News report

The latest news

A lot of people like watching news programmes on TV to get informed. The news stories presented can be related to economics, politics, sport, society or culture, among other topics. Both, presenters and reporters tell the audience about them following the principle of the 5 Ws.

At the end of this section, you will have:

Listened and watched a news report.
Learnt and revised question words.
Revised and practised the Past simple and the Present Perfect tenses.
Created a news report.

Channels broadcast news programmes at prime time, but remember that you can also watch the news on specific websites at any time.

Geralt. Preguntas (CC0)

Enter the newsinlevels site to read and listen to a news story. Comment with a partner how much you have understood. Then, answer with short phrases to the following questions about the news story.

What happens?
Where does it happen?
How long is it?

These questions contain question words that help you check you understand the most important information presented in a news story. Open the Question Word infographic and revise more particles. With a partner, invent and add new information on the news story by answering the questions below.

When does it happen?
Who does it?

Go round the class and ask your classmates what information they have added to the original news. Is it similar to yours and your partner's?

Let us go a bit further and change all the verbs in the news story into the Past Simple tense. Enter the ef.com site and refresh your knwoledge about this tense. Remember to include in your news correct Past - time expressions.

With your classmate, change the news' headline into a different one. Use the Present Perfect in your headline. Enter the E-books site and get some ideas.

As further practice, we suggest that you change the tenses in the same news story into the Present Perfect tense. Enter the Perfect English Grammar website and learn about the use and form of this compound tense.

Your news story

The mission you are about to start will allow you to create your own news story. In this mission, you will have the chance to develop, write and broadcast a news story that happened in the last few weeks or a long time ago.

Alexas_Fotos. Noticias (CC0)

Here, you are going to work individually first and then with three other classmates.

Your teacher will assess your written news story taking into account the criteria included in the 'Rubric for assessing an informative text' (download in editable odt format, download in pdf) .Read the criteria in the 'Rubric for assessing a video in the classroom' (download in editable odt format, download in pdf) that your teacher will consider to evaluate your team work.

We suggest that you follow the instructions to do the mission accurately.

Feedback

Remember that a news story gives important information about a recent event. The first step that you are going to take is to choose a news event that you think is important for others to know about.
Search for an important news event that has happened at your school or invent one to be more original.
Before writing your news story, get organized and plan your text with the help of the News Story Organizer document. Remember to keep your story simple and concise. Add a headline and use the Present Perfect and Past simple to develop the news story.
Hand or send your teacher the text for correction.
Your teacher will create a board on Pinterest entitled 'The Hottest News' where you can publish your text accompanying it with an image. Copy the text link and paste it in the page entitled 'My writing guide' of your Weebly site.
Get together in groups of four students and choose one of the four news stories on which you are going to base your report.
Watch the BBC News video to have an example on how to write and film your own news report.
In your report, include some interviews of the people who got involved in that news story. In your group, each member will have to play a different role when filming the report. You can use the online tool Storyboardthat to prepare the draft of your video considering the texts, images, the people participating and the places where you will film your report.
Together with your classmates, you are going to create and edit a video which will be part of the magazine programme that you will face in the great final challenge.
Try to attract the audience with relevant information about the event.
In order to create and edit your video, you can use the Wevideo tool or a similar tool.
Share the video with the rest of your classmates on Pinterest.
Your teacher will publish your video on an educational channel so that you can embed it in your Weebly site, on the page entitled 'My digital resources' .

Learning Diary

We hope you finished your mission successfully. Reflect on how you performed it and write down your reflections and thoughts about your learning process in your Learning Diary. This will help you become aware of what you have achieved or what you need to reinforce.

your learning diary

Peter O'Shea. Writing tools (CC BY)

Create a new post on your blog with the title 'News Report' and answer the following questions:

What are the most difficult aspects?
What tool was the most difficult for you to work with?
What do you think is the most important aspect you have learned?
Are there any aspects you didn't understand?

Do not forget it would be great if you shared these feelings and thoughts with your classmates. You will have 10 or 15 minutes to complete this part.

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