Day Four - Blogging, the Red Bulls, and Planning Projects

Today as was the last day of the first week of camp. Students began the day by comparing two different sports blogs that covered the LeBron James decision. The first was from the Miami Herald and the second was from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Teachers helped students to think about the structure, tone, and expected audience of each blog post. We included this assignment to provide students with mentor texts for their own blogging and as a chance to think about the variety of goals a professional blogging journalist has when writing a piece.

The whole camp then went to a practice session the New York/New Jersey Red Bulls were holding on the Montclair State University campus. Students spent some time watching the practice and then had the opportunity to interview the Assistant Coach, Richie Williams,



Defense-Midfielder Danleigh Borman, and Defense/Midfielder Luke Sassano.



Students were interested in the recent history of the Red Bulls (including an ownership and name change), the diverse nature of the roster (in terms of players' ages and cultural backgrounds), and the interview subjects' predictions for the world cup final.



The students spent the rest of the day doing background research for their print features, moving towards organizing those pieces, and completing storyboards for their video projects. By Monday students will be working on finalizing their first drafts, starting revisions, and shooting content for their video projects. They have made a lot of progress on each of the projects, fine tuning their topics and really thinking about how to interest readers in the stories they want to tell.