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Lesson Plan

Writing Serendipitous Fairy Tale Tabloids Using “Fairytale News” by Colin and Jacqui Hawkins by NNWP

Subject

English Language Arts (NYS P-12 Common Core)

Grade Levels

Elementary, Intermediate, 4th Grade, 5th Grade, 6th Grade

Content Provider

The Northern Nevada Writing Project: WritingFix

Description

After enjoying Colin and Jaqui Hawkins' story of Fairytale Land's newspaper, pose this question to students: "If they have a newspaper, do you think they have a tabloid newspaper too?" After examining articles from tabloid newspapers, students create crazy, tabloid-worthy headline for Fairytale Land. Using the style of a tabloid's articles, students will create an entire article that might run in the Fairytale Enquirer. Students will imitate a newspaper’s voice with a funny idea.

Website(s)

The Northern Nevada Writing Project
The National Writing Project

Six-Trait Overview

The focus trait in this writing assignment is voice; the writer's goal is to authentically imitate the style (and voice) of a real type of writing that can be found in the world. The support trait in this assignment is idea development; students should be encouraged to be as original as possible (no Shrek rip-offs!) as they write this assignment.

Author

Northern Nevada Writing Project Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. Check out all of Corbett's on-line lessons by visiting http://www.corbettharrison.com/lessons.html

Duration

One 40-minute class period

Materials

The picture book, Fairytale News, by Colin and Jacqui Hawkins
Copies of Serendipitous Fairy Tale Pre-Writing Sheet (one per student)
Copies of Fairy Tale News Samples (one per student)
Copies of an example tabloid article from The Weekly World News Online at: http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/
Copies of a real journalism article from your local newspaper (or visit: CNN at http://www.cnn.com/)

Fairy_Tale_News_Samples.pdf

Fairy Tale Tabloids Pre-Writing Sheet.doc

Step-by-Step Procedure

Anticipatory Set: Post some headlines from actual newspapers and tabloids on the board or overhead. Ask students to identify which headlines they believe are real and which are not. (Examples to possibly use: Day Care Puts Kids in 8-Hour Coma (Tabloid headline), ‘Fishgator' Caught in Lake (Newspaper headline), Woman Finds 8-Foot Snake in Washer (Newspaper headline), Town Issues “Citizen Report Cards” (Tabloid headline), etc.)

Introduce the picture book, Fairytale News. Tell students it is a clever look at how journalism is important everywhere...even in Fairytale Land.
Read Colin and Jaqui Hawkins' Fairytale News aloud to the class.
After reading this picture book, ask students, "If they have legitimate newspapers, mustn't they also have tabloid newspapers?"
Ask students to explain the difference between real newspapers and tabloid papers.
Print and share an example tabloid article. Print and share an example of a real journalism article from your local newspaper. Obviously, many tabloid articles are based on loose truths, and students will easily point that out as an important difference between the two articles. Acknowledge that, then ask students to think deeper. Ask, "Stylistically, how is the writing similar and different?"
Create a Venn diagram on the board that records their observations on the two articles' voices.
Tell students they will be using the voice qualities of tabloid journalism to write a newspaper article for the imaginary tabloid Fairytale newspaper.
In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups should certainly talk about the voice, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's idea development as well.
The first step is to have students create their tabloid headlines. They can easily do this on their own, but the chart on the Serendipitous Fairy Tale Pre-Writing Sheet has enough options so that a class full of students might all end up with a completely different headline, which should be encouraged.
For pre-writing, ask students to brainstorm people that might be interviewed by a reporter covering this incident. As part of their brainstorms, have students write one or two quotes for each of those people. Tell students they must select only their two or three best interviewees to include in the article.
As students begin drafting their articles based on their headlines, be sure they keep looking back at the examples you have shown them. Encourage them to borrow style and techniques from the examples, but also encourage them to adapt others' techniques into their own.
If some students finish their tabloid article drafts quickly, encourage them to create a second article or to create an article from a more legitimate newspaper that is reporting on the same thing as their tabloid article. Ask, "How would they differ?"

Closure: Ask for student volunteers to share with the class.

Extension of Lesson

To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach Revision & Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post Its.

When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.