Writing & Publishing Prose

Printing Press

Grades

K - 12

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About this Interactive

Overview

The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers. Teachers and students can choose from several templates to publish class newspapers, informational brochures, and flyers announcing class events. Text added to the templates can be modified using a simple WYSIWYG editor, which allows students to choose text features, such as font size and color. Documentation for the Printing Press includes instructions for using the tool. Customized versions of the tool, which include additional instructions and more focused choices, are included with some lessons. A basic planning sheet is available to help students gather ideas before working on this interactive tool.

Related Resources

Student Interactives

Calendar Activities

Strategy Guides

Lesson Plans

Flip Book

The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.

Stapleless Book

The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!

The New York Times used the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print."

After discussing newspapers and their different points of view, students choose a current event, read editorials on the event, and share them with the class to identify the editor's point of view.

Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series, was born in 1939.

After students have read one of Brian Jacques' Redwall stories, a class newspaper is created based on the story.

The first English printer, William Caxton, was born on this day in 1422.

Students consider how the printing press affects their world by completing a printing inventory, comparing lists, and developing a "super" list of all printed materials that they interact with.

Get ready for National Bullying Prevention Month!

Students create a poster to enter into a poster contest that educates others about issues surrounding bullying.

Frederick Douglass began publication of The North Star today in 1847.

Students read and discuss an editorial written by Frederick Douglass and then write the opening editorial for a contemporary publication devoted to a social cause important to them.

Shared Writing

This strategy guide explains how to use shared writing to teach students effective strategies that will improve their own independent writing ability.

Guided Writing

This strategy guide explains how to use small-group, guided writing instruction to teach students effective strategies and improve their ability to produce text independently.

How Does My Garden Grow? Writing in Science Field Journals

Students plant a garden and study its growth using the inquiry process of questioning and exploring. As they research and study, students record their observations in a field journal.

You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?

In this lesson, students read a literary text with the eye of a director, selecting scenes from the text and putting a cinematic spin on them.

Technical Reading and Writing Using Board Games

Students celebrate a novel they have read and get hands-on experience with technical writing by creating a board game based on the novel and writing the instructions for it.

So What Do You Think? Writing a Review

Writing a review of an author's work challenges students to develop their critical thinking skills. It provides an opportunity for students to speak their mindsand to enjoy being heard.

Travel Brochures: Highlighting the Setting of a Story

Readers are often transported to the places mentioned in texts through words and descriptions. This lesson invites students to create travel brochures about the setting of texts they have read.

The Year I Was Born: An Autobiographical Research Project

Students explore the year they were born through interviews and research, and then weave the details into a newspaper or booklet, written from another person's point of view.

Investigating Junk Mail: Negotiating Critical Literacy at the Mailbox

Students increase their media literacy skills by critically examining and revising junk mail.

Using Word Storms to Explore Vocabulary and Encourage Critical Thinking

Students learn that dogs are more than just pets in this lesson, which teaches them to use research and vocabulary-acquisition strategies to learn and write about working dogs.

Creating a Classroom Newspaper

Students write authentic newspaper stories, including learning about various aspects of newspapers, such as writing an article, online articles, newspaper reading habits, and layout and design techniques.

Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas

Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.

Building a Learning Community: Crafting Rules for the Classroom

Students will learn to mind their ps and qs in this lesson on etiquette and appropriate behavior in the classroom.

Zines for Kids: Multigenre Texts About Media Icons

Special edition! Students use ReadWriteThink tools to create magazines about prominent figures using a variety of writing genres and styles.

Crit Lit for Kids: From Critical Consciousness to Service Learning

Students take their ideas from the classroom page to the community pavement when they participate in a service-learning project based on their multimedia presentations.

I've Got It Covered! Creating Magazine Covers to Summarize Texts

Start the presses! Catchy titles, eye-popping graphics, and attractive fonts are all on students' agendas in this lesson as they create magazine covers to summarize a topic.

Leading to Great Places in the Elementary Classroom

Students examine great leads in children's literature before writing or revising a lead in their own writing.

Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom

Students examine leads in existing texts and create alternative leads for them before revising leads in their own writing.

Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research

Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.

Draw a Story: Stepping from Pictures to Writing

Students draw a series of pictures that tell a story, including character action, problem and solution. They ‘read' their story to others, transcribe it into writing, and create an accordion book.

Myth and Truth: Independence Day

By exploring myths and truths surrounding Independence Day, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Independence Day holiday.

Picture Books as Framing Texts: Research Paper Strategies for Struggling Writers

Students use picture books as framing texts for research, freeing them from the language of encyclopedia sources and allowing them to focus their attention on the content of their papers.

Acrostic Poems: All About Me and My Favorite Things

Students create acrostic poems using their names and the names of things that are important to them.

Imagine That! Playing with Genre through Newspapers and Short Stories

Students identify genre characteristics for short stories and newspaper articles then practice both genres by turning a short story into a news article and an article into a short story.

Authentic Persuasive Writing to Promote Summer Reading

Turn summer reading lists from a teacher-centered requirement to a student-driven exploration by asking students to create brochures and flyers that suggest books to explore during the summer months.

Color Poems—Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting

Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color.

Creating Classroom Community by Crafting Themed Poetry Collections

Students create poetry collections with the theme of "getting to know each other." They study and then write a variety of forms of poetry to include in their collections.

Looking for the History in Historical Fiction: An Epidemic for Reading

This lesson pairs the reading of historical fiction with nonfiction to introduce students to the large themes of history.

Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Explore reading strategies using Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and other works. Students read Poe's works in both large- and small-group readings then conclude with a variety of projects.

Collaborating on a Class Book: Exploring Before-During-After Sequences

Students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events.

Investigating the Holocaust: A Collaborative Inquiry Project

Students explore a variety of resources as they learn about the Holocaust. Working collaboratively, they investigate the materials, prepare oral responses, and produce a topic-based newspaper to complete their research.

What If We Changed the Book? Problem-Posing with Sixteen Cows

After reading a piece of math-related children's literature aloud, students pose and solve new problems by asking what-if questions about the events in the story.

Bridging Literature and Mathematics by Visualizing Mathematical Concepts

During interactive read-aloud sessions, students identify how an author conveys mathematical information about animals' sizes and abilities. They then conduct research projects focusing on the same mathematical concepts.

A Significant Influence: Describing an Important Teacher in Your Life

In this project, students write tributes to teachers who have made a profound difference in their lives then publish their work in a class collection.

Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet for a Digital Age

Explore the modern significance of an older text, such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama.

Our Classroom: Writing an Owner's Manual

Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.

Myth and Truth: The Gettysburg Address

By exploring myths and truths surrounding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding this famous speech from the Civil War era.

Put That on the List: Collaboratively Writing a Catalog Poem

Using the structure of a list poem, students combine creative expression with poetic techniques and language exploration in order to write group poems about what really matters in their lives.

Put That on the List: Independently Writing a Catalog Poem

In this follow-up to writing collaborative catalog poems, students write individual catalog poems about what really matters in their lives, based on Carver's poem "The Car."

A Poem of Possibilities: Thinking about the Future

After reading John Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player," students write poems describing themselves five years in the future. The teacher takes the poems and mails them to students in five years.

Searching for Gold: A Collaborative Inquiry Project

Each small group of students researches one aspect of the same big topic, such as the Gold Rush, and teaches what they have learned to the rest of the class.

The Feature Story—Fifteen Minutes (and 500 Words) of Fame!

Students learn how to differentiate between a news story and a feature story by writing a profile of a classmate.

Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose

Students create brochures on the same topic as another piece of writing they have done, highlighting how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers.

Connecting Past and Present: A Local Research Project

In this unit, students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school's history.

Technology and Copyright Law: A "Futurespective"

Students research and report on instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies. They write articles predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.

Ekphrasis: Using Art to Inspire Poetry

In this lesson, students explore ekphrasis—writing inspired by art. Students find pieces of art that inspire them and compose a booklet of poems about the pieces they have chosen.

Persuasive Techniques in Advertising

Students will be introduced to persuasive techniques used in advertising, analyze advertising, and explore the concepts of demographics, marketing for a specific audience, and dynamic advertising.

Creating Psychological Profiles of Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird

Students explore the motivation behind characters' actions in To Kill A Mockingbird by creating psychological profiles for characters from the novel.

Breaking the Rules with Sentence Fragments

Though teachers usually caution students against using sentence fragments, Edgar Schuster's work demonstrates that professional writers often use fragments effectively. This lesson helps students understand that there are reasons that they can and should use sentence fragments to become effective writers.

Book Report Alternative: Rewind the Plot!

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices by rewinding the plot.

Book Report Alternative: Sharing Info from Informational Reading

Reporting on an informational book doesn't have to be boring! Instead of the traditional book report format, students create newspapers using a Printing Press interactive to share what they have learned from reading informational books.

Printing Press

About this Interactive

Overview

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