Craft Lesson # 3: Getting Away With Murder

Title: Feature Story Writing

Rational: Students often complain that they cannot find anything to write about. By showing students that feature articles in the newspapers are written by reporters that go in search of a good story that is written to target a specific audience. Students will learn how to find a story when there appears to be no story by conducting a personality profile on another student to find something interesting to write about.

Resources: Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case, Daily newspapers with feature story examples

Discussion: The author of Getting Away with Murder: The true story of the Emmett Till Case, Chris Crowe, was conducting an interview with Newberry award winner Mildred D. Taylor. In preparation of her interview, Taylor had mentioned Emmett Till in an essay that Crowe had read. He decided to follow up on that reference to see if he needed to include more information in his writing. He used this lead to write 2 more books on the subject of Emmett Till and his murder case.

What to do: Group students in partners and have them interview each other like a reporter would. They are to find out some interesting things about his person that they might be able to use to develop a feature story.

Extension: Have the students actually interview at least 3 people that know the student (parents, siblings, teachers, coaches, enemies) and develop a feature story to be published (after being reviewed by teacher) in the school newspaper.

TEKS: (9th grade) 6,8