delves into that a bit and asks students to try it themselves.
• Feature Writing: Where do I begin? Writing an Effective Feature Story A unit that explores the writing of the feature story in-depth and looks at the different types of feature stories — profiles, backgrounders, etc. Students write a draft and a final paper as part of the unit.
• Introduction to Paragraph Development in News Journalism A lesson to introduce students to paragraphs and their importance. Asks them to look at stories without paragraphs and with them to analyze the most important material. It reinforces the differences between journalistic writing and essay writing.
• Practice makes Perfect: An Exercise in Newswriting A lesson that you can repeat as a staple of the class over and over again. It asks students to identify the key pieces of information in a story so as to better write their own stories.
• Precise Writing Teach students how to choose precise and accurate nouns, adjectives and verbs to create vivid writing.
• Revision Strategy: Using Math to Improve Writing Tracey Burger of Miami shares a short and sweet lesson to eliminate passive voice and “worthless words” from student writing.
• Using Best Newspaper Writing in a Journalism Class Megan Harowitz of Florida uses “Best Newspaper Writing” to show how the best writers craft their stories.
• What Does It Take to Write a Good Story? By helping to develop and employ good research and interviewing skills, this unit aims at helping students write good stories. Students will be taught some specific journalistic rules for writing — and that the lesson is ongoing (and perhaps lifelong!)

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Lesson 1: Journalism

Lesson plan.

What separates journalism from other kinds of information out there? Would you know reliable reporting if you saw it? This lesson introduces students to journalistic standards and ethics. Students learn basic markers of high-standards reporting based on the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. They flex their new skills by analyzing a variety of examples to identify what reliable reporting looks like.

Web Activity Link: https://www.icivics.org/node/2518248/resource

Got a 1:1 classroom? Download fillable PDF versions of this lesson's materials below!

This resource was created with support from the Raab Family Foundation.

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Get access to lesson plans, teacher guides, student handouts, and other teaching materials.

• Journalism_Lesson Plan.pdf
• Journalism_StudentDocs.pdf

I find the materials so engaging, relevant, and easy to understand – I now use iCivics as a central resource, and use the textbook as a supplemental tool. The games are invaluable for applying the concepts we learn in class. My seniors LOVE iCivics.

Lynna Landry , AP US History & Government / Economics Teacher and Department Chair, California

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Missouri School of Journalism

University of missouri, resources for high school teachers.

Missouri School of Journalism high school journalism project: Free, online teaching resources for scholastic journalism teachers.

Choose from 25 modules to help you teach skills used in journalism, yearbook and related topics.

Individual module landing pages set you up with an overview of the lesson’s activities:

• Complete lesson plan
• “Do” activities
• Worksheets, examples and answer keys to support activities
• Readings and resources
• Various types of formative assessment
• A summative assessment at the end of each lesson in the form of a 10-question multiple choice quiz with feedback on correct and incorrect answers
• The plans also state the learning objectives to which those activities and readings are aligned and sets the expectations.

Please contact Professor Amy Simons at  [email protected]

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Welcome to the Missouri High School Journalism Project

Are you looking to teach or revamp your journalism or strategic journalism lessons the faculty and staff at the missouri school of journalism want to share their expertise with you and your students. each of these 25 mo dules contains learning objectives, short video lectures, worksheets and activities, quizzes and related resources , produced for easy integration using google classroom and google apps for education. the topics covered include everything from audience engagement and audio storytelling to reporting and interviewing and journalism ethics..

Audience Engagement Plans

Audio Storytelling

Basic Design

Broa dcast News Producing

Broadcast Writing

Cross Cultural Journalism

Editing and Headlines

Feature Writing

Infographics

Investigative and Data Journalism

Journalism Ethics

Law and the First Amendment

News Writing

Opinion and Reviewing

Photography and Cutlines  

Reporting and Interviewing  

Social and Digital Tools  

Sports Writing  

Story Ideas  

Videography  

Web Design  

What Is News?  

Writing for Social Media

Using These Modules

Meet the Faculty