Exercises

Fairy Tale Ledes

Students create headlines and traditional news ledes for classic fairy tales. This exercise is also available in Google slides.

Learning Goals

Students will understand what makes a good headline, what makes a good lede, how to order information from most important to least, the role of perspective in news reporting, and the importance of sticking with facts.

Materials

Pens and paper.

Time

30–60 mins

PROCESS

Mindwarmer

Step 1:
Project a slide of “Little Red Riding Hood” on the board.

Step 2:
Ask for volunteers to quickly summarize the plot.

Step 3:
Have students get into pairs.

Step 4:
Give students 90 seconds to come up with a headline for a news story about “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Step 5:
Ask for volunteers to share their headlines.

Step 6:
Discussion: What makes a good headline? 

EXERCISE

Step 7:
Remain in pairs. Hand out a short version of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Step 8:
Give student pairs eight minutes to write a headline and news lede based on the fairy tale. Tell them they have no evidence other than what is in the story.

Step 9:
Have students read their ledes aloud. Evaluate based on accurate representation: whether it hit the who, what, where, and when, and whether it was possible to have a why based on the evidence. Does it go from most important information to least? And would it make you want to keep reading?

Step 10:
Discussion: Some students will likely have included details that were not in the text, which can lead to great conversation about the dangers of making assumptions and extrapolating. From whose perspective was each lede told (the wolf community or the human community)? Make sure that there is discussion of the different points of view, how it is sometimes hard to determine which information is the most important, and how everyone sees that differently (different students will likely have emphasized different things).

Step 11:
Use the discussion to create a class rubric for what makes a good lede.

Step 12:
Have student pairs swap their ledes and evaluate them using the rubric.

Step 13:
Return the ledes to the original pairs.

Step 14:
Have the pairs revise their ledes.

Step 15:
Have selected students share their revised ledes.

Possible Extensions

Redo the activity, but this time assign each student pair a character:

  • Little Red Riding Hood
  • Riding Hood’s Mother
  • Riding Hood’s Grandmother 
  • The Wolf
  • The Hunter

Have them rewrite the headline and lede from the perspective of that character. (Note: It is fine to have more than one pair assigned to the same character.)

  • Redo the headline and lede activity with a real historical event (rewrite a major news event from different points of view).
  • Analyze/critique a lede from a current news story.