Reflection 3: News Report

Strategy: News Reporting

What is the Strategy?

            This strategy that we used was designed to get us to take on the role of characters involved in news broadcast. We were put into groups of about four to five and each of us was given a character to portray. The situation that the news report focused on was someone going to a party and all this crazy stuff happened. For our group the roles that were assigned were Greg, his mom, a bystander and I was the news reporter who was interviewing them. We had a few minutes to brainstorm questions and potential answers to the questions based on our character. This activity allowed me to be creative and think of funny questions and experiment with a little character acting.

My News Report Group in Action 

What is the Value of this Strategy?

            This strategy holds personal value to me because it was one of the most fun activities that we have engaged in during drama class. I loved that the situation we were structuring our newscast around involved people in our class, which made it more relatable for us as a class. This activity also holds value for me because it gave me a chance to be goofy with puns and using a deep voice, which is one of my favourite parts of drama. During this activity my feelings were that it was fun to play the role of the interviewer and I loved getting to feed off the audience reaction. I felt really comfortable in this activity because it played into my strengths. This activity inspired me because I got the opportunity to really step into a new character and experiment which is the heart of drama. The professional value of this strategy is that by giving students the chance to role-play it allows them to take on different perspectives and gets them to think more critically about interviews and the different elements of a news report. This activity will allow the opportunity to be cross-curricular because I am toughing on elements of media literacy. I think this activity could inspire my students because it will give them the opportunity to tap into other perspectives and get to go outside their comfort zone which is so important in their development.

How Will I Differentiate for my Students?

            There are a couple ways I could differentiate this activity for my students based on their comfort level or to tackle different aspects of the curriculum. For students in my class that are nervous about performing in front of a group I could have them record their questions or do a video chat to simulate that they are recording from a different location, which happens on newscasts. A way I would differentiate this activity to touch on different elements of the curriculum is to have them make music for the news opening in order to touch on different elements of the Arts curriculum including visual arts. This activity can be designed to be longer in order to include more elements of a newscast in their report.