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HOW TO BUILD THE MUSCLES FOR WRITING FEATURE ARTICLES
Fiona Laing Forest Lake State High School
Australian Open Champion – Serena Williams
How does she get there?
Muscles are also required for writing effectively
Our goals
1. Appreciate the complexity of the feature
2. Understand how to build the gathering of required skills
3. Appreciate the need for strong modelling and scaffolding of features
Our goals
1. Appreciate the complexity of the feature
2. Understand how to build the gathering of required skills
3. Appreciate the need for strong modelling and scaffolding of features
Why are features important?
Senior English still requires public text in year 11 and 12
Universities requiring features in many courses eg Economics, Science et al
Journalistic skill most likely to translate to adult life Translate well to blogging – key skill for life & uni Strong visual components
Requires deep understanding of how to entice reader
With reduction in # of journalists, many companies/agencies need to provide ‘print ready’ copy to promote their agenda
To read on, we all need to be beguiled…
21st century skill
‘Newspaper editors realized that they couldn't compete with the speed and immediacy of the new media on breaking news stories…
Newspapers in the 21st century carry more features than ever, and even stories that once would have been written as straight news are now done as features.’
http://journalism.about.com/od/FeatureWriting/fl/Why-is-it-So-Important-to-be-Able-to-Write-Feature-Stories.htm
Why challenging?
Share with your neighbour why they are ‘hard’ to write
Many different types of features Genre is not fixed – highly malleable
Students sometimes not given a realistic context Features = ‘cream’ of the journalistic crop Many students only read very light weight features
(magazines with low literacy levels) Print publications on way out for many now – lack of
experience for students Too much focus on genre and too little on purpose –
hundreds of ‘do this’ on internet
How lovely can they be?
‘I have been thinking a lot lately of books that hurt me, about those times in my life when I have been shaken by what I’ve read. How painful and valuable those experiences have been, and also beautiful, which may well be a darker level of appreciation to descend into. How books that mess me up are still probably the most important reading experiences I can have.
This heart of darkness to our literary lives is not much spoken of these days. After all, something “negative” isn’t just emotionally repelling, or aesthetically or morally questionable – it’s bad for marketing.’
Mark Mordue ‘Art of Darkness’ Review: The Weekend Australian May 16-17, p 16-17
How lovely can they be?
‘I have been thinking a lot lately of books that hurt me, about those times in my life when I have been shaken by what I’ve read. How painful and valuable those experiences have been, and also beautiful, which may well be a darker level of appreciation to descend into. How books that mess me up are still probably the most important reading experiences I can have.
This heart of darkness to our literary lives is not much spoken of these days. After all, something “negative” isn’t just emotionally repelling, or aesthetically or morally questionable – it’s bad for marketing.’
Mark Mordue ‘Art of Darkness’ Review: The Weekend Australian May 16-17, p 16-17
Our goals
1. Appreciate the complexity of the feature
2. Understand how to build the gathering of required skills
3. Appreciate the need for strong modelling and scaffolding of features
Year 10 Feature: Deadly Unna
What has the student done well?
What does he need to do differently?
Forest Lake’s initial challenges Originally, our students didn’t read
newspapers at home nor quality feature articles
Senior feature articles ‘sprang’ out of nowhere
Original tasks lacked realistic context
Current Approach Year Level Unit Context Writing Format
Year 8 Teen Representations in the Media
Analysing how represented in news and features
Exam
Year 9 Play study Follow up interview in role with group write of feature based on own interview
Group project
Year 10 Novel study Analysing issue arising from novel Indiv assign
Year 11 To Kill a Mockingbird Feature in-role – background to trial highlighting issues & character
Indiv exam with notice
Year 12 Romantic poetry Article linking romantic poem to modern life/experience
Indiv exam with notice
Realistic context – task design should… Have models that exist in current magazines
Allow students to reasonably mimic the research process of real journalist
What do journalists do to prepare? Interview people
Find facts/data
Know a great deal on the topic, what others have written
Find an angle to provide a ‘fresh’ look at the topic
Ensure their ‘take’ will have currency for time into the future
Interviews as research in features: Year 9 First attempt to write feature, focused on
person, based on own oral assessment
12 Angry Men – Reginald Rose
Process
Oral assessment: interview with a juror
Each group has several interviews (questions and answers)
Group then constructs feature from that interview material
Students also have deep knowledge of topic (by end of unit)
Mimics the process of real journalist
Interviewing People: Year 10 English
Interviewing People: Year 10 English Writing in response to A Bridge to Wiseman’s
Cove by James Maloney
Writing on issues arising out of novel:
Homelessness
Child neglect/abuse
Body Image
Interviewed the Guidance Officer on issues
Sample questions developed by students: Questions for Interview of Guidance Officer: Mrs Law
HOMELESSNESS:
Why do young people become homeless? Does this only mean sleeping on the street or are there other forms of homelessness?
What are the chances of a young person being homeless?
What problems are there for someone who is homeless getting a job? Is there a barrier to getting work for them?
What is the problem if the public look at homeless youth as if they are ‘bums’?
How can the public help out homeless youth?
Is there any problem with people in society ignoring the homeless?
What can schools do to support students who are suffering from insecure housing (youth homelessness)?
Year 11: To Kill a Mockingbird
Year 11: To Kill a Mockingbird Can write in-role interview responses to
journalist ‘visiting Maycomb’ at the time of the trial
Our goals
1. Appreciate the complexity of the feature
2. Understand how to build the gathering of required skills
3. Appreciate the need for strong modelling and scaffolding of features
Your modelling:
What models do you use for your feature articles?
Modelling for Students
Year 10 – modelling using texts well known to students
Year 12 – modelling text showing its full process of construction for students
Year 10 Model – by Erin Geddes
Year 10 Model
Year 10 Model
Process just as critical
Year 10 Highly structured Approach
Sets of Weekend Australian and Q Weekend Articles in their ‘home’ environment
Students bathing in the magazine
Allows focused analysis of a wide range of articles
Release of responsibility
Highly structured teaching in year 9 & 10
Allow the most able to ‘fly solo’ as they can
Less structured assistance later
Bathe year 12 in the possibilities by encouraging the reading from 9-12:
Features are what we do in English
Features are what you do in many uni courses
Read them on topics you love and keep ‘eye out’
Year 12: Response to Romantic poetry
Teacher Model: from Erin Geddes My mum was a philosopher. She expounded on
the lack of permanency in the world whilst washing dishes and making lunch.
“Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair!” She would say as she wiped the laminate benches with a flourish. Then my baby sister would inevitably dribble, vomit or generally expel fluids. Clean kitchen ruined for now.
Years later, I opened John Marsden’s novel Tomorrow When The War Began and read with surprise when a character recalled her mum’s tea towel with the same phrase on it.
Teacher Model: from Erin Geddes Strong personal voice
Flippant tone
Depth of understanding of the poem itself
Deep level of reflection on personal experience
Authorial/Personal Voice
Best to teach by modelling through existing features
Will you allow a column style? Will you allow some choice between columnist
and journalist’s style? Columnist – strong personal voice
Citing of sources not usually required
Journalist’s feature – choice of how personal the voice is Citing of sources necessary
Complexity and personal insight (informality)
Another gem of an article
Nikki Gemmell: Read them & weep The Weekend Australian, May 24-25, 2014
So to a vivid weekend, where the relentless assault of emails and tweets and newspapers and magazines online have been shunned for a diving into something deeper, stiller. A book from English just published, Poems That Make Grown men Cry. 100 Men on the words That Move Them…
Being immersed in this emotional wallop of a book feels like the opposite of that world of emails at day’s start and stutter that have to be answered immediately; the opposite of writing a column during a child’s soccer match with the laptop resting on the car’s steering wheel; the opposite of waking at 3am with ideas buzzing and checking the news while you’re at it because you can, you must; the opposite of grazing endlessly, distractedly, on all those varied grasses of the internet, flitting from one vast plain to another but never grabbing the most succulent of stems, those closest to the earth; never grabbing anything too deep or too rich…
What feature articles can’t always assess:
Whether or not students can identify figurative language
Whether a bright student has ‘read the book’
Definitely ‘Creating’ not ‘Evaluating’ in 3rd dimension of criteria
Past Student Model
What is working for her?
Contacts:
Fiona Laing [email protected]
HOD English
Forest Lake State High School
Erin Geddes [email protected]
Librarian/English teacher
Forest Lake State High School
