Creative Lesson Plan for Covers Investigative Journalism and More

Reader Idea | Practicing 'Detective Skills' With Infamous Local News Stories - NYTimes.com

Clarence Davis/The Daily News, via Getty Images

I absolutely love this creative lesson plan using news stories to teach investigative journalism – and more. The lesson plan, here, is for high school students. The lesson provides links to news stories and photos from infamous New York City crimes at least a decade old. You could adapt the plan to your own city if you wanted.

The student then chooses a photo without seeing the matching story. He examines the photo and matches it with who, what, when, where, and why clues written on index cards. They research on Google to determine if their deductions are correct, and finally write up the story of the event.

Oscar Hidalgo/The New York Times

I like this plan because it is creative and different, and would be highly interesting for students. Obviously, it teaches journalistic writing skills. But, it also involves deductive reasoning skills which apply to other fields. For example, a historian uses similar skills when examining and interpreting primary resources.

If you use the resources from this lesson plan, there’s minimal prep work you would need to do, but it you decide to use different news stories, it would take a bit more time to prepare. It’s a great way to get your student involved in the processes of investigation, interpretation, research, deduction, story-telling, and writing. A big bang for your buck.