Our fun list of 15 investigative activities is all you need to get started presenting the concept of journalism to school students. Not only will the journalistic skills employed by these activities aid students who have a dream of pursuing this career path, but they will also benefit all learners from various walks of life. By including journalism activities in your lesson plans, you’ll teach your pupils how to analyze information, ask the right questions and develop a good understanding of the world around them.
1. Analyze The News
One of the key roles of a journalist is to analyze and report on current affairs. This activity requires learners to locate assorted news sources, list them in order of reliability- explaining why in the process, and lastly, select a handful of news items and stipulate what exactly classifies them as news.
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2. Journalism Crossword
This crossword is a wonderful activity for testing learners’ understanding of assorted journalism vocabulary in the field. It’s the perfect tie-in to your next journalism teaching unit and we guarantee that your students will want to complete a whole heap more!
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3. Brainstorm
Brainstorming the concepts of reporting and the press is a stellar introduction to journalism. Complete this activity as a class by analyzing news in different locations. To help get you started we’d recommend taking a look at the following; news at school, local news, and even global stories!
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4. Take A Quiz
Investigative journalism relies on a few important features in order to produce good and accurate content. This fun quiz will help you as a teacher test students’ knowledge of these features and ensure that they come to grips with the importance of these elements.
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5. Conduct An Interview
One of the more predominant aspects of journalism is interviewing. By pairing up and conducting a simple interview, pupils come to understand the significance of asking the right questions when it comes to gathering information and conducting research in the field.
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6. Fairy Tale Ledes
Who would’ve thought that fairy tales could be linked to a journalism unit? Well, they certainly can and create the perfect source for the analysis of headlines and teaching learners how to source good ledes. Students will also come to understand the importance of ordering information correctly as well as reporting relevant facts and remaining unbiased.
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7. Story Development
Story development is crucial for investigative journalists. This activity requires students to walk around a particular location- gathering information by recording their surroundings either in written, audio, or video format. They’ll then regroup and share their findings for discussion and analysis before devising a compelling story.
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8. The Elevator Pitch
Similar to someone presenting an elevator pitch, credible journalists should be able to piece together a compelling body of information. This activity requires students to come up with a short yet persuasive speech in order to pique the interest of an assigned organization or news team.
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9. Write A News Story
Infamous journalists are renowned for reporting harsh realities and may even be rather grueling in their interviews. This activity calls for students to observe an event, question someone who was directly involved, and then write out a news story- ensuring that they include at least one direct quote from the interviewee and bringing all separate pieces of a story together.
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10. Play A Current Events Game
Staying on top of current events is one of the leading career roles that a journalist undertakes. As a class, decide on 5 categories that one might find in a newspaper before asking your students to search through a newspaper to find one article relevant to each category.
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11. The Inverted Pyramid
The inverted pyramid activity is the perfect model to demonstrate to your class how to structure a news article. The activity also gives them an opportunity to practice one of the key skills a good journalist must possess- the ability to listen and record accurate information.
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12. Celebrity Interview
Journalism students often have the opportunity to work with people from all walks of life. Of course, this dictates that the type of questions one will ask will differ from one interview to the next. This activity encourages students to put together questions that are suited to interviewing a celebrity.
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13. Record A Radio Program
Community journalism takes shape in a number of ways. One of the ways that local news is reported is via the radio. In order to record a radio program students will need to develop the skill of consolidating large bodies of information and practice reporting only the key facts of assorted stories.
Learn More: Paths To Literacy
14. Analyze Features Of Journalistic Writing
To develop a decent journalist profile, learners should learn the key features of journalistic intake, writing, and reporting. As a class, discuss the features together- prompting your learners to think deeper about the features by proposing simple questions about them.
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15. Read The Newspaper Together
This is an awesome follow on activity from the one above as it allows you to check your student’s understanding of the features of journalistic writing. Pull an extract from the newspaper to analyze together and ask your students to identify various features by either highlighting or circling them before labeling them.
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