KS 2 English News - Fact or Fiction and Hot of the Press

These units of work are suitable for upper KS2.
The learning in these five lessons offers pupils to research and read different newspapers and distinguish between factual information and opinions based on factual information; Read and explore a range of journalistic writing and identify how a newspaper reports on specific events. Leading on to comparing and contrasting journalistic articles using the 5w’s and how and evaluating the effectiveness and impact different journalistic articles have on its target audience.

Lesson one starts with distinguishing between facts and opinions in the newspapers and answering questions with the importance of answering questions with the 5 W’s. The weeks focus is all about when the sugar tax was first introduced and how the sugar tax has impacted on reducing the obesity of the nation.
These newspaper articles will be evaluated and questions will be answered –
Q. what type of language is used? Q. What’s it purpose/impact on audience?
Q. is formal or informal language used? Q. Is all the information needed?
Q. Is anything missing? Q. Who is the intended audience?
By the end of the week pupils should be able to identify the key language features, the structure and layouts features and explain what the differences are between fact and opinion. A following week’s planning leads into writing own newspaper reports.
Hot of the Press is a unit of work suitable for upper KS2.
The learning in these five lessons gives pupils opportunities to identify the features of note taking on a health topic for a news article and write own newspaper reports; understand the concepts of journalism and how to take notes as reporters by planning a news article using key language and structure layout for own news paper report.

This unit of work follows on from ‘What’s in the News’
Hot of the Press unit of work begins with scanning and skim reading an article to take notes which leads on to skills activities in subordinate clause at the beginning at the end of sentences, embedded clauses., Semi-colon separating two main clause, simple sentences and rhetorical question in a news article. By the end of the week pupils will use their scan and skim reading skills to take their own notes before composing a newspaper article on food, nutrition or health successfully using all criteria from the class checklist and use editing skills to produce a final news article.