Writing a news report

Introduction

In this lesson plan, learners will write a news report about an imaginary crime. They will first go through the process of brainstorming, developing ideas and collecting and organising information. They will then use the information to create the first draft of their story. They will then focus on some key areas of good writing by using an editing checklist and try to redraft their articles with these in mind. Follow up tasks are offered after the main plan.

Lesson outcomes

• create a news report about the disappearance of an English teacher
• identify and follow the typical structure of a news report 
• practise working in groups to brainstorm and organise information
• practise editing writing by using an ‘Editor’s checklist’

Materials 

• Lesson plan 
• Student worksheet 

Similar resources

• News - A lesson plan about news and the media which gives learners opportunities to express their own opinions. Suitable for secondary learners and adults at CEFR level B1.
• Fake news - This lesson for seconday learners and adults at CEF level B1 looks at strategies for identifying fake news and fake websites.

Pre-writing tasks (10 minutes)

• This part of the lesson gives learners the opportunity to collect information before writing the news report. 

• Note: Before the class, take some time to think up some details to this imaginary story, so you can answer learner’s questions later.

• Show slide 2 or write up the headline on the board: 

  ‘Mystery Disappearance of English Teacher: Students Suspected’

• Tell learners it is an imaginary story, and they need to be creative. Put learners in pairs to try to predict the content of the story and what may have happened to the teacher. Learners may do this in their L1 if this helps them with ideas.
• Ask learners to change pairs and compare what they think happened.
• Give out small scrap pieces of paper, 2 or 3 per learner. Tell learners to write a question about the possible story on each piece of paper and give each one to you. (Click to show the thought bubble on slide 2 or write up some question words on the board to prompt them, e.g., Who…? What time….? How many….? Etc.)
• As they give you back the slips of paper, quickly write very brief answers on them and give them back. The answers you give them will help to prompt them to produce more questions. If you have a very large class, this may not be possible, and you may want to do this stage one lesson, take the slips home to answer, then continue the next day.
• Stop when the learners have used up their papers or run out of questions.

Writing preparation (10 minutes)

• This stage helps learners construct their story, first in groups, then pairs/alone.
• Put learners in groups of 5 or 6 and give each group their share of the slips of paper from the previous activity. Tell them they will need use the information to compose a news report to go with the headline. Before they start writing the report ask them to decide what order they will put the information in.
• If time, join two groups and ask them to explain their story. Tell them not to worry if stories are different.

Writing (20 minutes)

• Show slide 3 or give out the student worksheet and direct learners to the first task ‘A typical crime report’. Ask learners to work in pairs to complete the common order for newspaper reports. (answers: headline, basic, more, description, police, witnesses)
• Once they have grouped the information, ask learners to work in pairs or individually to write the report. They should make sure to include all the information from their questions. Monitor and help when needed. Allow dictionary access.

Editing (15 minutes)

• Once the learners have written their reports, ask them to exchange them with another learner/pair and give out the ‘Editor's checklist’ (Show slide 5 or direct learners to the student worksheet). The learners then use this to check through each other's work and write on any comments or suggestions for improvement. Monitor and help here.
• Then they give the checked report back to the original writer(s) to make any corrections or changes.
• Learner then produce a final draft, using the template provided on the student worksheet/slide 6, if they want. The template is in columns to mimic a newspaper. Encourage learners to add an image to a column, if they wish.
• Suggestion: Often, the process of drafting, adding comments and redrafting works best when done on a computer, as it is much easier for learners to make changes to their text without having to rewrite. If your learners don’t have access to computers, then consider spreading the redrafting over two lessons.

Feedback and reflection (5 minutes)

• If learners wrote on paper, put the reports up on the walls around the class and get the learners to look at them all and choose the one they think is best. If learners wrote digitally, collect the news reports in a file to share with learners, or ask all learners to share on a simple blog, such as https://padlet.com/ 
• Ask learners to reflect and say what they have enjoyed and learned.
• Collect up the learners’ news reports and do error correction work. Write 6-10 anonymous errors on the board and ask learners to correct them.

Extension tasks

• Idea 1: Give the learners the following headline: ‘Mystery of the Disappearing Teacher Solved’ Ask groups to produce a report for a podcast or TV news on how the mystery was solved and what happened. They could include interviews with the teacher/ students involved. They could record this on a mobile phone.
• Idea 2: Collect some short authentic news articles, from the internet or newspapers and ask learners to compare them with their own. They should look for the following: 
• the way the information is organised (how many paragraphs, what is the focus of each paragraph?)
• the structures used (present perfect, present simple, active or passive?)
• ways writers make writing more exciting (use of adjectives, adverbs, etc.)