READ ALLABOUT IT!

LESSONPLAN

44 SUBSCRIBE AT TEACHSECONDARY.COM

STARTER ACTIVITY

Invite students to make a list ofpresentational features they wouldexpect to see in news articles.These might include slogans,headlines, captions, subheadings,font, logos, pictures, diagrams andparagraphs. These answers shouldbe shared in order to provokeclass discussion.

ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO ANALYSE THE PRESENTATION OFNEWPAPER ARTICLES CAN HELP THEM MAKE LEAPS OF

UNDERSTANDING ABOUT NON-FICTION WRITING, SAYS PRIYA RUDHUN-IMRITH...

WHY TEACHTHIS?

This lesson was used with a mixed ability Year 7 class studying the“Non Fiction Unit” in preparation for the Summer Reading Exam.Students find studying Language in Media interesting and the focus ofthe lesson is not to simply identify, but to infer and deduce from the textto show how the target audience is addressed. Young people tend to befamiliar with the technical terms but not always able to understand fullyhow they affect meaning, so they tend to describe generally, hence theaim of this lesson is to explore meaning.

The lesson aims to look closely at a newspaper article, where studentswill be asked to identify language and presentational features thatsupport meaning in non-fiction text. The learning strategies will includevisual, auditory, paired, class discussion and individual written tasks.

This unit is cross-curricular in how the students are taughttechnicalities of media language, which makes a direct link to mediastudies and advertising. Equally, this could be useful for design whenfocussing on page layout using software such as InDesign.

Next, students reinforce theirlearning by identifying thosefeatures using visual stimulus. Thismight include showing themimages of logos for popular brandssuch as Nike, Subway, Tesco andMaXfactor, or articles that havesubheadings, captions or varyingfont. Then a mix and match activityis introduced, where students areasked to match language featuresto their definitions.

Teaching non-fiction can betricky in the way studentseasily slip into descriptionrather than analysis.Developing a range ofactivities for this lessonallowed students of allabilities to be engaged andstretched as a lot ofindependent thinking wasinvolved, combined withpaired and group work –making learning dynamicand less teacher led. Studentstook ownership of the taskand this led to structureddiscussions, enabling themore able ones to formulatedetailed analysis withtechnical accuracy while alsoallowing the lower abilitystudents to engage with thetask and work collaborativelyboosting their confidenceoverall. The feedbackreceived were very positivewhere the teacher becomesthe mere facilitator and thestudents run the lesson. It’sbrilliant and has provided the results!

Lesson plan English 3.5_Layout 1 16/06/2014 10:04 Page 1

ENGLISH | KS3

The exam question (see ‘summary’, right) could be set as homeworkif you want to spend time in the plenary reviewing how well thestudents thought that the lesson went.

An alternative suggestion for homework could be finding an articlefrom The Guardian and comparing it with an article from the DailyMirror, analysing the similarities and differences between the twotexts. Students could also print the articles and annotate thedifferent presentational devices found and explain in text boxes howeffective they are in supporting meaning.

In addition, students could be asked to show their work to theclass in a two-minute presentation, with the most original one havingthe opportunity to write an article for the school newsletter andearning house points.

HOME LEARNING

SUBSCRIBE AT TEACHSECONDARY.COM 45

After each activity, or at the end of the whole session, you can usetraffic lights to see how well each student feels that he/sheunderstands the features and structures discussed (I tend to askstudents to use thumbs up/to the side/down to show their level ofunderstanding). Those who are unsure or do not have a completegrasp can be asked what aspects they do understand, and whichaspects they are unsure of. Then a student who feels confidentabout understanding the structure can be asked to explain therelevant points to the class. This enables you as a teacher to seethe level of understanding across the class.

I find peer assessment especially useful at this point; studentsexchange their PEE paragraph with their partner and will use achecklist provided to assess their work. Some answers will be readin class and students will be asked to identify WWW and EBI.

Finally, a past exam question (or one you set yourself), based onhow picture and language article headlines add to theeffectiveness of the text could be set. This can then be collected inand marked to see how much the students have learnt andwhether they can apply this learning.

SUMMARY

INFORMATIONCORNER

Priya Rudhun-Imrith is headof English at All SaintsSecondary School,Dagenham. She has over 14years’ teaching experiencein English and MediaStudies, and describes AllSaints as “a brilliant schoolwith the greatestsatisfaction being thestudents who are willing tolearn making teachinginteresting, engaging andinteractive.”

ABOUT OUR EXPERT

MAIN ACTIVITIES

Students will need to be organisedinto pairs for this part of the lesson.Each group will require somepaper and pencils or a mini-whiteboard and pen. I wouldalso advise that they are of mixedability to assist weaker students.

They are given an article fromthe Daily Mirror called ‘FureverFriends’ to examine, and look forpresentational features in the text.They then move on to looking forthe language features of the piece;the answers should be shared withthe class so students can see

those they may not have identified themselves.

Students then look at a scaffoldexample of how to structure a PEEparagraph. The scaffold exampleis an example of differentiationthat includes starter sentences tohelp students begin the task. Thisallow students to reflect on the aim of being more evaluativethan descriptive.

They are then asked to writetheir own PEE paragraph with theuseful phrases and words from thelist; this also involves themanalysing the effectiveness of thepicture as well as the language inthe headline.

Lesson plan English 3.5_Layout 1 16/06/2014 10:04 Page 2