Hit the Headlines

Exciting journalism activities for improving writing and thinking skills

Colin Macfarlane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136507601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Hit the Headlines charts out a series of fun and inspiring, cross-curricular journalism workshops that enhance key skills and confidence in areas such as:

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• Writing and editing.

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• Critical assessment.

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• Interviewing and observation.

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• Mental flexibility and resourcefulness.

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• Role-playing and teamwork.

This book will enable teachers of 9 – 15 year-olds to involve their students in a number of effective and well-tested exercises, games and scenarios, which will encourage them into enthusiastically seeking out and gaining further knowledge in areas such as news, journalism, social issues, IT, data assessment, 'intelligent observation', and enhanced questioning and listening. This is 'organic learning' at its best!

An introduction to the theory behind the book summarises short and long term learning outcomes which your students can achieve through these methods, explaining why scenarios which feel 'real' can immerse students and inspire them to achieve greater proficiency. The author also flags up particular aspects of the book which encourage readers to read and use it systematically, as well as to take on specific challenges themselves in order to better assist their students in the writing and editing challenges it contains.

Practical photocopiable templates for many chapters are provided, which can be used as classroom (and out-of classroom) exercises, examples and solutions to exercises. Through these engrossing journalistic scenarios, students will learn how to critically assess levels of 'interest and importance' of diverse facts, and so begin to understand that report or presentation writing of any sort involves sequencing a critical balance between these two factors.

Readers and users of this book can go on to customise their own scenarios, drawing on the stimulating techniques outlined to improve their students' factual writing and related thinking skills. In particular, classroom teachers in primary, middle and secondary schools and all literacy co-ordinators will find this book extremely useful, as well as students studying for PGCEs and NQTs.

1  Introduction and theory

Simply because you are reading this book, you must be a teacher or tutor who understands the educational limits of paper-based exercises and who feels the need to teach beyond the narrower confines of the curriculum. You are obviously someone who is prepared to take time to discover skills and techniques that will enthuse and engross your young students and get them learning in the broadest way possible.

This is great news because two of the most essential elements involved in the effective use of the kinds of hands-on, cross-curricular teaching methods described in this book are inspiration and enthusiasm!

Many of the activities use role play in some form or another to make the workshops really come alive, be it in acting the part of a witness or participant in a convincing news story scenario or playing the role of a reporter, sub-editor, or even news presenter.

Learning subtler English writing and related thinking skills without spending a lot of time sitting staring at a real or simulated sheet of paper might seem contradictory to some, but of course that only needs to be part of the process. We all know that too much of that kind of thing can quickly cause less ‘bookish’ pupils to lose interest, and that this is especially true for boys.

The techniques described in this book

The techniques described in this book have been developed to:

• make learning about English exciting, absorbing and fun;
• make learning about news journalism equally exciting, absorbing and fun;
• bring greater enthusiasm for learning and improving in English to a wider range of children and especially to boys;
• develop those important thinking skills that lie behind better writing, as well as improving ‘hard’ writing skills themselves;
• increase skills, knowledge and confidence in a wide range of learning areas;
• challenge and inspire more able students;
• create such wholehearted immersion through exciting role play and amusing games that pupils learn organically, proven to be the principal way young people learn and perhaps the principal way some children learn;
• motivate as many participants as possible to the point where they want to take on learning responsibility for themselves and seek out further knowledge both in areas central to their projects, such as news, journalism and English, and also in related areas, for example, social issues, politics, history, the law, science, medicine, IT, layout, graphics, photography, etc.;
• generate personal legacy skills which students can take into other areas of learning and life. These may include reasoning skills; observational skills; mental dexterity in assessing and organising levels of importance and interest; improved ability to ‘read between the lines’; increased confidence in drama work; greater resourcefulness, flexibility and ability to think under pressure; IT skills; layout, graphics and photographic skills; and increased proficiency in planning and writing all sorts of reports, articles, presentations, leaflets, coursework, exam essays, etc.;
• generate legacy skills for teachers, students and the institution of which they are part.

This might all sound too good to be true, but over many years of running intensive courses and workshops employing these sorts of techniques, their effectiveness has been proven over and over again, and the highly positive feedback received from a great many students, former students, families, teachers and education advisors is testament to that.

Some of my students have been so enthused by these courses that they have chosen journalism as a career, and many have moved on to creating, or becoming involved in, school, college or university newspapers. At least one ex-student, who was quickly promoted to editor of a major university newspaper, used some of these techniques to train her large editorial staff so successfully that she was given a specially-created media award by her institution. Significantly (this stems from personal experience and testimony, and not the report of any scientific study), those students who became involved in journalistic roles in their learning centres often appeared to jump forward significantly in their results in other areas of their studies.

This book is overwhelmingly designed to be a practical guide to the techniques developed in, and for, these courses and school workshops, but I will begin by describing in the rest of this chapter some of the ideas underlying these activities. As a teacher who craves having sufficient practical teaching time, you may feel you have had enough of educational theory and could be tempted to skip to later chapters in this book, but the small amount of theory is here to explain the thinking behind how and why the techniques work so effectively, and to convince readers why it is worth putting that extra effort into making the practical side run as well as possible.

Learning is effective when it feels ‘real’

Although the old adage says that no news is good news, making learning fun and effective for all abilities is always good news. For children and young people, throwing oneself into the processes of inventing dramatic ‘news’ happenings, developing associated characters, acting these characters out or being an intrepid reporter trying to ferret out the real truth about them is terrific fun. Even relatively weak students in a group can become ridiculously caught up in the excitement of creating dramatic news stories together, perhaps also finding props or dressing up and taking on adult roles in the scenarios.

More able children particularly relish thinking and writing in ‘real’ and ‘adult’ situations and, in all of these activities, can be challenged and re-challenged relative to their particular age, ability and developmental stage. The extra enthusiasm generated is partly to do with the fun of the game elements and partly because they sense that these more grown-up activities have ‘value’ as well as clear personal and group goals.

This element of making a news scenario seem real is important because, to an extent, it feels important when it feels real. Scenarios are playing … drama … a ‘play’. Children learn by playing, that’s much of what play is for. Baby mammals such as wolf cubs learn co-ordination and basic hunting skills through play with each other and sometimes with their parents. They also develop social skills in their own ‘mini scenarios’ in which they learn how to bite, scratch or throw their siblings down a slope just hard enough to make the game adequately realistic for them to test and improve their strength, strategies and conditioned reflexes, but not so hard that they get hurt themselves, temporarily ostracised by their playmates, or receive a quick ‘educational’ nip from mum. It is not long before these developing skills are joined by the even more complex skills involved in learning sophisticated teamwork and beginning to function together as a pack, even if they might only be hunting grasshoppers to begin with. It’s organic learning.

Learning the organic way

Watch a pack of young human newshounds’ immersion and pleasure in learning through exciting structured play and you also see organic learning at work!

Although a news story has fundamental differences in form compared to a piece of fiction, the enthusiasm generated by involvement in creating exciting, life-like ‘event’ scenarios means that participants automatically start taking on other English challenges such as team writing, plot creation and adaption, the refining of story logic, character development, and discovering – in a simplified form of script creation – more about how to devise and slant a story to fit a specific purpose.

All of this entails the use and development of quite subtle skills and yet, to the participants, it doesn’t feel like hard work: it feels like fun. This active, joyful form of working is typical of organic learning at its best. Interestingly, the ‘realistic’ feel of many news scenarios can often enthuse relatively disenchanted students almost as much as the more predictably ‘involved’ learners. Motivation is fundamental to learning and these methods can greatly increase it. Children begin to learn actively rather than passively because they are immersed by their roles in the exhilarating scenarios and motivated to achieve their goals.

Learning is more effective when it has goals

It is not surprising, then, that these cross-curricular techniques fall broadly under what is sometimes referred to as ‘goal-based learning’, of which there are two sorts, somewhat confusingly called ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’. As you may know, the former means learning while involved in the actual activity in real life (as a craftsman’s apprentice would do), and the latter usually relates to participation in scenarios designed to replicate all or part of the real thing.

For children, of course, the first sort is often impossible. The ultimate ‘natural’ goal-based learning in journalism might, for instance, involve your young pupils in becoming real miniature trainee reporters, racing around the country or world, mentored by a hard-bitten old hack while ferreting out gripping news stories for an important adult newspaper or television station. Unsurprisingly, that would not be safe, practicable or even possible, and of course children don’t have enough base knowledge or skills to cope with that kind of adult role while learning, so the second form, the ‘artificial’ type, is the predominant type used in this book.

It can be argued that the artificial sort is often preferable in many ways because scenarios, or scenario ‘rules’, can be deliberately constructed to cover learning desired skill sets while the scenario still feels relatively like the real thing. When you think about it, invented news stories can be more dramatic and exciting than a great many of the real stories that genuine news reporters cover on a daily basis (have you ever had to sit in a town hall meeting for several hours listening to a discussion about drainage?) and ‘teacher-editors’ don’t have to worry about their young charges going to dangerous places or getting embroiled in the subtler complications of the laws on libel and contempt of court, with which real journalists have to contend in the regular course of their work!

Processes matter more than facts

It is important to remember that in journalism, and to a large extent in English, our young participants, for the most part, really need to be learning processes rather than facts. Learning a process is learning a skill, and immersion in each process is a potentially exciting journey where necessary sub-skills and facts are gathered readily on the way. This includes not merely facts about the fictitious or real news stories they are dealing with, but facts about journalism and English and all of the other allied areas of learning already mentioned. Sadly, institutions such as schools and colleges sometimes attempt to teach processes but end up simply teaching facts and theory because these are more easily testable. In attempting to learn a process well, however, it is much more effective to do it than to be taught it in a sort of realism vacuum.

Can you imagine an airline pilot learning to fly a passenger jet only by being told about the process in a classroom? How did your holiday pilot really learn how to fly a jumbo jet? Well, of course, there was a certain amount of classroom theory and straight factual learning, but he could still probably learn to fly a plane, to some extent, without most of that. As a pilot he had already learned to fly, principally through natural, goal-based learning, by manoeuvring a small plane with an instructor beside him. As he moved on to learning the more complex, challenging and massively responsible process of controlling a large flying machine with hundreds of passengers on board, ‘artificial’ goal-based learning came strongly into play.

Before they would let him loose in the real thing, they put him in a flight simulator a great many times and ran through scenario after scenario after scenario, including some where he was allowed to feel what it was like to exceed the limits of successful flying control and even crash the jet … only in simulation, of course. Why were they doing all that? To make the simulations as lifelike as possible, of course, and to cover as many situations that might arise as possible … without having to jeopardise the lives of his passengers!

Similarly, those wolf cubs mentioned earlier learned many of the early stages of the hunting processes by so-called ‘artificial’ methods through play and involvement in simple scenarios, then went on to learning by ‘natural’ methods while out on the job with mum and the rest of the pack. I prefer to call both those routes ‘organic’ learning rather than ‘goal-based learning’. Firstly, this is because this type of learning feels more ‘organic’ than narrow classroom learning. Secondly, it is unlikely that, as the tiny cubs were playing with their siblings in the early stages, they were aware of a conscious goal of becoming successful adult hunters, although they would already have, or have quickly acquired, the goal of wanting to beat their little opponents in the games.

Harnessing the natural drive to learn

Human babies and young infants are driven to want to play, experiment, make mistakes and learn from them, not because they have clear mental goals yet to become writers, bankers or teachers, or even just to be adults, but because they are pre-programmed with the all-powerful goals of human development: to keep attempting to succeed in crawling, walking, manipulating objects, etc. Their built-in drive to succeed, reinforced by encouragement and example provided by those around them, will soon lead to increasingly complex play and games (which are really just more ‘scenarios’) from which they will learn organically … all practice for the ultimate game known as adult life.

Just as is the case for the trainee airline pilot in his relatively life-like simulator, it is much easier to learn when one is convinced about the ‘realness’ of the situation and/or the ‘realness’ value and purpose of that learning, so it’s not surprising that as children grow and become more aware, they learn most effectively when that learning feels well connected to both purpose and real life. This brings us back to why it is helpful that your young students’ roles as reporters, editors, witnesses, interviewees or broadcast presenters, are made to feel reasonably real and the scenarios created seem equally realistic and relatively grown-up. After all, much of the point of children’s play is learning, and children learn in order to grow up successfully.

2 A few words on how to use this book

Please read this!

Although, as a busy teacher with too much to read, you may be tempted to dip in and out of this book to begin with, it’s important to realise that it has been constructed so that the best learning outcomes will be achieved by reading it from the beginning, and using the activities suggested in the way they have been explained and in the same general order as in the book. Once you become familiar with using the techniques you can dip in and out to remind yourself of ideas and suggestions for parts of the process, and to stimulate your own ideas about how to customise, develop or transfer these.

Fundamental to everything that follows it is the Basic Sequencing Exercise described in Chapter 3. It was designed early on in the development of these workshops as a response to my discovery that an amazingly high percentage of children, even in early secondary school, have never, or hardly ever, read a newspaper or a full news story, and the related realisation that a surprisingly high percentage have only the vaguest sense of what the structural form of a news story (and, to an extent, of any relatively complex report or presentation) is like.

Other possible reasons for this are described in the relevant chapter, but my repeated experience has been that most young people tend to struggle to fit material tightly and successfully into the format of a proper news story, although they struggle much less if they have taken part in the basic sequencing exercise beforehand. Once they have worked on it in a well-run session, they begin to understand the essential principles of the form and can then work progressively through many of the activities suggested in the book and towards developing the surprisingly sophisticated skills required to structure and write a news story well. They will then acquire greater understanding of the process and improve their skills naturally over time. The Basic Sequencing Exercise itself has been designed to be as organic as possible, which is one reason why participants do not need to write anything physically with a pencil or word processor while working on it.

Creating a perfectly structured, well-written and balanced news story or report is surprisingly hard for young people (and indeed for many adults). It’s important to remember that it can even take professional trainee journalists (who are obviously older and have had much more general writing experience) quite some time to master the form. Indeed, their editors may send their copy back with suggested improvements and changes to what the lead should be and how parts should be written.

As a result of young people’s general lack of familiarity with newspapers, it is important for your group to look at papers in some depth at an early stage so they gain an organic feel for the structure and look of articles and how they vary in different newspapers and news sources, the shortness of paragraphs and sentences, the varying choice of leads, the use of different typefaces, etc. Most teachers in primary and secondary education will have led some of this kind of activity as part of their curriculum work, but additional suggestions will be given on things to talk about and ideas on how young students can discover many of these for themselves. You can even turn this process into a game: as always, a...