opportunity to push yourself as a writer and to explore topics that most interest you. Mini lessons each day will introduce you to the best work in the field. Additionally, for at least part of each class, you will be working in a Media Lab environment on your individual work. Over the course of a year you will have the chance to create: features, hard news, reviews, captions, opinion columns, blog writing, humor columns, letters to the editor, and photo stories.
Feature Writing( 0.5 credit)( alternate years, offered‘ 19-’ 20) Grade 10, 11, 12 with priority given upper grade level students
Feature stories give newspapers and magazines their dynamism and flavor. Students in this workshop will explore feature writing techniques and philosophies, including sliceof-life, interview, profile, and analysis and insight. Students will write every week for critique by class members, with the goal of publishing the stories they write.
Students learn the fundamental skills of a global journalist, including identifying and researching a story, making an effective pitch, doing the groundwork for reporting in a foreign country, and using reporting to craft a powerful story.
Together, we will review the basics for writing and reporting: interviewing, gathering information, drafting, revising, and fact checking. We will discuss freelancing for newspapers, magazines, professional publications, and websites, as well as a working with multimedia. Guest speakers include several successful freelance journalists and professional writers. The course requires regular writing assignments, culminating in a final project that should be suitable for publication.
News Writing( 0.5 credit)( alternate years, offered‘ 18-’ 19) Grade 10, 11, 12 with priority given upper grade level students
This one semester course is designed to give students an indepth experience in developing, writing, and publishing traditional news stories. These stories typically deal with local politics, interesting or provocative criminal cases, community events or organizations, and international events that are connected to the area of the world where the class is taught. Students will be expected to develop the stories quickly and produce accurate, interesting, and focused stories. The work produced in this class may be published in one of the school’ s news publications, online, or perhaps with a local media company.
Radio / Audio Journalism( 0.5 credit)( alternate years, offered‘ 18-’ 19) Grade 10,11, 12 with priority given upper grade level students
This journalism-based course provides students with the opportunity to have their voice streamed live via the Internet. This is a creative course that offers hands-on experience behind the microphone, and it will help a student to develop their journalism skills while running a radio show. Whether it’ s talk, music, entertainment, politics, interview, or sports, the topics are virtually endless. The class will focus on content generation, research, writing, and collaborative creativity.
Sports Journalism( 0.5 credit)( alternate years, offered‘ 19-’ 20) Grades 10, 11, 12
Sports are part of the fabric of American culture. Thousands of lucky souls report on sports for a living; this is your chance to start that process. Sports writing, blogging, photography and broadcasting are just a part
www. thorntonacademy. org of sports journalism. Technology offers changes every day in the art of sports journalism, and as part of this class you can keep up! As a journalist you will report on Thornton Academy’ s rich tradition of sports success, cover games and tell the stories behind the games. The content produced will be part of a new blog on Thornton Academy activities and athletics. Students will learn about writing, photography and broadcasting sports by getting hands-on lessons in each field. Several professionals in the sports journalism world will visit during the semester to provide first hand information about this dynamic medium. A strong interest in sports and interest in at least one of the three major components of the class is strongly recommended.
Technical Writing( 0.5 credit) Grade 10, 11 and 12
This course is designed to develop and improve students’ technical writing skills, and introduce the technology used in the workplace today. Students will focus on the production of material that uses all of their creative energy, and channel those creative ideas into projects that match their interests. Reflective of the demands of today’ s workplace, emphasis is placed on the selection and organization of technical data for presentation to a variety of audience, in a multitude of ways. Students will: create new websites, learn the basics of digital and video editing, learn to embed audio and publish articles and information( as writers and bloggers do today), create real-time links to collected data, answer proposals and create marketing material for real companies and real products. In many ways, this class will focus on the writing that is done on a daily basis in the digital world around us, writing that is not limited to text.
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