Social Media Lesson Plan




Michael Johnson
Gallia Academy High School
Gallipolis, Ohio      

Using Twitter to Promote a News Story

Overview and Rationale:
   Journalism students will learn how to apply previously taught news writing skills to compose a tweet and eventually use it as a crowd sourcing tool in each individual assignment. Ultimately, students will be in charge of creating and maintaining a social media presence for their news beats and stories assigned throughout the school year.
Goals for Understanding
  • Students will be able to apply basic concepts that have been previously taught and apply them to creating an individualized social media presence for each story/event assignment.
  • Students will be able to tease/summarize news stories in 140 characters and comment on trending topics with their peers.
Essential Questions:
  • How will students promote story assignments to a large audience in a short amount of time?
  • How will students learn to write more concise?
Critical Engagement Questions
  • What subjects will students tweet about?
  • How often will students tweet?

Overviews and Timeline:
Activity I: Looking at the pros (Two weeks)
   Students will follow a professional journalist on Twitter and evaluate both their tweets and the stories the reporter publishes over a 2-­‐week period. This can be a journalist selected by the teacher from a local, national, or international news organization or the teacher can allow students to select a journalist on their own. Students can follow the same journalists or each choose their own. They should keep a log of all tweets that correspond to the stories that are published during this time frame.
Homework: Based on the prior two weeks, students will write a 400- to 500-word essay about their evaluation of the journalist they followed on Twitter. Provide information about the journalist, where they work, what stories they covered and tweeted about. Students will summarize provide their personal insight about the stories covered/tweeted. Deadline: At the conclusion of the two-week lesson.

Activity II: (One 50-minute class)
   Students will break into six equal groups. In their small groups they will evaluate the tweets of one of the six writers featured in Mallary Jean Tenore’s article, What Twitter Teaches Us About Writing Short and Well. Each group will document what was effective about the tweets. They will also answer the following questions: What, if any, information was intentionally left out? Did it matter? How did this affect the tweet?
   Each group will present the tweets from their writer, while members of the other groups attempt to guess the context of the tweets.
As a group, students will create a checklist for what make a well-­‐written tweet.
   Homework: Based on the criteria established by the students, each student will compose a tweet for a story they are currently working on or are about to publish that would attract attention to their tweet. Students will compose two versions: One in Twitter “lingo” and a second in journalism style. Deadline: One class period.

Activity III: Tweet it. (One 50-minute class)
   Students will break back into the six equal groups from the day before. In their small groups they will peer evaluate their original tweets. Each group will document what was effective about the tweets. They will also answer the following questions: What, if any, information was intentionally left out? Did it matter? How did this affect the tweet?
Each group will present the tweets from their writer, while members of the other groups attempt to guess the context of the tweets.
   Homework: Based on the new tips learned from 10 Tips for Journalists to Get Picked Up by Google News article by Denis Pinsky, each student will rewrite or compose three new tweets teasing the story. Deadline: One class period.

Assessment
   Each student will open a new Twitter account for the use of this class only. Each student will post on every student’s wall once per week, according to the topic being discussed in class each week. Each student will use their individual school ID numbers in their Twitter handle, preceded by their last name.

Supplemental worksheets:
Social Media Madness 1
Social Media Madness 2
Social Media Madness 3
Social Media Madness 4

References:


Rubric for Activity 1

Name:
Deadline:
___ / 200 points

___ / 10
  • Locating a qualified journalist
___ / 40
  • Keeping a journal/log of tweets
___ / 150
  • Essay summary of journalist’s tweet evaluation

Activity 1
·         Organized and easy to follow       Y  N
·         Lessons derived from this class    Y  N

Rubric for Activity 2

Name:
Deadline:
___ / 50 points

___ / 10
  • Twitter lingo and journalism style
___ / 40
  • Composing a Tweet
Activity 2
·         Organized and easy to follow       Y  N
·         Lessons derived from this class    Y  N

Rubric for Activity 3

Name:
Deadline:
___ / 30 points

___ / 10
  • Tweet 1
___ / 10
  • Tweet 2
___ / 10
  • Tweet 3
Activity 3
·         Organized and easy to follow       Y  N
·         Lessons derived from this class    Y  N

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