Tag: KS2

BBC School Report Day: Media Literacy at Horns Mill Primary School, Helsby

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I went back to school last week.

Well, sort of. Last Thursday marked BBC School Report Day, the day designed by BBC Learning to help schoolchildren make their own news reports.

The project is aimed mainly at secondary schools but I joined a colleague at Horn’s Mill Primary School in Helsby to run a news-writing and media-literacy workshop for year six pupils [pictured above].

The day-long project took a cross-curriculum approach and was based around the class’ set text, King Kong.

The class worked in pairs to research, structure and write a series of news reports about New York City.

After the morning editorial conference, we draw up a news list [pictured below].

Here are some of things we talked about:

  • What do journalists do all day?
  • What makes news? How do we find news?
  • Why is direct speech important for writing articles?
  • How is it different to write stories in a media style?
  • What reflections and learning points did we get from the day?

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Here are a selection of the comments from the learners on the day:

  • “I really enjoyed it. We discovered there are a lot of stages to writing a good story” – Oscar & Nathan
  • “It was fun. We found out how to use the who, what, where, when, why, how.” – Jess & Izzy
  • “I learnt about writing stories and that research is as important as writing.” – Billy & Amy
  • “It was interesting to meet a reporter and learn how to write a news report.” – Zak & Keira

* Do you have any tips for leading KS2 workshops? Share your views below.

Liked this? Try also A media-writing workshop for Overleigh St Marys Primary School

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BBC School Report 2015

Horn’s Mill Primary School, Helsby

Overleigh St Marys Primary School: a media-writing workshop for KS2

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I like a challenge.

It’s one thing lecturing a group of student journalists in a university lecture theatre but how about inspiring a primary school class to develop their news sense as part of KS2 literacy?

Well, that’s exactly what I tried to do this week, delivering two media-writing workshops to year-five learners at my local primary school.

The classes had just done a school trip to Spaceport on The Wirral and I used their try as basis to write some simple articles.

Some of things I talked about included:

  • What is news? How do we identify news?
  • How do we structure a news story?
  • What are interviews? What makes a good interview?
  • Why is direct speech import for writing articles?
  • What’s the difference between news and feature stories?
  • Why are intros so important in a feature?

Here are a selection of the comments from the learners on the day:

  • “It was s fun. I would like to be a journalist now. I love it!” – Charlie
  • “It was fun, interesting and constructive. It made me learn about writing news.” – Emi
  • “I thought it was real interesting. It was very descriptive. I liked it a lot.” – Amy
  • “I liked learning more about newspapers and features. Give even more examples. It was inspiring.” – Will
  • “It was constructive with lots of complicated words and sentences to make me think.” – Lily

* Do you have any tips for leading KS2 workshops? Share your views below.

Liked this? Try also Teachers: do you want to enhance the quality of writing in your class this term?