Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Johnny Tremain Newspaper Article”

After reading about Johnny’s adventures in Johnny Tremain, students create newspaper articles based on details from Forbes’s novel.

You’ve just read about Johnny’s adventures during the early days of the Revolutionary War. Your goal for this activity is to create a newspaper article that discusses the most important events in the novel.

• Choose 10 important moments that trace Johnny’s character development over the course of the novel.
• Using this list of 10 events, write a newspaper article about Johnny’s adventures.
• End the article with an important lesson that Johnny learns because of his adventures. This lesson should connect to one of the novel’s main themes, which are Surviving in a Changing World, Learning Humility and Empathy, and Self-Sacrifice for the Greater Good. Please present the lesson in your own words rather than simply restating the name of the theme.
• Give your article a unique, creative title that is different from the novel’s title.
• Draw a relevant illustration for your article to catch your readers’ attention.
• Use fonts, columns, and other formatting details to help your work look like a newspaper article.