English/Language Arts
Explore journalism - the human interest story
Use this Minute to introduce the journalistic human interest story. Find an online definition for students and gather other articles to find similarities and differences. Then challenge your students to use Percy the Cat as a mentor text as they find their own subject to write about.
Explore writing from newspaper stories
Though Author Newman doesn’t tell us where and when she first read about Percy, it is very possible that she saw the article online and decided to satisfy her curiosity with further investigation. Point your students to other examples of people writing stories after reading a newspaper article. One example is the New York Time’s story of an Iraqi librarian that was captured in both Alia’s Mission by Mark Alan Stamaty and The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter. Have your students find a story in a newspaper and rewrite it as a narrative.
STEM
Explore Animal behavior
This Minute highlights the behavior of one unusual feline. Or is that true? Is Percy’s behavior really out of the ordinary for the species? With your students, generate a list of known cat behavior. Use your library to find more information about behavior patterns of felines. Have your students re-read the Minute and pull out all of the behavioral information about Percy and compare it to what they already knew and discovered. Is Percy’s behavior really that unusual? Are there some parts that are and some parts that are not? As scientists, how do you handle something that falls outside the realm of what you thought you knew?
Explore proportional equations
Students learn from this Minute that half a mile is equal to 0.8 kilometers. Given that information, can your students express one mile in terms of kilometers? Introduce, reinforce or just plain practice proportional equations!
Research Skills
Explore the journey of a story
Author Newman tells her readers that Percy’s owners found out about their cat’s adventures when a friend called to tell them Percy had made the front page of the newspaper. Have your students do a close read of this Minute and then see how quickly they can find the original story online. Using their internet sleuthing skills, can they find the follow-up story published after Percy’s owners were identified? Keep looking. What other source published stories about Percy? Have your students create a map to find the geographic locations of published stories and accompany that map with a timeline of stories published. Leave some time for analysis and speculation at the end of class to process how and where the story traveled over what period of time. Can your students draw any conclusions about the movement of information?
Explore native revenue
Human interest stories like “Percy the Cat” can be found on many newspapers online. The problem is that they are often surrounded by (and even interrupted mid-story) sponsored content and native advertising - products or services promoted as though they are actual news stories. Stanford University published a study in November 2016 showing, among other findings, that more than 80% of middle school students in the study, while adept at identifying traditional advertising on a homepage, were not able to pick out native advertising and believed these pieces to be viable news stories. Take a look at the homepages of the pages students found when following the spread of this story. See if they can find examples of native advertising on the page. Start a list of words they find that indicate to the savvy user that these pieces are not news, but advertising - sponsored content, from our advertisers, paid partner content, etc. Once students can identify the difference, they will be on their way to being savvy consumers of internet information.
Explore journalism - the human interest story
Use this Minute to introduce the journalistic human interest story. Find an online definition for students and gather other articles to find similarities and differences. Then challenge your students to use Percy the Cat as a mentor text as they find their own subject to write about.
Explore writing from newspaper stories
Though Author Newman doesn’t tell us where and when she first read about Percy, it is very possible that she saw the article online and decided to satisfy her curiosity with further investigation. Point your students to other examples of people writing stories after reading a newspaper article. One example is the New York Time’s story of an Iraqi librarian that was captured in both Alia’s Mission by Mark Alan Stamaty and The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter. Have your students find a story in a newspaper and rewrite it as a narrative.
STEM
Explore Animal behavior
This Minute highlights the behavior of one unusual feline. Or is that true? Is Percy’s behavior really out of the ordinary for the species? With your students, generate a list of known cat behavior. Use your library to find more information about behavior patterns of felines. Have your students re-read the Minute and pull out all of the behavioral information about Percy and compare it to what they already knew and discovered. Is Percy’s behavior really that unusual? Are there some parts that are and some parts that are not? As scientists, how do you handle something that falls outside the realm of what you thought you knew?
Explore proportional equations
Students learn from this Minute that half a mile is equal to 0.8 kilometers. Given that information, can your students express one mile in terms of kilometers? Introduce, reinforce or just plain practice proportional equations!
Research Skills
Explore the journey of a story
Author Newman tells her readers that Percy’s owners found out about their cat’s adventures when a friend called to tell them Percy had made the front page of the newspaper. Have your students do a close read of this Minute and then see how quickly they can find the original story online. Using their internet sleuthing skills, can they find the follow-up story published after Percy’s owners were identified? Keep looking. What other source published stories about Percy? Have your students create a map to find the geographic locations of published stories and accompany that map with a timeline of stories published. Leave some time for analysis and speculation at the end of class to process how and where the story traveled over what period of time. Can your students draw any conclusions about the movement of information?
Explore native revenue
Human interest stories like “Percy the Cat” can be found on many newspapers online. The problem is that they are often surrounded by (and even interrupted mid-story) sponsored content and native advertising - products or services promoted as though they are actual news stories. Stanford University published a study in November 2016 showing, among other findings, that more than 80% of middle school students in the study, while adept at identifying traditional advertising on a homepage, were not able to pick out native advertising and believed these pieces to be viable news stories. Take a look at the homepages of the pages students found when following the spread of this story. See if they can find examples of native advertising on the page. Start a list of words they find that indicate to the savvy user that these pieces are not news, but advertising - sponsored content, from our advertisers, paid partner content, etc. Once students can identify the difference, they will be on their way to being savvy consumers of internet information.
© Karen Sterling, 2017 - May be used for educational purposes without written permission