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Classroom Activities
To Help You Connect Trumpet Books to Your Curriculum
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The Landry News
Classroom Activity
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About the Book
Quiet newcomer Cara Landry gets the whole school's attention when she publishes an editorial in her newspaper about her uninspired teacher, Mr. Larson. The article spurs Mr. Larson to change and the former teacher-of-the-year gets back his old spark. He encourages the whole class to publish an even bigger newspaper. When the principal gets wind of what's going on, he tries to fire Mr. Larson for allowing a controversial article to be published. In the process, the fifth-graders get a real-life lesson in freedom of speech and their First Amendment rights. But will Cara's newspaper cost Mr. Larson his job?
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Start a Class Newspaper
After reading The Landry News, students can take what they've learned about writing and running a newspaper and start their own.
- Work as a class to vote on a name for the paper. Then, decide what sections the newspaper will contain—current events, sports, advice columns, entertainment, comic strips, and, of course, editorials.
- As a class, vote on who should be the editor-in-chief.
- Post sign-up sheets on the bulletin board for different areas of responsibility such as reporters and writers, proofreaders, photographers and illustrators, printers, keyboarders. Under reporters and writers have students write which "beat" they'd like to cover based on their areas of interest.
- Give the writers some story ideas such as the cafeteria food, what new experiments the science class is doing, why the school got new computers, which school library books get checked out most often, and where the principal goes for vacation.
- Help the editors write punchy headlines and edit the articles for grammar and readability. Show them how to cut articles shorter if there's a space problem.
- Walk the students through the first few issues, acting as senior manager. Then gradually let the students make more of the decisions. If a situation comes up where the editor-in-chief is unsure of whether to include a certain article, such as happened in The Landry News, talk about First Amendment Rights and the freedoms of speech we enjoy in a democracy. What articles would have to be left out of your class newspaper if we lived in a country that didn't allow freedom of expression?
- In general your class newspaper can be as individual as your students. The point is to give them experience with the process of writing pieces that inform and entertain others. Share your class newspaper with other classes.
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