Summary:
After focusing on newspaper structures (Headline, Lead Paragraph, Body and Conclusion)give students this creative newspaper writing task which gives students the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of an actual reporter. The tasks gives a variety of information about Myer getting robbed.
Australian Curriculum Links:
- Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, choosing and experimenting with text structures, language features, images and digital resources appropriate to purpose and audience (ACELY1714)
- Reread and edit students’ own and others’ work using agreed criteria and explaining editing choices(ACELY1715)
- Use a range of software, including word processing programs, learning new functions as required to create texts (ACELY1717)
- Compare texts including media texts that represent ideas and events in different ways, explaining the effects of the different approaches (ACELY1708)
Lesson:
Introduction:
- Hand out the Myer writing scandal task sheet and get students to read through the instructions which outlines they are an aspiring journalist and they have been hired to cover a big scoop about retail giant Myer.
Body:
- After quickly glossing over how to structure a newspaper report, ask students to quickly plan what they are going to write so that their writing is a lot more structured. (This also gives you the chance to get to the students who struggle to generate ideas.
- Students then work independently writing their newspaper article.
- Also for a bit of fun, you can say that students are working to a deadline and are required to submit the article at a specified time to you! (A great way to motivate those workers who are easily distracted!)
- About 10 minutes til deadline, ask students top proof read thier work with a focus on grammar, spelling and tense (these explained earlier in the unit.)
- Then get them to swap with a friend to proof read as well.
- Extension: You can turn this into an oral presentation in which students will pretend to be a news team and read their story out live to the class. I also bought in some suit jackets and ties for my students to wear so that they felt like a real news team and filmed it as well!
Assessment:
- Work Sample- Able to moderate the writing samples they produce.
Resources:
- Myer Writing Scandal– The template to be used in class.
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