Visual Mapping: Laying Out the Script
Subject: English
Grade level: 9-12
Rationale or Purpose: Students visually map out the order of the episodes or roles
they want to use in their Living Newspaper script and begin transcribing the first draft.
Materials:
 Primary sources containing the episodes or roles to be used in the Living Newspaper
script. These should have been decided on previously (you can use the “Group
Consensus” lesson, Resource Guide p. 105, for this, or make it a homework assignment)
 butcher paper
 markers
 scissors
 note cards
Objectives:
English I – English III: 110.42-110.44
 (2B) develop drafts alone and collaboratively
 (7F) identify main ideas and their supporting details
 (11E) analyze the development of plot in narrative text
 (13C) use text organizers to locate and categorize information
 (14A) focus attention on the speaker's message
 (16F) make relevant contributions in conversations and discussions
English IV: 110.45
 (2B) develop drafts alone and collaboratively
 (8E) analyze text structures such as time frame, cause/effect, etc. for how they influence
the audience understanding
 (14E) organize and record new information in systematic ways (e.g. charts)
 (16F) make relevant contributions in conversations and discussions
Activities:
Step 1: Set up the room by covering the floor or a large table with butcher paper. (Or have
separate sheets of butcher paper for groups working on different scripts.) Have markers, scissors,
note cards easy to access. If the class is working in groups on different scripts, have students
break up into their groups.
Step 2: Ask students to find the quote or paragraph in their primary sources that inspired each of
the chosen episodes or roles they selected for their Living Newspaper script.
Step 3: Have students cut out these quotes or paragraphs from the original context (i.e. students
cut two lines out of a larger article). For items that can’t be physically cut out (i.e. roles students
want to develop and include), have them write the name and a brief description of this item on a
note card.
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Step 4: Instruct students that they will work in silence to create a “visual map” (outline) on the
butcher paper. Students should decide where in the course of the script each role or episode
should be (i.e. should the script begin with the monologue by the United Nations official or a
refugee in Rwanda? What makes the most sense as far as introducing information to the
audience, making a statement about the information being presented, and impacting your
audience emotionally?)
 This might be a good time to remind them of their first English Unit lesson about the
structural difference between realism and epic drama.
 Remind students that their thesis statement should guide their creation of the visual map:
the way episodes/evidence is pieced together affects the clarity of the thesis statement.
(See the Extension activity for the “Creating Arguments” lesson for reference.)
Step 4: Ask for a volunteer to put one episode or role down first, then ask students to begin
placing their episodes near or around this episode based on their connections. Ask students to
work one or two at a time, taking each other’s placements into consideration.
 This works well (though it is challenging) as a silent activity, but students could also
discuss among themselves while they are placing episodes.
 If students are working on multiple scripts, this activity can be done in groups.
 You may want to play soft music during this activity to aid nonverbal communication.
Step 5: Once episodes are all placed, students each have a chance to make one adjustment to the
visual map, to draw something with the markers (could be a line to connect episodes, a stage
direction, a picture of a role, etc.), or to cut an episode into halves or thirds and distribute it
throughout the map.
Step 6: Once the visual map is done (this could look very literal and chronological or very
abstract, depending on the group), ask students to discuss whether they are satisfied with the
order. Ask if/how the order supports the thesis statement chosen earlier for the performance.
 If a map seems strictly chronological, ask if anything is out of place and have students
collectively re-order episodes.
 If a map is more abstractly put together, ask if students see chronological connections.
Have them draw lines/arrows between episodes with the markers.
At the end of this activity, you should have a visual map or maps with a beginning, middle, and
end of the script and a clear through-line.
Step 7: Once the maps are done, put students into pairs, then split the script into as many pieces
as pairs there are. Ask students to record, now in chronological order, their section of the script
(i.e. what will happen in this section? Which episodes does it contain? Where does it fall in
greater structure of the script?). Or if multiple maps were created in small groups (for multiple
scripts), have each small group work together to record the order of the script. This should be a
direct transcription of the episodes/evidence in the visual map, but without “characters” assigned
to speak certain lines (See Extension below.)
 If working with one script, collect the separate sections in the order in which the students
originally mapped them, or have students do this on their own. This will be the current
barebones draft of the Living Newspaper script.
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Closure: Students can post the visual map on the wall to return to in subsequent lessons. Ask
students to consider ways they still want to build on their script (i.e. assigning lines to certain
characters, expanding certain roles, the inclusion of creative writing) and tell them you will be
doing some of these things in future lessons.
Student Product: Visual map(s); transcribed basic script
Assessment/Evaluation: Students might be evaluated based on their active participation in the
decision-making process of mapping out and deciding on the order of the script. This could also
be a self-evaluation.
Extension: While students will end up at the end of this lesson with a rough skeleton of the
script, the lines they include will probably have no character attached. In other words, a line
would merely read, “7 million illegal immigrants resided in the United States in January 2000,”
rather than “NARRATOR: 7 million illegal immigrants resided in the United States in January
2000” or “GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: 7 million illegal immigrants resided in the United States
in January 2000.”
 You could extend this lesson by asking that students draw from the roles they have
printed on note cards by giving them lines to speak (i.e. adding “GOVERNMENT
OFFICIAL” to the statistic above). Ask students to consider how a line changes
depending on who says it.
 Students could also create new roles for lines that seem not to have an obvious speaker.
This character assignment is something that might be developed further in some of the
performance-based lessons in the following unit and/or in some of the creative writing
exercises that follow.
From p. 107 of the Living Newspapers Across the Disciplines Resource Guide by the
Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, http://humanitiesinstitute.utexas.edu
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