Veterans Day Newspaper

Procedures

1. Working in small groups, have students look up the following vocabulary words in the dictionary and write down their definitions: veteran, POW, armistice, commemoration, memorial.
2. Once the definitions have been found, discuss the words for a few minutes.
   
3. Ask each student to read The Origins of Veterans Day article.
   
4. Ask students to discuss why it is important to remember those who have fought for their country.
5. Generate a list of armed conflicts/wars with which your students are familiar. Help students by teaching them the names of conflicts that are unfamiliar to them. The following is a list of conflicts in which American soldiers fought:
   Civil War, Indian Wars, Spanish American War, Mexican Border, World War I, World War II, Korean Conflict, Vietnam Era, Persian Gulf War.
6. Assign each student one of the conflicts to research. Tell students that they must be able to answer all of the questions on the Veterans Day Research Worksheet before they begin writing their newspaper article.
7. Ask each student to write an article for a class newspaper about the war researched. Encourage students to look for additional information in books or on the Internet.
   
8. Before the students begin writing, remind them that writing for newspapers is different than other types of writing. The point is to get the information across to the reader quickly. Therefore, newspaper articles always include the most important facts (who, what, where, when, and why) in the first paragraph of the article. The details and background should be included in paragraphs that appear later in the article.
   
9. Once each student has written his/her article and it has been edited by the teacher, ask students to put the result together into a newspaper. This can be done electronically or it can be done using paper, transparent tape, and a copy machine.