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Rafe Esquith: Five Tips to Help Children Develop Their Natural Gifts

#2573. Tabloid News

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Posted Wed May 8 09:27:23 PDT 2002 by K. Covington (karenc@panola.com).
Batesville Junior High School/ 8th Grade, Batesville, MS
Materials Required: Strips of paper and an imagination
Activity Time: 20 minutes or more

This turned out to be a very popular activity among my classes. I asked them if they knew what tabloids were. Of course, most of them did. We talked about some of the crazy tabloid headlines that they had seen in the grocery check-out line. I then had each student draw three slips of paper from a bowl. On each strip of paper I had written a random but interesting object, person, or place. (Ex.: Elvis Presley, ostrich, North Dakota, etc.) I then told the students that they were going to create their own tabloid news story using the three things that they had drawn. Of course many moaned and said there was no way they could do it, but then their imaginations started rolling. We ended up with some hilarious and very cretive writing. (My favorite involved an deranged ostrich who invaded the local Kentucky Fried Chicken!) After we read some of the stories out loud, they begged to try again. Now, I keep my tabloid strips on hand at all times.