Collaborative Learning Lesson Plans for Journalism Classrooms
Student-led journalism is, by definition, a cooperative venture: Students depend on one another to know content, produce it with skill and do so in a team environment where they all succeed (or fail) together.
However, much of the premade journalism curriculum relies on methods that don’t jive with that process. Ironically, some scholars even borrow from the practices of scholastic journalism for direct instruction in other areas. So, journalism teachers should teach the way their students eventually do.
To that end, I created these lessons as part of my Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication concentrated in journalism education from Kent State University. I sought to bring the cooperative learning practices our students do everyday into the instructional part of the journalism classroom. These were made from lauded journalism textbooks, non-journalism textbooks, and my experience as a professional journalist, combined with cooperative learning strategies.