Lesson video

Hello, it's Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to our English unit, all about journalistic writing.

Today we're going to start planning for our own newspaper reports.

We're going to be planning the opening paragraph and the chronological recount paragraph.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil to write with and a ruler or a straight edge.

If you don't have any of those items with you right now, just pause the recording and get yourself ready.

In today's lesson, we're going to start with an introduction, recapping what we're already learnt about journalistic writing.

We're then going to start planning for our opening paragraph.

Moving on to planning for our chronological recount paragraph and finishing today's lesson with your independent task.

Let's remind ourselves what is journalistic writing? Can you write down anything you can remember from our previous lessons? Off you go.

Well done.

Journalistic writing is text written by a journalist.

Journalists collect, write, present, edit or comment on news and current affairs.

News is a recount of current significant events.

So it retells you what's happened that's really important that's been going on in the world.

And written news reports are found in newspapers or online.

And remember, we looked at this image before to remind us that often people read their news electronically these days on their mobile phones or on computers but we can also read printed news in newspapers.

This is the newspaper report structure we're going to be following as part of this unit.

We're going to have an opening paragraph, a chronological recount paragraph, a quotes paragraph and a closing paragraph.

You might find that you've read newspaper reports that follow a different structure but this is the structure that we're going to be following.

In today's lesson, we're going to plan for the opening and the chronological recount paragraph.

First of all, let's remind ourselves of the events that we are reporting on.

We're basing our newspaper report on the film "Hoodwinked," which is a retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood." In a moment, I'm going to play the film clip.

Once you've seen it, I'm going to ask you to put the stills in order and retell the events.

So make sure that you can hear it really well and you can see it really well.

And you are completely focused so that you are able to retell the events once you have seen the film clip.

This is "Hoodwinked," directed by Cory Edwards and the production company is Kanbar Entertainment.

Granny? It's me, Red.

Is everything okay? Oh, over here, shuffle in, come on in.

What? Who are you? I'm your grandma.

Your face looks really weird, granny.

I've been sick.

Your mouth doesn't move when you talk.

Plastic surgery.

Grandma's had a little work done.

Now, come on over here, let's have a look at ya.

So what's going on, grandma? Oh this and that, doing a lot of quilting so you get the loot.

Whoa, what big hands you have.

Oh, all the better to scratch my back with.

And what big ears you have.

All the better to hear your many criticisms. Old people just have big ears, dear.

And granny, what big eyes you have.

Are we just going to sit around here talking about how big I'm getting? You came here for a reason, didn't ya? So tell old granny what you've got in the basket.

Arg, granny, what bad breath you have.

All right.

You again? What do I have to do? Get a restraining order? Settle down, little girl, I'm onto you.

Ha ya.

Save it, Red fu.

You've been dodging me all day.

But now you might as well get it.

Ha, you crazy wolf.

What have you done with granny? I've taken granny down and you're next.

Granny! Hopefully, you were really focused on that clip.

Can you put the stills or the images in order and retell the events? Try and say one sentence for each picture to retell what is happening in this part of the film.

Off you go.

Well done, I'm sure you got the correct order.

If you want to check, here is the correct order here.

So we've got image one, two, three, four, five and six.

And hopefully you said at least one sentence for each picture to retell those events.

Before we start to plan our opening paragraph, let's remind ourselves of this example.

We looked at this example paragraph in a previous lesson.

I'm going to read it out loud to you and then we're going to consider the question what is the purpose of the opening paragraph? If you want to pause the recording and read it yourself, you can.

Otherwise, follow along on the screen.

Goldilocks Raids Bear Residence.

Yesterday afternoon, police were called to an incident at 3 Honeypot Lane in the Big Bad Forest.

A young female, known as Goldilocks, was arrested at the scene after a violent disturbance raised concerns with neighbours.

What is the purpose of the opening paragraph? Why has it been included in the newspaper report? Pause the recording and write down your ideas now.

The opening paragraph of a newspaper report summarises the key information from the rest of the report or the key information from the whole event or incident.

It gives us information about the four Ws, who, what, where and when.

It also provides the reader with an overview of the event or an overview of the rest of the report and this helps them to decide whether they want to read the rest of the newspaper report.

They might find that it interests them or it's relevant to them and therefore, they would like to read on.

We're now going to start planning our opening paragraph.

I would like you to use your ruler to draw yourself this very, very simple table on your piece of paper.

You need two columns.

And I would make one column narrower, thinner than the other column.

So you can see one column on the left-hand side, we need to write the who, what, where and when and then the right-hand side is going to be much larger because that's where we're going to write our key information.

Pause the recording and create this table in your book, so on your paper now.

Okay, hopefully you're set up and ready to go.

So the first thing we're going to have a think about is who.

Who was involved in this event? Who were the main characters or the main people? Write down who you think were the main people.

Pause the recording and write yourself some notes now.

Excellent, well done.

Hopefully, you wrote down wolf, Mrs. Puckett, Red.

You might have written down Kirk.

He is another character as well.

He doesn't play a huge part in the event.

Wolf, Mrs. Puckett and Red are the three main people that you definitely need to mention in your newspaper report.

Now let's think about the what.

What was the main event? What happened? What do you think? I think the main thing that happened was a violent incident occurred or you could say a fight broke out.

Summarising everything that happened, this is how I would summarise it.

Pause the recording and write yourself some notes now for what happened.

Okay, we've now got the who and the what.

It's time to think about the where.

Where did this violent incident occur? Can you remember? Who's house was it? Maybe you can remember the address.

So the where was a property, or a house or a cottage or a residence, you could use any of those words on Cherry Pot Lane.

Or you might want to say Mrs. Puckett's residence or Mrs. Puckett's property because it belonged to her.

Pause the recording and write down the where on your plan now.

Right, we are now going to think about the last W, the when.

When did this occur? Now, normally when you're a journalist, you report on things that have happened either that day or maybe the day before.

So what do you think we would say about when this incident occurred? Of course, we're going to say yesterday afternoon.

We know it happened around 4 p.

m.

So it was definitely in the afternoon.

Write down yesterday afternoon on your plan now.

Excellent.

Hopefully, you have now got a completed plan, which is going to help you to write your opening paragraph in our next lesson.

We're now going to think about the chronological recount paragraph.

Remember, chronological means in time order.

So this paragraph will recount or retell the events in time order, in the order that they actually happened.

We looked at an example of a chronological recount paragraph in one of our previous lessons.

What is the purpose of the chronological recount paragraph? Why do you think it's really important that that paragraph is included in our newspaper reports? Pause the recording and have a think or write yourself some notes to answer that question.

Okay, so the chronological recount paragraph provides detailed information about the event.

We know the opening only gives a very brief summary.

So this goes into a lot more detail about exactly what happened.

It recounts the event in chronological, time, order.

And it helps the reader understand exactly what happened.

If we just gave a short summary, they wouldn't really understand the event or the incident very well at all.

You've already done a flowchart of the chronological events as part of this incident.

So you can see here an example, I've got the first three events.

At 3:45, the suspected entered Mrs. Puckett's property.

At 4 p.

m.

, Red entered Mrs. Puckett's house.

At 4:05 p.

m.

, witnesses suggest that Wolf tried to attack Red with a stick.

You might feel that you've already got a really detailed plan for this paragraph in your flowchart, in which case, you don't need to do any more.

You might want to add to it but other than that, you can leave it and you're ready to write your chronological paragraph.

If you feel like your flowchart is maybe lacking a little bit of detail, you could plan it in more detail now.

So similarly to our opening, we just need two very simple columns.

The left-hand column needs to be very, very narrow 'cause that's simply where we're going to write our numbers to show the order that they happen.

And then the rest of the page is where we're going to write the events at each step.

So you can see in the example here, I've got number one, witness saw suspicious Wolf outside Puckett residence.

Peered in windows, then entered through front door.

I'm not writing in full sentences.

I'm just writing down keywords and phrases.

Number two, second onlooker witnessed young girl enter property.

Number three, two figures were spotted moving around inside the house, one holding a large stick.

Number four, a dog walker saw a large bearded man fly through the window, wielding an axe.

Number five, a high-pitched, distressed scream was heard.

And number six, emergency services were called, police team dispatched, and they arrested the suspect at the scene.

So as I said, if you want to plan this out in more detail, you can or if you feel that your flowchart already includes all of that information, then you are ready to go to write your chronological recount paragraph in a few lessons' time.

You may have already completed today's task as part of this lesson but if you haven't, what I would like you to do now is to complete your plan for your opening and your chronological recount paragraphs.

Remember how I said to lay out your opening with your who, what, where, when on the left-hand side, and then next to each one, just writing some short notes.

We're not writing in full sentences.

We just want to write down our key ideas.

So this was our agenda for today.

We had an introduction to newspaper reports to remind ourselves of our previous learning.

We then planned our opening.

We thought about our four Ws, our who, what, where and when together.

Then we planned our chronological recount paragraph, so in that time order.

And lastly, for your task, you're going to make sure those paragraphs are both planned in detail, ready to write in our next lesson.

Congratulations.

You have completed your lesson for today.

If you would like to, please share your work with your parent or carer.

I will see you in our next lesson.

Goodbye.