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Lesson Title: Past Tense- "ed"

Objective: To teach students that the newspaper is an invaluable resource to practice and reinforce grammar lessons. Ninth grade students will recognize past tense action verbs and be able to comprehend that when adding "ed" to certain action verbs, they can be changed to past tense action verbs.

Materials Needed: Newspapers- Highlighters for each student, overhead projector, lined paper, language arts notebook.

Procedures: Pass sections of newspaper out to each student. For review of present tense verbs, ask students what they are planning to do today after class, i.e., play, work, skate, watch TV, sail. As they respond, write the 10 to 15 best verbs of their responses, present tense verbs, on the board for everyone to view.

Demonstrate that when you add "ed" to these action verbs, it changes their meaning to past tense, played, worked, skated, watched, sailed. Ask students to repeat aloud each new past tense verb as instructor adds "ed" to each one on board. (have students begin to list in their language arts notebooks the words discussed in present and past tense, i.e., play - played, sail - sailed, skate - skated).

Have students take turns reading one short newspaper article out loud. Ask students if they heard any past tense words with "ed" added to them (write them on the board as they state them and have them write them in their notebooks). With students in 4-5 each cooperative groups, have the students review the mini-page and highlight all the past tense action verbs. Review with students what the past tense action verbs are and write some of them on the board. Have the students scan again for present tense verbs and write them on the board and have them enter them into their notebooks. Ask students to change present tense to past tense by adding "ed´ and ask how adding "ed" to each verb changed the meaning from present to past tense.

Evaluation: A news story will be projected on overhead. Have students read it silently to themselves. On a separate sheet of paper, have students identify and write in a list all the past tense verbs which have "ed" added to them in the article and write their own sentences using the same past tense action verbs.

A second news story will be projected on overhead. Have students read it silently to themselves. On same sheet of paper, have students identify and write in a list all the present tense verbs found and change them to past tense and write a sentence for each word found.

Lesson Title: Getting the Facts

Objective: A reporter must write all the facts in a news story. To get the facts a reporter answers the 5 W´s and H questions in his story which are: Who, When, What, and Why and How. This exercise is to teach students about the "5 W´s and H" and inverted pyramid style of news writing.

Materials Needed: Newspapers, paper, overhead projector Procedures: Review the elements of a short fictional story-the introduction, the plot and the climax. Explain that short story writers usually tell a story in the order it happens, building up to the major event and saving the most important or exciting part for last. (Ask students for examples of this in short stories they have read).

Read students a simple news story from today´s newspaper. Ask students if the writer followed the same rules; for example, did the writer save the most important information for last? Students will discover that writers of news stories do the opposite of what is often standard for writers of fiction---news writers put the most important information at the very beginning.

Group Activity: Introduce students to the inverted pyramid style of writing. Draw the following diagrams on the board, so students can see for themselves that news stories are unlike other story forms.

Explain that the inverted pyramid style is used for two major reasons. First a newspaper reader pressed for time need only read a few paragraphs to learn the basic facts of the story. Second, newspaper editors who run out of space for the entire article know that they can cut off the bottom part of the story without losing essential information.

Now explain to students that news story writers often follow a forumla to make sure the beginning of their story, called the lead, includes all essential facts. The forumla is called the "5W´s and H" for the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a story. The 5W´s and H usually can be found in the first or second paragraphs of a story, with less crucial information following. (Note that all news stories carry every one of the 5W´s and H, present news stories to the students. Because feature stories often are less structured, the 5W´s and H may not be obvious.)

Evaluation: A. Read and identify the 5W´s and H of the projected news story leads. Fill in the blanks below for each story with the appropriate answers. (Two news stories will be projected overhead).

B. Students can pretend that they are reporters covering famous fairy tales or nursery rhymes. Students should write their stories in 5W´s and H form. For example: "Today while dining on curds and whey in Central Park, Myra Muffet was attacked..."

Creativity counts!

Marlene Vitori
Mainland/Samsula

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