by Julie Dodd
JEA Mentoring Committee c0-chair

The news from the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund is that 11 high school teachers  each won 30 copies of The Classroom Edition, a downloadable Teacher Guide, unlimited use of WSJclassroom.com and full subscription access to The Wall Street Journal Online.

To enter, the teacher had to write an essay about how The Wall Street Journal  would  be used to teach journalism. Segments of the winning essays were posted.

Mentors could share information about this contest with their mentees so the mentees can apply next year.

I certainly know that having a class set of newspapers was a great resource in my high school teaching — both for journalism and English classes.

One of the activities I used in teaching journalism was to have the students analyze how a controversial issue is presented differently depending on if it is a news story, an editorial or a letter to the editor. Being able to see how the same topic is handled differently depending on the writing goal (i.e., presentation of facts and sources who are involved in the topic versus a persuasive editorial) helped students see how to separate their own opinions from news stories they are writing.

I’d be intersted in hearing how you have used commercial newspapers in your teaching.