Writing a Newspaper Feature

More than 80 percent of the population of Quebec speaks French as its primary language. French Canadians live throughout other provinces in Canada as well. Since 1977, French is the only language used in Quebec government, commerce, and some schools. In this activity, your group will learn more about the history, culture, and lives of French Canadians and the province of Quebec. Then the people in your group will work together to write newspaper features about different aspects of French Canadian life. Finally, all the groups will work together to arrange the features and publish a special section on Quebec. Background

Procedure

1. Choose topics for your features. Read all the steps in this project. Meet with your team to decide what kinds of articles you will write. You might look at the Sunday edition of a newspaper and note the types of articles you find. Newspapers are usually divided into local, national, and international news articles; business news; the arts; sports; editorials; letters; and classified ads. You may want to organize your team so that the whole group plans the articles; then individuals research and write news, art, sports, and travel articles. You may want to have another person act as editor to edit the articles, suggest photographs or art, and write headlines.

2. Organize information. As team members finish their research, your team may want to meet again to decide which ideas you think would make the best feature articles.

3. Write your feature articles. Before you write articles, read some features from newspapers to see how different kinds of articles are written. If you want, you can include editorials as well as letters that might appear in a Quebec newspaper. Remember to write a headline for each article.

4. Publish the paper. When teams have finished the articles, your team can work with other groups to assemble the paper. You may be able to design it on a computer.

Click on these websites to find information about Canada.

http://www.teachnet.org/IMSL/ps6/canadaunit.htm

http://www.civilization.ca/indexe.asp

http://atlas.gc.ca/

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/caninfo/

http://www.craigmarlatt.com/craig/canada/

http://www.teachnet.org/IMSL/ps6/canadaunit.htm

Your article will be graded using the Rubric for Newspaper Articles.

Click Here for the Teacher Page