Lesson video

Hello.

It's Mrs Smart.

Welcome back to our English unit all about journalistic writing.

In today's lesson, we're going to continue looking at an example newspaper report and identifying some of the key features.

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 that you can draw straight lines with.

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

Here is the agenda for today's lesson.

We're going to start by recapping the purpose, audience, language, and layout of journalistic writing or a newspaper report.

We're then going to look at the next two paragraphs of our example newspaper report, and we're going to identify some of the key features.

So we're going to read through the quotes paragraph, and then we're going to read through the closing paragraph.

We'll finish today's lesson with your independent task.

Let's start with a recap on what is journalistic writing.

Can you remember what we discussed in our previous lesson? Or maybe you already know something about journalistic writing or newspaper reports.

Can you pause the recording and write down anything that you know? Off you go.

How did you get on? I'm sure you thought of lots of ideas.

Journalistic writing is text that's been written by a journalist.

Journalists, their job is to collect, write, present, edit or comment on news and current affairs.

Current affairs means events currently happening, happening right now.

News is a recount of current, significant events.

So it reports on really important things that are happening anywhere in the world.

Written news reports are found in newspapers, magazines or online.

We discussed in our previous lesson that lots of people these days choose to read the news on their mobile phones or their tablets or their computers, and newspapers are actually becoming a lot less popular than they used to be.

We're now going to discuss the purpose, audience, language, and layout of newspapers.

Let's just remind ourselves what these four keywords mean.

Purpose is the reason a text is written.

The audience is the type of people that read a text, the readers.

Language is the vocabulary or the words that have been chosen.

And layout is how a text is organised or structured.

I now want you to have a think about those four different aspects in relation to newspaper reports.

So what's the purpose of a newspaper report? Who is the audience? What sort of language and layout would you expect to see? Pause the recording and write yourself some notes now.

Okay, let's go through the answers and you can check off what you managed to remember.

So the purpose of a newspaper report is to provide information about significant, current events.

So really important things that are happening right now in the present.

The audience is anyone interested in that subject, and we can have different sorts of newspapers.

We can have newspapers for adults, and we can have newspapers for children, but often people don't read every single article in a newspaper or on a news website.

They might pick and choose things that interest them.

The language we would expect to see in a newspaper report would be formal language.

And we might also expect to see some journalistic phrases.

And then layout.

Now, the layout could be lots of different structures, but the structure we've been focusing on in the example that we've been looking at and what we're going to be writing follows this structure.

So it's going to start with a headline, then have an opening paragraph, a chronological recount paragraph, a quotes paragraph, and a closing paragraph.

So by the end of this unit, you're going to written all four of those paragraphs.

How exciting! We're now going to have a look at the third paragraph in our newspaper report.

This is the quotes paragraph.

Quotes mean what people have said.

So I'm going to read this through and you can follow along, or you might want to pause the recording and read it for yourself.

Many witnesses have provided further information about the incident.

The Bears' next door neighbour, Mr Hunter, who was outside gardening at the time, heard a commotion at the Bears' residence.

He reported, "I was just pruning my roses "when I was distracted by the sound "of crockery smashing." Furthermore, a passer-by stated that she had seen a young girl with blonde hair approaching the Bears' house while she was walking her dog.

The police have issued an official statement.

"Number 3 Honeypot Lane "is currently a crime scene "and is undergoing further forensic investigation," explained the chief of police.

We're now going to look at that quotes paragraph in a little bit more detail, and identify some of the key features.

You can see the list of features we're going to be looking for on the right-hand side of your screen.

We're going to try and find the opening sentence, some direct speech, reported speech, and a relative clause in a complex sentence.

The first feature I want you to find is the opening sentence.

Pause the recording and point to the opening sentence in this paragraph.

Well done.

Of course, the opening sentence is the very first sentence.

And this sentence summarises what the whole paragraph is about.

Many witnesses have provided further information about the incident, and then those witnesses share the different things that they've seen or experienced.

Well done if you found that.

The next feature I want you to find is direct speech.

Direct speech is directly what the person has said.

So it will be in inverted commas or speech marks.

That might make it a little bit easier to spot.

Off you go.

See if you can find it.

Well done.

There're actually two examples of direct speech.

So we have, he reported, "I was just pruning my roses "when I was distracted by the sound of crockery smashing." And then towards the bottom, "Number 3 Honeypot Lane is currently a crime scene "and is undergoing further forensic investigation," explained the chief of police.

So if the words are in inverted commas or speech marks, that means that's exactly what those people have said.

It's direct speech.

Now I want you to try and find some reported speech.

So this is different from direct speech.

It won't be in speech marks, and it might not be exactly what the person said.

Have a scan through and see if you can point to the reported speech.

Off you go.

Here it is.

Furthermore, a passer-by stated that she had seen a young girl with blonde hair approaching the Bears' house while she was walking her dog.

No speech marks there.

So I know it must be reported speech.

The journalist is reporting what someone said, but they're not necessarily quoting it exactly.

The last feature I want you to try and find in this quotes paragraph is a relative close.

Relative clauses are a type of subordinate clause.

They make a sentence a complex sentence.

They also add extra information to a sentence.

And they often start with the relative pronouns who or which.

So that makes it a little bit easier to spot them.

Have a scan through and see if you can find the relative clause, starting with who or which.

Off you go.

Well done if you found it.

Let's read the whole sentence.

The Bears' next door neighbour, Mr Hunter, who was outside gardening at the time, heard a commotion at the Bears' residence.

Who was outside gardening at the time is our relative clause.

You can see it starts with the relative pronoun who, and it adds extra information.

I could take the relative clause out and the sentence would still make sense on its own.

Well done if you found that.

Now you've had a chance to have a look at a quotes paragraph.

Can you think about this question? What is the purpose of the quotes paragraph? That means why has it been written or why has it been included in the newspaper report? Pause the recording and write down your ideas now.

Okay.

Quotes paragraphs provide additional information about the event, so extra information.

They give different perspectives on the event so we can understand what different people have experienced or seen or different people's thoughts and feelings about the event.

It also shows where the information for the report has come from.

So when journalists are researching their report, they will often speak to witnesses or the police or anyone involved in the incident to find out more information.

And they may then use some of those quotes in the report.

We're now going to have a look at a closing paragraph.

This is the final paragraph of a newspaper report.

I'm going to read it through and you can follow along.

Or if you want to, you can pause the recording and read it for yourself.

Local residents are still shocked at yesterday's unusual events.

The perpetrator has been formally identified as local girl Goldilocks, age 12, who spent last night in a police cell.

Questioning of the defendant and her victims will begin later this morning.

Currently, forensic scientists continue to investigate the crime scene and have sent various pieces of evidence off for further testing.

It was reported that no one suffered serious injuries.

However, there was significant damage to the Bears' property.

Before police can release further details, they are appealing for witnesses to come forward with any information linked to the event.

We're now going to identify some of the key features from that paragraph.

We're going to find any examples of present tense.

So that's the tense happening right now.

Future tense.

So that's the tense showing me that something's going to happen in the future.

And then also referring to nouns in different ways.

So different ways that nouns have been referred to rather than repeating the same noun throughout the paragraph.

The first feature I want you to find is any examples of the present tense.

So pause the recording and scan through the closing paragraph, pointing to any examples of present tense.

Off you go.

Did you find them all? Here are three examples of present tense.

Local residents are still shocked.

So right now they're shocked.

Forensic scientists continue to investigate.

So that's happening right now.

And before police can release further details, they are appealing for witnesses.

So the verb 'are' from the verb 'to be' tells me it's happening right now.

They're appealing for witnesses.

Now I want you to try and find any examples of future tense.

This shows me that something is going to happen.

Off you go.

Did you find it? Here it is.

Questioning of the defendant and her victims will begin later this morning.

So it's not happening now.

It didn't happen in the past.

It's going to happen in the future.

Later this morning.

Well done if you found that.

The last feature I want you to find is any examples where the author has referred to nouns in different ways.

So we're talking about the main people involved with this instance.

We might find different nouns for Goldilocks or the Bears' family or the people that saw the crime or heard the crime happening.

Or we might have nouns for things as well.

It doesn't have to just be people.

Have a scan through and see what you can find.

How many examples did you find? Well done if you found some of these.

So we had local residents is a way of referring to the people that saw or experienced the event.

The perpetrator.

That's another word for Goldilocks or the local girl Goldilocks.

That means that she is the person who is guilty of the crime, the criminal.

Defendant is also another word for the person who is guilty of the crime.

Victims refers to the Bear family.

So the people who had the crime done to them.

And lastly, we've got witnesses.

That's another noun we can use to refer to the people who may have seen or experienced this incident, similarly to local residents.

Well done if you found some of those examples.

Now you've had a chance to read through an example closing paragraph.

I want you to have a think about this question.

What is the purpose of the closing paragraph? Why has it been written or why has it been included as part of the newspaper report? Pause the recording and write down your ideas now.

The purpose of a closing paragraph is to summarise the events.

It's a little bit like the opening paragraph.

It doesn't go into lots and lots of detail, but it mentions the event in a brief, summary way.

It explains what has happened since the event occurred.

So it mentioned that Goldilocks was in prison or in a cell, and what is happening now and what will happen next.

So it mentioned that forensic scientists were exploring and investigating the crime scene.

And what will happen next, what's going to happen in the future was that the perpetrator, Goldilocks, and the victims, the Bear family, were going to be questioned so the police could find out a little bit more about what happened.

Right, it's now time for your task.

Can you write down the features of journalistic writing that we have learned about today? Can you include an example of each feature? Think about the layout or the structure, the language features, all the punctuation.

Now we started a mind map in our previous lesson where we were looking at an example newspaper report.

So you can add to that today, if you've already done that.

Here's my example from the previous lesson.

So you can see we've got features of journalistic writing in the middle, and then around the outside, I have added information about the different features, and then sometimes I've added a bit more information.

So for example, formal conjunctions.

I've then also gone on to say that there're three different types, 'and', 'but' and causal, and then for timings, I've given an example there, at approximately 5:00pm.

So see if you can make your mind map really, really detailed to show everything that you've learned in today's lesson.

This was our agenda for today's lesson.

So we recapped the purpose, audience, language, and layout of a newspaper report.

We then moved on to identify the key features in a quotes paragraph and in a closing paragraph.

And now you're going to complete your independent task to show everything that you have learned in today's lesson.

Congratulations! You have completed your lesson for today.

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

I will see you in your next lesson.

Goodbye!.