This week we were creating newspaper reports as the final part of our Captain Scott topic. My class had finished them by Thursday but I wasn’t 100% satisfied with their work and felt many of them had settled for less than their best so I used Friday as a chance to further develop their skills. I decided to approach the lesson in a way that I had never attempted before with a book I hadn’t actually got round to reading yet (what could possibly go wrong?) After searching through my shelves I decided to use the  Spiderman: Miles Morales book in which Spiderman (who is now an Afro-Latino teenager named Miles Morales has taken over the role from Peter Parker) finds himself being captured by mobsters after being chased by several highly powered missiles. I used this part of the story because it had lots of potential witnesses who could provide a quote, there was lots of little details that they needed to include or reference and it left the reader in a state of uncertainty over what would happen next, this would ensure they wrote a report that left people wanting to know more and therefore would force them to read the next days news.

 To start the lesson the class worked in pairs so they could establish what had happened in the panels before we created a timeline together on the whiteboard. After agreeing on what events had transpired and who might have witnessed them we discussed how the report would not be able to answer certain questions which meant we needed to inform the reader as much as possible whilst also alluding to the potential outcomes from the day. Following this discussion the class were given time to work collaboratively on what they were going to include in their report before individually writing a draft in their  English jotter books. Each member of the class received verbal feedback about what they could improve in their report along with having their areas of strength highlighted to them. After receiving their feedback the children wrote up their report on a blank newspaper template, making sure they developed their areas for improvement as much as they could. The quality of their writing was noticeably better than their rough drafts but more importantly it showed a clear improvement from the reports they completed earlier in the week on Captain Scott.

Several children who often struggle to find motivation in English lessons commented on how enjoyable they had found the task which they felt had led to them producing their best work. Overall the visual stimulus seemed to have helped them express their ideas and the class in general agreed that it was one of their favourite writing tasks this year which inevitably led to them creating better work. Below are some examples of the work produced by the end of the lesson, some aren’t quite fully finished but their writing was which was the focus of the task. Although I anticipated the task would be an enjoyable way to approach newspaper reports I didn’t realise quite how engaging the class would find it. Their positive reaction was uplifting to see and means I will definitely look to approach this unit in a similar way in the future.