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Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 2)

Susan Cumberland February 10, 2017

This article is a follow up to our article on learning to write news copy, where we covered the inverted pyramid model of writing, writing leads, writing simple and the general concept of news copywriting. This is part of our series on teaching kids how to start a newspaper. See our other articles on this series below:

In this article, we’re going to get into a big topic when teaching kids how to write news copy: the way of writing ‘tight.’

Teach kids how to write ‘tight’

First, a review of the inverted pyramid style of writing

The purpose of the inverted pyramid style of writing is to ensure that if space is limited (which it often was in the old days of paper-only newspaper publishing), the editor can cut from the bottom, upwards. Thus, the lesser important information would be cut, since it’s at the bottom of the article. And this would not compromise the important information at the top, nor reduce the value of the story.

Time is short in the world of reporting, where media companies compete to be the ‘first’ to have released a story, thus attracting more readership. And so, newspaper editors have to find ways to rush the news out to the public as fast as possible. This is why cutting from the bottom upwards saves time, and helps get a newspaper out to the public faster.

Why learn to write tight for lessons on starting a newspaper?

To make more room for ads, and to increase readership, stripping down word count is also an exercise used by journalists, which can be learned when teaching kids how to start a newspaper.

In addition to putting the most important information at the top, journalists must ensure all information is written with as few words as possible. This is where learning to write ‘tight’ comes in.

There are multiple ways to write tight, and to reduce word count in an article. Here are some journalistic practices you can teach students when learning to write a news story:

Eliminating adjectives and words that embellish a sentence, without adding core information.

For example:

“The silly, furry cat walked down the stairs.”

Versus

“The cat went downstairs”

The first sentence took up eight words, whereas the second sentence only takes up four. That’s already a 50% reduction in word count.

This topic may involve a lesson on adjectives first, if your classroom’s age-group hasn’t covered that part of writing structure yet.

Using plural instead of singular

Sometimes, when we switch to the plural, we can use less words. For example:

“An apple can be eaten by a rat”

Can be written as:

“Rats can eat apples.”

In the example above, the meaning and ‘truth’ is not taken away, but the word count is reduced.

Ask your students to identify ways they can turn the singular into the plural to reduce word count in their news articles.

Reducing unnecessary phrases and words

Below is a great resource that explains how writing can often include unnecessary words to get the message across (aside from adjectives described above):

http://web.uvic.ca/~gkblank/wordiness.html

Lead-in phrases like, “And so,” or “Above all else,” create what the author calls “wordiness.” This also happens when we use extra words like “all of a sudden,” which can be turned into merely “suddenly” and “bald-headed” which can be turned into “bald.” See more examples from the author in the link above.

Also, it’s worth noting that often we use words like “that,” “are” or other ‘fillers.’ These can be taken away and still maintain meaning and readability in a sentence. For example, the first sentence in this paragraph could be turned into:

“It’s worth noting we often use words…”

See how we took out “also” and “that”? We reduced the sentence by two whole words.

However, an editor may revise again and claim that “also” is needed in this case, so as to lead-in from the paragraph above. These are the types of decisions editors need to make: should we keep the word, or can it be cut? Would it help or confuse?

This is what writing tight is all about – finding ways to say the same thing, but shorter. But the aim is always for better readability, whether that means taking away, or keeping and adding words.

And, writing tight is not easy. In fact, it can take more time than writing long. But it is ever so important when submitting an article to an editor, or you might not be doing your job properly as a journalist. See how we could have cut “ever so” out of that previous sentence?

There is more to learn when teaching kids how to write tight

Learning to write tight is a great lesson for students when self-editing one’s work, and when learning to accept edits from a peer. It also turns the craft of writing into a disciplined art, where student writers pay attention to every word, making them all count. This way, they have to really think about what they are saying and spewing out. They also have to learn to think clearly and sequentially to be able to write tight.

We encourage you to teach your students the many ways they can learn to write tight. We won’t cover them all here, but we will give you some resources for identifying ways to reduce word-count when learning how to write for the news:

http://www.writerstreasure.com/how-to-write-tight-sentences/

http://writetightsite.com/7-cs-of-tight-writing/

http://writetodone.com/15-ways-to-write-tight/

http://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/mass/mass5.html

http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/Want-To-Learn-To-Write-News-Stories-Just-Follow-The-Format.htm

The pros and cons of teacher ‘looping’ for education in Canada

Susan Cumberland February 3, 2017

This article is a follow up to our article titled “What is teacher ‘looping’ and is it time more schools in Canada use it?” In that article, we explain the challenges faced by classrooms in Canada, and the need to consider ‘looping’ as a possible solution.

The pros and cons of ‘looping’ have been documented on the web already. Below are some resources to help explain the issue. Some are written by the insightful testimonies of teachers who have experienced teaching a looping classroom.

To summarize the information in the above links, we’ll delve into the pros and cons of teacher ‘looping’ for education in Canada.

‘Looping’ in education is beneficial because:

Students can form bonding relationships with teachers, to improve learning. This is especially helpful for special needs students, who may need time to build trust with their teacher, and for their teacher to understand their individual needs.
Parents also form relationships with teachers, so that a child’s needs can be better communicated and worked on in both the home and school environment.
Teachers save time by not having to ‘waste’ early weeks of the school year on classroom rules and behaviours. They also are better able to understand the transition children go through from grade level to grade level.
Teachers remain innovative and are motivated to learn more about education methods, since they can’t reuse the same material every year.
Learning can progress smoothly, or pick up on ‘gaps’ in skills that were underdeveloped in the previous year.
The group of students can bond better, and form a sense of community.

The concept itself, as noted in a link above, is also as old as the one-room school house. Rural cities and towns may already be using the method. So while ‘looping’ doesn’t necessarily mean multi-age or multi-grade classrooms, its concept of the same teacher for multiple years is not new to education.

The case against teacher ‘looping’:

As you were reading the above list of ‘pros’ for teacher looping, you may have thought of some counter arguments. And you are not alone. The disadvantages of looping in education have been noted as:

A teacher not being able to specialize in teaching a certain age group, thus reducing the quality of lessons in classrooms.
A conflict between a teacher and student carrying on for years, affecting learning ability for the student.
Children not being exposed to the change that is needed in their environment to learn how to cope with new surroundings, relationships, rules or conditions.
Leaving a ‘loop’ interval after multiple years, and joining a new group of students, with a new teacher all of a sudden can be more shocking and difficult than yearly, regular changes.
A weakness in the classroom, with the challenges noted above, could hold back students who are ready to advance to tougher subjects. This would then be aggravated by the length of the looping interval.

However, many ‘counter-counter-arguments’ have also been made to the above points that negate the benefits of teacher ‘looping.’ Some will say, for example, that

If a student has a problem with a teacher, parents can request a new classroom.
Groups within the ‘loop’ can be organized with consideration to help create the maximum learning outcomes – meaning everyone is at roughly the same learning level within the group. This seems to already happen with advanced placement programs in schools for students who want more challenges.
If a teacher is not doing their job properly, they shouldn’t be teaching at all, and the school should recognize that weakness.
Schools can make an effort for the looping groups to get together so they are exposed to more peers and teachers.

As a tutoring company, we are tasked with the job of creating student-teacher matches all the time. We have seen that the right student with the right teacher can make all the difference in learning a subject that a student is struggling with. We have also seen that parents and students often request the same tutor they had in the previous school year. This can be indicative of the case for teacher ‘looping’ in our schools. Perhaps the familiarity of the same teacher year after year can improve education.

What is teacher ‘looping’ and is it time more schools in Canada use it?

Susan Cumberland January 27, 2017

The interesting thing about the education field is that it is continuously evolving in its method to try to improve, just like many other industries. Teacher ‘looping’ may be one way for Canadian schools to face the challenges of today’s students. This method of teaching means keeping the same teacher with a grouped classroom throughout multiple grade levels. It has both pros and cons that we’ll discuss in this article.

Many theories of education are out there, and all of them contribute to the thought that leadership and progression are needed in ensuring positive outcomes for future generations. As society changes and learns more about child development, its education needs to change too.

And it’s not always the case that one-size-fits-all: both in terms of the individual child, school or society the education system operates in. So we will emphasize our belief that the teacher ‘looping’ strategy is an idea for discussion, but not necessarily a method that all schools must adapt.

Some background on why teacher ‘looping’ should be discussed more often

Why even talk about teacher ‘looping’? Isn’t our education system facing enough challenges and changes? Aren’t enough experts tasked with improving education outcomes already? Didn’t B.C. just implement a new curriculum update?

The above is all true. However, we found it hard to find many schools in Canada that use ‘looping’. However, it’s apparently more common in Europe, and is being adapted as an innovative strategy in the U.S. It’s also used in a large way by Waldorf schools, which keep the same teacher with a class for most of the elementary grades.

It’s not that no one in Canada knows or talks about the subject, but it may be something for more educators to become aware of.

Canadian schools face challenges that teacher ‘looping’ may help

Today, we’re living in a country that faces challenges in our schools such as:

Increasing diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and other special needs.
At-risk youth living in underprivileged households, or from families with uneducated backgrounds, which then make it hard to keep up with schooling.
Larger classroom sizes and volatile funding for schools (though one report says otherwise).
Large diversity of students facing newly acknowledged identities, such as being labelled as LGBTQ, holding a set of not-commonly-Western religious beliefs, being ‘gifted,’ and so on.
Students coming and going from the public school system that vary in education backgrounds, such as homeschooling, alternate education, private schooling.

And possibly more.

So when you have these above considerations in a classroom, it can be hard, by the experience of some teachers, to benefit all the students. By nature, their learning needs will be different, and could take more time as a whole than would otherwise be the case. This is because relationship-building, and understanding individual students is important to the process of education.

Stay tuned for our future article that outlines the pros and cons of teacher ‘looping’ for education in Canada.

Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 1)

Susan Cumberland January 20, 2017

This is our third lesson on teaching kids how to start a newspaper. Here are links to the other articles in this series:

In this 2-part article, we will cover the next step to newspaper development: learning to write news copy. This is where things get practical and fun, and less theoretical, as in our first two lessons in this series.

This lesson can also be incorporated into an English or writing class, if you wanted to make a ‘theme’ of teaching news and media in your classroom. This way, the lessons can span across various existing subjects taught at school.

Teach kids how to write news copy: a different style of writing

Writing for the news is different than other types of writing. However, the skill of writing for the news can make anyone a better writer and communicator (according to our humble opinion). We’ll find out why below!

In your writing class, you can teach children that writing takes many forms. There is poetry, novel writing, essay writing and then there is news reporting.

This lesson plan has sections on writing news, and how to approach the writing of a news article. We encourage you to check it out, if it helps with your own lesson planning on this subject. It certainly goes into more detail than we can here.

Teach kids about the inverted pyramid method of writing and reporting

News reporting is different because it uses the most important information at the top, often in the first sentence. It’s called the inverted pyramid model of writing. This means that instead of ending with a conclusion, you start with one. It’s a much more straight-to-the-point way of writing. This is in comparison to say, storytelling, which works up to its climax, instead of starting with it.

Teach kids how to write an effective lead

The inverted pyramid method of writing also includes the 5 Ws and H in its first sentence. There are other types of introductory sentences to teach when covering journalism writing. These are referred to as “leads” in a newspaper story.

Here are resources for teaching students how to write a lead:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/05/

http://cubreporters.org/leads.html

And, here is a lesson kit that teaches both the inverted pyramid and lead writing for students:

http://mediasmarts.ca/lessonplan/writing-newspaper-article-lesson

Teach kids to write simple, to attract larger audiences

Teaching kids to write with simple words is a big lesson to learn when teaching how to start a newspaper. Many newspapers aim to write simply to be able to attract larger audiences. Big words can be overwhelming, slow readers down and take up too much space in an article. Also, newspapers aim to target multiple education levels.

This is what the Guardian has to say about writing simply, and it’s importance in good journalism:

“Do not, as a writer, show off your extensive vocabulary. It is never better, wherever you are writing, to prefer the less familiar word – “wordy” is always better than “prolix”. Nobody is impressed by the use of a word they do not understand or would not use in everyday speech. The danger of talking down to the audience – assuming vocabulary as well as knowledge – is that it insults readers, makes them feel inadequate. And that turns them off and, worse, turns them away. They do not read on, and you have not communicated with them.

…So the overriding message in journalistic writing is: Keep It Simple.”

This can be a new concept to some students, especially those who have been formerly trained to write with flowery words. In fact, it can be a hard method to adapt after being taught creative writing or essay writing in English class. However, it’s an important lesson to teach students, as much of popular culture today uses simpler English. Thus, it is the language many use to communicate daily. The important thing is making sure you are understood, to be a better communicator.

This does not take away the importance of growing your vocabulary, however! Lessons taught in English class need to be taught in their context, of course.

To conclude: learning to write for the news teaches various forms of writing

News writing can teach kids about writing styles and writing structures. It can also help them ‘think’ sequentially, and exercise ways of relaying information in different ways. And of course, it can teach them about the history and method of news reporting, which is today used frequently in the online world.

We’re not done yet! In our next article in this series, we’ll cover more on how to teach students to write news copy. For example, a big topic in writing news copy is learning how to write tight.

3 tips to help teens concentrate longer

Susan Cumberland January 13, 2017

This article is a follow up on one we wrote earlier about 5 Ways to Improve Learning and Concentration in Kids’ Brains. This time though, we’ll focus on helping teens concentrate longer. The considerations can be slightly different when the kids get older and have to be more independent, managing their own time.

Concentration and increased attention span is correlated with better problem solving skills. As we know, problem solving is the foundation of most learning tasks kids encounter at school. And not only that, as kids get older, the tasks they need to perform become longer, and more ‘brain-consuming.’ How do we help teens concentrate longer, so they can get through a novel, complete a paper, and spend lots of time struggling on math problems? We’ll give some tips in this article.

Start early, and make concentration a part of normal life

Games like memory or ‘eye-spy’ as a child are great exercises for teaching kids to pay attention. These are the types of activities to do when kids are young. As they get older, kids become teens who need to learn to focus longer and longer. While this may be harder for kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it is a struggle all young children face, and need to work on. In a way, we can think of attention span and concentration as a life skill to be developed.

See related:

This article by Parents.com delves into many aspects of helping a young child maintain their attention span.

One important thing brought about is the idea of using a child’s interest to help them learn to concentrate. This can be passed on to the methods used in helping teens learn to concentrate. An English teacher, for example, can assign music lyrics to a struggling student who needs to learn poetry, instead of traditional poetic books taught in schools.

See related:

However, while we want teens to pursue their interests, at this age in their life, they will need to learn to become more well-rounded individuals. Sometimes that means taking the time to learn and do tasks that are not always enjoyable. As teens enter university, and then working life in their career as adults, they will face the need to fulfill mundane responsibilities with concentration and attention often.

So this is where we can use other types of tasks as kids grow, to get them used to paying attention for longer. For example, we wrote an article on personal growth lessons kids can learn while kayaking. One of these, is mindfulness, which is shown to increase concentration overall. This article states that even playing board games can help with improving attention, among other skills. And, we wrote an article on 7 brain games for kids, which you can check out here.

And, we can learn a lot about focus from those who have to work at it daily. Articles on maintaining ADHD can also give some tips to help teens concentrate longer. We wrote one here:

4 ways to help students with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)

Get good physical activity to help improve concentration in teens

We brought this out in our earlier article (linked to above), on helping to improve learning and concentration in younger kids. It doesn’t change as we age!

Physical activity is important for many benefits. However, a study shows it is also related to improved concentration and school performance. This is an important need in our schools today, though it can often, incorrectly, seem secondary to academic performance.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a guide on the requirements of activity for children, which can be different at varying ages:

How much physical activity do children need?

Plus, sports in themselves can teach kids lessons related to staying focused. For example, we wrote about the benefits of kids learning to skateboard, which can teach endurance and perseverance.

See our related article:

Kid’s health: the importance of kids staying hydrated for academic performance and activity

Remember to be realistic when teaching teens how to concentrate

Teens are learning how to get a handle on their life. Their workload at school has been gradually increasing. In high school, they are being prepped for university in a lot of ways, especially in grades 11 and 12. But aside from that, they still need to have fun and pursue their extracurricular activities. Many teens also start working part time in this period.

So how do they juggle it all? It can be hard if they haven’t learned how to make a schedule for themselves outside of school. Sometimes parents take on the role of ‘micro managing’ or ‘tiger parenting,’ ensuring teens keep up with their schedule and stay focused. And don’t get us wrong – scheduling and routines can play a part of improving attention span. And helping a teen learn to get organized is also important in teaching them how to concentrate longer.

However, it may be worthwhile taking a hands-off approach so that kids learn how to manage their time, and the amount of things they can concentrate on at a time. Eventually, they will have to teach themselves how to concentrate.

When they try to manage multiple goals – academic, extra-curricular, work, fun – teens may learn that they can’t ‘do it all,’ no matter how much they want to. As this Guardian article states, there is actually a lot going on in teens’ brains, so we can’t expect too much of them, just like we can’t expect much of children.

See our related articles:

Remove distractions to enhance concentration in teens

Just like with little kids, distractions come at a price – the loss of concentration! This may be an obvious point, but when teens are studying, they need to have a space that encourages only that. If that means music in the background, or (healthy) snack breaks every hour so be it – whatever suits their ability to truly focus and get things done.

However, it is unlikely that incoming texts, TV or internet browsing are going to be conducive to concentration – and this is a practical piece of advice. It is a matter of ‘just doing it’ – hardly any teen will be ‘naturally gifted’ at staying focused when there are distractions all around.

To conclude, helping teens concentrate for longer periods is a matter of lifestyle

Starting to teach kids brain-enhancing skills young, getting physical activity and not ‘overdoing it’ are ways we can help teens concentrate longer. So is the obvious removal of distractions. As you can see, these can all be considered lifestyle habits that have an impact on teens in other ways. We do encourage you to find your own concentration games, and ways of staying focused.

Colour science lessons to teach students

Susan Cumberland January 6, 2017

Colour science lessons can be fascinating. This is because colour as we know it is not all of what meets the eye. There is a lot to understand about colour too, and how it affects us as humans.

In this article we will discuss the ways in which a tutor, teacher or parent can give colour science lessons.

Teach kids about the prism of light and its colours

Light is very important when it comes to understanding colour. We see many colours as a result of light reflections and absorptions in objects. And, ‘white’ light is actually made up of several colours. This was first discovered by Isaac Newton. According to the Smithsonian Libraries,

“By scientifically establishing our visible spectrum (the colors we see in a rainbow), Newton laid the path for others to experiment with color in a scientific manner. His work led to breakthroughs in optics, physics, chemistry, perception, and the study of color in nature.”

Also according the Smithsonian Libraries link above, the electromagnetic radiation that is visible to us are the colours of the rainbow. You can do experiments with kids to teach them about the colours of the rainbow through a homemade prism.

However, this implies that there are types of electromagnetic radiation we can not see. This includes radio waves, for instance, which enable our cell phones to call each other. As a teacher, you can use this as an opportunity to delve into a science lesson about radiation and wavelength frequencies.

Colour can explain science

Colour is not just pretty! It has a lot to do with the way our natural world is formed, in our own view. One practical way colour is used in science is with the Hubble Telescope, which actually takes black and white photos, even though its universe pictures are often shown to us in enhanced colour. How do they do this? What decides the colours in the images taken by the telescope? This would be a great lesson on colour filters, aside from only using prisms.

We’ll give more examples of colour in science learning below.

Teach kids about colour being subjective

Taking the concept of the above, that colours visible to us are the colours available on one wavelength, we can teach more colour science lessons. Here are ways to teach kids about colour giving us each our own subjective experience.

“The Dress” phenomenon

In 2015, the Internet went wild over “The Dress.” Someone published a photo online of a dress that looked gold and white to some, and blue and black to others. How could this be? No one could understand how anyone else could see something differently than they were seeing it.

This is a fun science lesson about colour and how our brains perceive colour. It’s called “colour constancy,” and has to do with the context in which we, as individuals, are seeing an object.

This video by ASAP Science explains the science of “The Dress” phenomenon, which you can show to your students, as a great example of how colour constancy works:

What Colour Is This Dress? (SOLVED with SCIENCE)

See related on our blog:

Optical illusions: A hands-on science activity for kids

How animals see colour

Did you know that animals can see colour differently than humans? Here is an app, and examples, that help you see the world with the colours your dog’s eyes use.

Colour blindness in children

We wrote about this on our blog before, and if you’re concerned about a child’s ability to see colours correctly, we encourage you to have a look:

Kid’s health: Helping kids with colour blindness

Teach kids about colour theory in paint and colour mixing on screens

Now this is fun: how do we make all the many colours we see at the paint store, or on TV, or in our natural world? Surely, there are more shades of red than we see in the rainbow, right? Exactly. This is where the science of colour mixing comes into play – and it can be a complicated mathematical equation!

And, here is a great colour wheel that you can create with students, from Steve Spangler Science, to show how colour mixing works with primary colours:

Color Mixing Wheel – SICK Science!

In addition, here is a resource full of colour science lessons and activities to teach kids about the way colours work together to give us the world we see.

This resource gives a comprehensive lesson on colour, where painting and colour theory is used. It explores the colour wheel, colour identification and colour vocabulary in art.

Here is a paint mixing guide by WikiHow.

Teach kids the difference between types of colour sequences: CMYK, RGB, ROYGBIV, primary colours and secondary colours

You’ll often hear colour sequence abbreviations used in the ‘real world.’ To make a colour science lesson practical, you can teach kids about how and why these sequences are used, and in what contexts.

CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) and RGB (red, green, blue) are often referred to in design and print. When creating screen material, RGB is used. When creating print material, CMYK is used. Here is more on this subject.

ROYGBIV are the colours of the rainbow, used to talk about the light prisms noted above. This was Isaac Newton’s discovery.

Primary colour and secondary colours produce tertiary and complementary colours. This is all about mixing colours in pigments found in paint and dye. The terminology here is based on a difference sequence in colour science than the rainbow colours. The Smithsonian Libraries link above talks about how this sequence came about.

Combine a colour science lesson with psychology

Colour can affect us as humans in more ways than mere aesthetics or symbolic understandings. Some studies have made claims that science can affect our creativity, our actions and our feelings. In the practical world, people can use this information in marketing and design, and to elicit purposeful responses in others.

See this article for more on this subject to teach kids about colour science and psychology:

The Science Behind Color and Emotion

To conclude: colour science lessons can go in many directions

As we’ve seen above, colour science lessons can take you down different paths with your students. We haven’t yet discussed camouflage for instance! Plus, each of these colour lessons can veer into subjects outside science, such as art or history. We encourage you to take on these multi-faceted lessons, and show kids that colours are far from a boring subject to learn about!