In the end, my chosen headlines were these:
Forgotten Brother Reappears
Man Killed in Accident
Passerby Sees Woman Jump
Professors Protest Pay Cuts
Tommy the Dog Named Hero
Woman leaves baby to play video games
Arrest of young boys at school sparks outrage
Football star Ronaldo in trouble for pulling opponent's hair
Teenager kills brother in gang shootout
Boy, 6, takes wheel after dad passes out
UFO crash lands in Beijing!
Search for 'Miss Beautiful Morals'
A HOMELESS South Korean unable to withdraw his life savings because he could not remember his real name has died in poverty.
AN eight-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia has won a divorce from her 50-year-old husband at the third attempt.
Europe's thinnest women feel fat
Woman divorces overly clean husband
Man saves dog by sucking snake venom from his nose
Kids want to hear more bedtime stories
It's a cool lesson to do. I opened with 15 minutes of something from the text book (in this class' case, 4 story outlines with the instruction to "say how you'd report it" for discussing news preferences, and a text book dialogue between a helpful Chinese and a clueless foreigner about what newspapers there are to read in China). And then it's on to the TV news hour!
Teacher introduces the words "anchor/host", "reporter/journalist" and "expert/guest" and with the help of the class brainstorms a story for a given headline. For me I used "Man bites dog!" First you elicit:
who?
when?
where?
what's happening now?
what's being done?
broader social theme?
And then you present! You take the three roles yourself. First act as anchor to briefly introduce the story, then cross to yourself as a reporter on the spot, and then cross back to the studio with yourself as anchor again, and as studio guest, where you discuss the broader implications of the story. I was impressed by how in six different classes my story always managed to include cannibalism. Well, see, there had to be a reason the man's wife and child were missing and he only took one bite of the dog... I found I had to watch my speaking speed too: as the story wore on I would usually get louder and faster--had to slow it down.
After your presentation you give groups of three/four till the end of the period to prepare their story and presentation. In the second period they do the presentations. Keeping it brisk, 45 minutes is usually enough to get 8-12 groups on stage at least once.
It really helps the procedure if near the end of the first period you go around assigning a running order. If you leave it up to the students to decide who goes first and so on, there'll be long gaps between stories with students sitting on their thumbs waiting for some other group to get on stage.
Although most of the resulting stories were fairly tame, I found it fun to sit back in the second period and watch what the kids could do. It was great!
Best story? "Passerby sees woman jump." That team had the woman still on the ledge--one kid stood up on the tables--and she was interviewed by the journalist on the spot. The woman raged against the iniquities of inexpert doctors. She had, you see, been born a man but recently gone to a doctor for "the operation" as she thought women were great and wanted to be one. After the operation, she was a woman--halfway. The interview included a lot of yelling about "this thing" and waving at her hips and moaning "what can I do? Curse that doctor!"