In this webquest you are going to produce a school magazine that recalls some of the important news events of 2021. The magazine is called ‘The Year 2021’. Find out, what was cringe, sus or sheesh about 2021? Any idea?
You are a team of reporters who need to produce a school magazine on important events from the year 2021, called 'The Year 2021’.
To produce the magazine, you will work in groups of 3, and do the following:
• choose two important news stories from 2021 for each of these categories (group work):
Politics
Health
Crime
Sport
Pop Culture
• Present a short summary of your news stories to the newspaper Editorial Board. They will help you decide on the most important story for each category (group work).
• Write short articles about your final five news stories, and include graphics (individual work).
• Edit and produce the magazine. Show your magazine to other groups (group work).
Process 1 – News stories from 2021
• Think back over the year 2021. What important things happened in the news? Make a list of three important events that happened in 2021, and compare with a partner. Have you chosen any of the same events?
• Work in groups of 3. Look at suggested homepages:
Process 2 – News stories summaries to the editorial board
• Assign each of your group members a letter – Student A, Student B or Student C. Prepare a short summary of each of the news stories you chose in Process 1: Student A - politics, health Student B - sport, crime, Student C - pop culture
Tips for your summary:
• Your summary should be short – between 100 and 120 words.
• You may use graphics from the Internet to illustrate your summary.
• Include at least three of the key words listed at the bottom of your article. (You can listen to these words to hear how they are pronounced).
• Include the date on which your news story was published.
• The Editorial Board is going to ask you extra questions about your news story - make sure you know more than what you put in the summary.
• Practice your presentations a couple of times out loud with your group, trying to make it as interesting as possible. Useful language for your presentation: This article is about … One of the main events of 2021 was … You’ll remember how in [March 2021] … What happened was …. We think this article is important because … • You are going to present your news story summaries to the Editorial Board of your newspaper. (The Editorial Board is another group in the class – you too will act as the Editorial Board to another group.)
• Present your summaries to the Board, trying to use your own words rather than directly reading your summaries. Remember to include your three key words in your verbal summary.
• The Editorial Board will decide on which story is best of the two for each category, and tell you their decision at the end of the presentations.
Tips for the editorial board:
• When deciding on the best story for each category, ask yourself:
• Is the story newsworthy and interesting?
• Is the summary clear, and is the language used accurate enough?
• Are there any pictures presented with the summary and could they be used in the final magazine?
• Once the presentation is over, ask a few extra questions about the story.
• Overall, have you chosen a good range of stories for this group’s magazine? Think about the topics, and also the publication dates – do these articles offer a good overview of the year 2021?
Process 3 – Producing ‘The Year 2021’ magazine: writing news stories
• You are now going to produce The Year 2021 magazine, with the one news story (approved by the Editorial Board) for each of the categories:
• Politics • Health • Crime • Sport • Pop Culture
Here's a video with some tips on how to write an article properly:
You may use your original summary as a basis for your final news story for your categories, but you will need to include more details this time. Remember that you can always find out by researching different homepages. Try to use your own words as far as possible, and include your three key words. Try to write about 200 to 250 words per article
Read the articles written by the other members of your group. Give each other feedback on:
• Content: Is the article clear? Do we know exactly what happened, where, when and why?
• Structure: Does the article have clear paragraphs, and is it well structured?
• Language: Is the use of English as correct as possible? Are the tenses appropriate? Is there a good range of vocabulary? Are the three key words included correctly?
• Rewrite and correct your own articles as needed.
• Decide on what photos or illustrations you would like to use, and where you would like them to appear in the articles.
Process 4 – Producing ‘The Year 2021’ magazine: editing and reading
As the editing team of ‘The Year 2021’ magazine, you now need to put your separate articles together into one magazine. You will need to discuss the following issues with your group:
• What will the cover of The Year 2021 magazine look like? What photos/illustrations will you use?
• What order will you put the articles in?
• What ‘look’ will the articles have? Will they all have the same headline font and style, the same layout, the same number of photos, or will each article style be different? What size paper will you use?
• How will you put it together? Who will be responsible for printing and binding? Once you have decided on this, you need to work together to produce the 2021 magazine. • Put all the magazines up around the class. Walk around and look at the other groups’ magazines. Were there any images or articles that appeared in more than one magazine?
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.