This kind of exercise gets the students involved in actual history, and into thinking like the various characters would have thought. It also gives different kind of learners an opportunity to shine. I think this could be a very good cooperative learning lesson. Throughout the last couple of pages I have given some of my main ideas for this lesson, I have not gone into great detail on the everyday lesson, such as lectures, reading assignments, vocabulary, quizzes, etc. Hopefully I have given the impression groups would have to grade each other.
Peers often can be much more critical than the teacher is.
Also there is incentive for the other news panels to listen to each others newscasts, and think about what worked well and what didn't, storing this away for use when they do another similar project. The other major project in this unit was the play that the students were to have written and presented to the class. The dialogue would be graded for creativity and for historical accuracy, they may have Gorbachev discussing the future of the Soviet Union with Lenin or Stalin. I think that whenever a teacher does any kind of teaching they are constantly doing some sort of evaluating, they need to find out if they are getting the points across. Not only does this evaluate the students' knowledge, but it evaluates my effectiveness as a teacher.