My American Newspaper
 History from a student's perspective

The format is a weekly newspaper.  The teacher logs on to a website which lists “newspaper articles about actual historical events, but written by kids the students’ age, writing from their perspective to their grade level.   Teachers pull selected “articles” which most match elements the teacher will be   teaching that week into a preformatted “newspaper”, which can   be printed out, copied and distributed to the class.  Each article also identifies  the number of words and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability  Standard.

 

The articles are broken into the following categories:

• Events – Significant historical events from a teenager’s perspective

• People – Special people, not covered in textbooks, who changed how we live our lives today
• Technology – Solving a unique problem or situation in a different way, one that isn’t obvious from today’s view
• Conditions – Cultural and social situations which we can’t understand today without a different perspective

 
“Articles” about the  events are supplemented by a journal from a pioneer family traveling the Oregon Trail, a  first person narrative about a job a typical student-age person  would have during the 1800’s (i.e. printer’s devil) and a “Then and Now” section highlighting changes to society over a span of time.   But each item would be dragged from a menu and plugged into to a preformatted “newspaper” to match a particular teacher’s teaching plan.
 
The goal would be to include events which might not normally be in a history book or lesson, but which would provide additional historical context or perspective to how we got where we are today.
  
A separate Teacher Edition is printed with a guide for leading a discussion about each element of the newspaper.