About the curriculum

The Journalism for All curriculum explores the intersection of civics, journalism, literacy and student engagement with a focus on critical thinking and journalism-skills development. Through the course, teachers will help students navigate the modern landscape of news media, first as news consumers, and then as mediamakers.

The course is centered on these essential questions:

What are our responsibilities as news consumers?
How can journalism provide students with a voice in our school community?
What’s the role of a free press in a democracy, and how can student journalists engage in the practice legally and ethically?
What do school communities need from student journalists?

The course aims to teach the following enduring lessons:

A free press is integral to a society centered on the pursuit of liberty, equality and justice.
The news we consume can be assessed for reliability, independence and accuracy. This practice is key to being media-literate.
When young people write the news, they can make a difference in their community by highlighting issues others might not be aware of or understand in depth.
With each article journalists write, they learn how to better represent the views of their sources, and offer readers enough context to engage with the topic themselves.
Student journalism is journalism.

What’s in the curriculum?

Five parts:

News Literacy and Student Voice
Reporting and Writing Basics
The First Amendment and Ethical Journalism
News Production
Specialized Journalism Modules

In the first unit, News Literacy and Student Voice, students will become better news consumers and discerners of information (and disinformation), as they learn to understand the role news media plays in their lives. They will expand their tool kit with tips for evaluating social media posts and navigating a world with constant information streams. Students will also begin to explore opportunities for student voice expression and action at their school.

The second unit, Reporting and Writing Basics, will introduce students to the journalism process through an approach called “Story Mountain.” Students will go through a guided, scaffolded approach to producing a news article three times, each time gaining more skills, knowledge and experience. In round one, students will reverse engineer stories and be introduced to the concepts involved in coming up with, reporting and writing a story. For round two, students will work in small groups to report and write an assigned basic news story together. In the final round, students will work independently or in pairs to make their way through all the steps of story mountain—from brainstorming story ideas to requesting interviews to writing the article. A debriefing class is built into each round to give students the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and accomplished.

The third unit, The First Amendment and Ethical Journalism, will provide students with an understanding of the legal framework that supports journalism in our country. They will learn how journalists are—and are not—protected by the Constitution and other laws, and study Supreme Court rulings that affect student journalists. As part of this unit, students will explore the legal issues that guide journalists, including defamation, copyright infringement and privacy, and explore ethical dilemmas that newsrooms encounter. Students will identify and use reputable, accurate and accountable sources of information. They will understand how to use attribution to avoid plagiarism.

The fourth unit, News Production, will simulate a newsroom-like environment for 12 weeks. Students will be assigned to one of three beats and rotate to a new beat after four weeks. The beats are: School News, Student Life (things that are going on with students outside of school), and After-School (clubs/activities). Each four-week cycle will have students go through the story mountain process and include class-wide editorial meetings, beat-specific check-ins, peer reviews and the option for publication. Subject-specific workshops will enhance students’ understanding of the process and news-producing skills. Workshops include photojournalism, covering events and fact-checking.

The fifth unit, Specialized Journalism Modules, will allow teachers to individualize the course to meet their students’ interests. Teachers will choose from one of four high-quality, specialized journalism modules that will provide students with the opportunity to practice a specific field of journalism–audio journalism, solutions journalism, video production or student publications. Each module will cover four weeks of instruction and include assessments.

Areas of Skill Development

Writing

Writing concisely (Units 2 and 4)
Incorporating direct quotes to provide evidence, highlight a point or add new information (Units 2 and 4)
Engaging readers (Units 2 and 4)
Understanding the construction of different types of news articles (Units 2 and 4)
Demonstrating effective use of paraphrasing (Units 2 and 4)
Incorporating research, statistics and context into journalistic pieces (Units 2 and 4)

Critical thinking

Fact-checking (Units 1 and 4)
Discerning different types of information: news, promotion, entertainment and raw information (Unit 1)
Discerning different types of journalistic articles: news, opinion, features, reviews, etc. (Units 1 and 4)
Discerning fact from opinion (Unit 1)
Identifying key sources with direct experience or knowledge of a topic (Units 1, 2 and 4)
Discerning which statistics and research contain evidence that provides context and understanding for readers (Units 1, 2 and 4)
Being able to spot misinformation and disinformation (Unit 1)
Developing interview questions (Units 2 and 4)
Ethical decision-making (Units 3 and 4)
Practicing scholastic journalism within the law (Unit 3)

Reading skills

Close reading (Units 1 to 4)
Active reading (Units 1 to 4)
Recognizing patterns in structure for journalistic articles (Unit 2)
Lateral reading (Unit 1)

Meeting the Goals of the Media-Literacy Requirement

The DemocracyReady NY coalition created a framework of recommendations to help guide school officials, policymakers and the public in advancing media-literacy education in all schools throughout the state. This curriculum meets many of the goals the coalition laid out by teaching the following skills:

Source Evaluation: Analyzing media sources for accuracy, bias, reliability, credibility
Critical Analysis: Critically examining media sources
Responsible Engagement: Engaging with digital tools responsibly
Technological Skill Development: Demonstrating critical analytic and communication skills
Multi-Format Literacy: Evaluating media across different sources