Creating and Reviewing Your Midterm Plan of Action

Your team spent some time considering what you will do as you enter into the second half of the semester. Based on that information and the discussions you will have today in your teams, you will come up with a specific plan of action that will include what actions (or steps) you will have to take to reach the goal(s) who will specify. Your team will also consider how to measure your goals. In other words, how often will you strive to complete "a product"? For example, if your team was doing videography, you could strive to complete at least one video product each week as a way to measure your success. 

USING GOOGLE DOCS: CLICK HERE to make a copy of the template you will use in Google Docs to create your plan of action. This Google Document also includes an example that you can use as a guide.

USING MS WORD: If you are using MS Word, CLICK HERE to view the template and you can copy the text and paste the text into Word. Note: Your page orientation should be landscape (click on the "layout" option). 

Make sure to review the work your team previously did and discuss what your team wants to pursue and how you will go about doing that. 

Remember, the purpose of this activity is to help your team focus on what you think would be the best direction to take so your team can improve on what you have been doing already.

Once you have complete your Plan of Action in Google Docs, share it with your teacher. Make sure to re-title the Google document or MS Word document. You can then start or continue your work assignments for this week. At some point this week, your teacher will discuss your plan of action with you and your team. 

Reviewing Individual Participation and Hard News Vs. Soft News

This week your class assignment is in two parts. The first part extends on what you did last week when you reflected on your course participation and teamwork (plan of action and goals).

You will look over the reflection you did on your individual participation and consider what you think your participation/work mark should be for the midterm report. As part of this process, you will write a short rationale explaining how you came up with your mark and sometime during this week you will discuss your suggested mark and rationale with the teacher.

NOTE: Next week, in your teams, you will also review your plan of action and your team's midterm goal(s).

Once you have completed this work, make sure to complete the second part which this week's class assignment, Hard News Versus Soft News (SEE BELOW). 

Instructions on how to help you determine your midterm participation/work mark. 

Click on the image to enlarge

Hard News Versus Soft News

Click here and click here to read what is hard news and soft news and how they are different. 

1. Find one news article that you consider is definitely hard news and explain why (include the characteristics of what a hard news article is). Provide a link for the article.
2. Find one news article that you consider is definitely soft news and explain why (include the characteristics of what a soft news article is). Provide a link for the article.
3. Find one news article where you think there is an "overlap" between whether it is hard or soft news. Then make a decision on how you would categorize the article based on the tone of the article and its purpose. Provide a link to the article.

Deadline: Next Wednesday, November 12

Work Assignments: Reflecting and Planning

OVERVIEW

You have been a few weeks in your work assignments, so now is a good time to consider:

• What you have done; what your team has done
• What others are doing and how they do it (for example, professional journalists)
• And what more you could aim to do and accomplish (plan of action with a goal)

This activity will essentially be a reflection on your team participation and work assignment. It will also be a plan of action where you will explore what is going on in the professional field and creating a team goal so you could enhance your work assignment to offer more to your audiences.

Individually, you will also reflect on your own class and team participation as well as the contributions you have made to the work assignments you have been involved in.

You (and your team) will do this work online by completing submitted forms.

What is Newsworthy?

You have looked at how a news story is structured, and in journalism class you started work on your work assignments. Every work assignment we have - from the yearbook and videography to the online school newspaper - deals with how newsworthy the story is. Whatever we are covering, we have to ask ourselves what is newsworthy to our audience.

Read the following article "What Makes a Story Newsworthy". This article provides a list of five factors that make a story newsworthy:

• Timing
• Significance
• Proximity
• Prominence
• Human Interest

Find TWO news articles online from news sources (Suggestions: CBC, Global News, Huffington Post, or VICE News) and using a scale from 1-4 (1 being the least, 4 being the most), grade each story on how newsworthy it is. Your score will total up to 20 points (5 factors X 4 points each).

Include in each score a summary explaining your mark for each factor. Also make sure to provide a link to each news story. NOTE: If you do not complete this assignment in the same day, make sure to get your links from the selected stories so you can easily access them the next day. See below for an example of this assignment.

You will be assessed on:

• Overall effort
• Spelling/Grammar/Mechanics
• Strong summary for each factor
• Links to each news story, story headlines and final marks are provided

Deadline is next Monday, October 27

Writing the News Article

In the last assignment, we looked at the basics for writing a news article, and then you selected two news article so you could analyze the writing structure. Today you will write your own news article to get a sense of how it is done. If you need to review the basics, click here.

Most of the time finding a news idea to write about is not hard, but for this assignment you will be creating your own news. You will be provided with a few photos, and you have to determine what is happening in one of the photos and then report the news in a written article. You will also create a headline for your article.

Starting with the Basics

Writing News Stories

Whether you are writing for newspaper, radio, podcasting, television, etc. there are some basic guidelines that most journalists follow when reporting news. Click on this link to get a concise formula for a well-written news article.

Notice the basics:

• Who, what, when, where, and why
• Try to catch the reader's attention (the news lead and/or hook)
• Use quotes (sources)
• Strive to be objective (remember our code of ethics)
• Tell the interesting information first

Now let's take some of this basic information and add to it.

Check out this link to see information about the inverted pyramid and writing news. The inverted pyramid is a writing style used by journalist to remind them to tell the most important and interesting information first.

Watch this video to view some tips on how to write a lead or hook (the first paragraph of a news article).

Exploring a Code of Ethics

Click here to see the handout your team will use to complete today's assignment. It is a class activity and your team will be given a paper copy of this handout.