Newark Day Two - Our first guests

Today students began the process of preparing for guests for the first time. They read the morning paper and worked backwards, thinking about what kinds of questions the articles were trying to answer. For this activity students worked in small groups, with each group selecting a story to read in common. Teachers sat in and pushed the students to think about questions beyond the most obvious who, what, where, etc.

After finishing the newspaper discussion, students received short biographies of the two guests. They generated questions they wanted to get answered in preparation for writing their first stories. The first two guests were Doug Doyle, who works at WGBO as the News Director, Morning News Anchor, Co-Host of the WGBO Journal, and the host of SportsJam. The second guest was our own Kathy Holloman, star running back for the New York Sharks. 

Here is Doug interviewing Kathy, before the students had a turn to interview each of them. 

After the model interview, student had a turn to ask questions. One of my favorite questions was this. "Ms. Holloman, in your biography you said that as someone who was playing women's football you needed to earn the respect of male football players. Can you elaborate on that?" 

During this activity the students listened, took notes, and prepped for what we have come to call "The Locker Room Activity."

Here is the Locker Room in action. Students as reporters have to make themselves heard in order to get their question answered.

Students then sat down and wrote a first draft. Some wrote about Kathy, some about Doug, and some about the event as a whole. The teachers were impressed with how many students are already looking for their angles. One student asked Kathy follow up questions about her diet when she was a kid ("Did you eat Wheaties?") is going to write about the connection between eating habits and health. Several students were writing about inspiration and motivation, as hearing the two guests talk about what they have accomplished really struck a chord with them.

At the end of the morning, our staff photojournalist Brian Horton gave students a short overview of how photos tell a story and how to think about creating the shot you need. All the photos on the blog today are Brian's work, and demonstrate the kinds of things he was talking about (including detail, context, and perspective). Later in the day the students started to get comfortable with the Flip cameras they will be using to shoot their own video projects.