Creative Writing Homework

KS3

2 week project

This half- term, you will be working on a creative writing project for your homework tasks.

At the end of the project you will have drafted, edited and completed your own Newspaper article

reporting on events from the Coronavirus pandemic.

You will be aiming to develop the following skills:

Using a powerful headline Using engaging and ambitious vocabulary Punctuating for effect Creating effective tone and style Drafting and editing

KEY WORDS Draft: to create a version of a piece of writingHeadline: The title of an article designed to catch the reader’s attentionPun: A clever play on wordsStatistics: Using percentages to back up your storyThe power of three: Listing in groups of threeThe 5W’s: A tool you can use when analysing or writing a newspaper article (who, what, when, where, why)

Lesson 1:A catchy headline is vital when writing a newspaper article. Look at the below headlines. Can you spot which features they use? Below is a list of techniques you could use. Draw arrows from the technique you spot to the appropriate headline.

Exclamation marks Pun Rhyming Power of three

Alliteration Statistics Bold text Simile

Which headline do you think is most effective and why? Write your answer below:

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Lesson 2:In order to write a newspaper article, you must include the 5W’s. This means mentioning; who is involved; what happened; where did it happen; when did it happen and why did it happen. These can appear in any order. Look at the below article about an event which occurred in I’m a Celeb jungle. Can you identify the 5W’s and fill in the table?

YouTube star Jack Maynard and rapper Stormzy are the latest celebrities to discover that ill-judged and offensive things they said years ago on social media can come back to damage their reputations and possibly their careers.

Virtually every celebrity breaking through today - certainly all those who are as big on YouTube as Jack Maynard is - will owe at least part of their success to social media. But, as Maynard has discovered, living your life online means opinions you expressed years ago can resurface when you least expect it. Like when you're in the Australian jungle.

The 22-year-old, whose funny videos have attracted 1.2 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, was kicked off I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here on Tuesday. That was after a series of tweets, most of which date from 2011-13, came to light. Maynard was between 16 and 19 at the time. In the offending messages, he used homophobic language and referred to friends using the n-word. His representative has said he is "ashamed" of the posts and realises the language was "completely unacceptable".

Meanwhile, some viewers have wondered why Maynard was singled out when questionable tweets from fellow I'm A Celeb contestant Amir Khan have emerged - and the show let the outspoken Katie Hopkins stay a decade ago. She has voiced her support, writing: "Dear @Jack_Maynard23 - they kept me in, my love. You're an angel by comparison. It's all just noise. Breathe quiet air." Maynard is one of a number of celebrities whose unsavoury comments have recently been dredged up. He says they were views "that I've unlearned as I've grown up and become a man". He's 24 now. He said he would ‘never say those things now’.

But can such comments be explained away by youthful ignorance and the passage of time? In a highly personal column, The Sun newspaper's showbiz editor Dan Wootton recounted how he was bullied at school by people using the same language as Maynard had tweeted. Wootton said "I feel deeply sorry for the millennial generation whose every utterance from their earliest years is archived on the internet. "But that's not what this situation is all about." Using such words "was completely unacceptable long before the invention of Twitter, as Jack learned the hard way", he added.

The thing Maynard, Stormzy and Zoella's tweets all had in common was that they all featured homophobic insults. A spokesperson for LGBT rights group Stonewall said: "It's important that homophobic abuse and slurs are called out. People need to understand that this sort of language is, and always will be, deeply damaging and harmful. "We also know people can and do change. At Stonewall our mission is to get people to understand the impact that discriminatory attitudes and abusive words have on lesbian, gay, bi and trans people."

David Levin, co-founder of social media agency That Lot, says celebrities should be cut some slack for saying things when they were "young and daft". "But there's a limit," he says. Celebrities need to realise that journalists are probably trawling through their social feeds right now. And that stupid thing you tweeted is gonna come back and bite you on the bum."

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WhoWho was involved?

WhatWhat happened?

WhenWhen did it happen?

WhereWhere did it happen?

WhyWhy did it happen?

Lesson 3 and 4:This week you are going to use the 5W’s to plan your own newspaper article reporting on the evens of Coronavirus in the Uk or you can completely make up what you are going to write about

WhoWho was involved?

WhatWhat happened?

WhenWhen did it happen?

WhereWhere did it happen?

WhyWhy did it happen?

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Lesson 5 and 6:

TASK: WRITE! You have planned your article. Have a go at writing your first draft! You don’t have to use all of the lines provided, but try to aim for a minimum of 5 paragraphs.

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Lesson 7: TASK 1: Read through your draft from last week and edit it in a DIFFERENT COLOUR PEN. Use the EBI’s below to help you.

Check your basic punctuation. Have you used capitals, full stops and commas? Now consider where you might punctuate for effect. Can you use punctuation to

change the pace or add emphasis? Have you used a range of sentence structure for clarity and effect?

Challenge your vocabulary. Look at your description – can you make it more powerful and effective? Is it formal enough?

Check the FLOW of your work. Read it out loud – does it make sense? Are there ‘clunky’ phrases that you can improve?

TASK 2: Come up with a catchy headline for your article. What language techniques have you used in your title and why? Use the lines underneath to justify your choice.

My headline is ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Techniques I have used and why_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Lesson 8 and 9 : Write up your final article using the draft that you edited. Remember to include your headline. You may include pictures and captions if you wish. This can be typed or hand written on lined paper!

Extension / development ideas

Include an interview with a witness. Create the front cover of the newspaper which will include your article. Do some research around any epidemics in the world – can you use any of this

in your article? Create a poster recommending social distancing.

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