The Journalists 

Have you heard about the floods?

On Monday, children across Worcestershire headed to school, but the snow and rainfall cases some disruption. In Redditch, flooding caused severed roads to close and cars were stranded. We looked at before and after photos, and then explored places we recognised and saw one of the roads near to Arrow Valley Lake was closed by the police because of the flooding. 
 

We saw an article, but the photo was missing. Using what we had seen in the photos, we created a representation together. We added various layers of collage to build the image. 

What is a newspaper?

Many of us knew about newspapers. We knew they had words and photos in them. We knew that ‘news’ meant important or interesting things that happened that week. We also knew that the newspaper has the same news as the TV or internet. 
 

Who writes the news?
 

We didn’t know who wrote the articles, or who made the news videos, so we looked at BBC Newsround and discovered the studio. We looked at the equipment the people used and learnt that these people were called journalists. 
 

We began creating miniature representations of the equipment journalists use and constructed an office, using shoe boxes for each room. 

Working in the role of a Journalist 

We looked at some muddled headlines, and in pairs put them in order to make sense. We then tried to match the captions to the headline. Once we did that, we could create a photo to match. 
 

These will form part of our history as journalists.

The Farmer’s Market Poster

We saw a poster about a farmer’s  market happening locally and thought it would be a great story for our newspaper. We thought we could take some photographs and share some of the things we’ve seen. 
 

Outside the drama, we created products that way be sold at a farm, including jam, cakes, vegetables and milk. We used a video of a farmers market to help us build up some experience and knowledge too. 

Meeting the Farmers

Whilst we were at the market, we met a number of farmers. To help represent them, we worked in small teams to create a role in the wall for each farmer. 

The note…

Whilst we were at the market, we observed Farmer Darren whispering to other farmers. We used drama to explore this further, each of us in the role of farmers, listening to Darren and receiving a secret, coded note. The note read, “London, 10 o’clock, bring tractors”. We wondered what it meant and thought perhaps we should go too…. We could get a great story. 

Representing the tractors, farmers and signs

To begin with, we created tractors. We used kitchen roll tubes, cut to size and painted in the colour we wanted for the tractors. We then chose two large wheels and two smaller wheels. We used straws for the exhaust and attached everything with glue. Then, we represented the farmers, and sat them in the tractors. Finally, we discovered that the farmers were in London to protest. We heard a narration of how the farmers arrived outside the Houses of Parliament, holding signs with words such as “no farmers, no food” or “help us”. We then created protest signs for our farmers. 

Representing the protest 

Using the representations we’d created, we split into a team of journalists and a team of farmers. The Journalists observed as the farmers chanted the words on their signs. Then, we switched roles. We found out that the farmers were angry with supermarkets because they were paying very little for milk, but making lots of money in the shop for themselves. 
 

Reporting on the protest 

In our Literacy learning, we explored the lenses from The Write Stuff to create a poem. We applied the work we had done to create an independent piece of writing all about the things we’d seen at the protest. We used this as our article and put it with the photos we had taken.