Newswise Project Workshops
02 Jul 2024
Newswise Workshops... Part 1 and 2!
We have had a big focus this week on our learning around critical literacy and news writing. In the last 7 days we have been very lucky to take part in 2 workshops fead by the Newswise team.
Part 1
The first of these began by exploring real headlines that had been written recently. The children were asked to show if they thought different news stories were real or fake. Our workshop leader Annie then gave us 4 steps to use to help us work out whether a story was real or fake news
-stop
-question
-check
-decide
We added actions to each step to help us remember them.
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We used QR codes and iPads to dig deeper and find clues on 4 given stories. We looked at the source, the date and the way it was written to give us clues. We then looked to see if it was also being reported anywhere else. We fed back what we had found and what that suggested to us.
We then split into groups and each child was assigned the role of editor, reporter or sub editor. The groups then had to produce a short new bulletin and deliver it to the rest of the class.
Part 2
On Tuesday we did our second workshop, this time family members were invited too, and we were really lucky that lots of parents were able to join in. It was really great to hear that they also found it as useful as the children when learning about fake news.
We began the session deciding if some head lines were fake or not. We had to make a snap decision - and it was interesting to see what actually was real!
We then used QR codes again to locate some more detailed news stories, using our skills from Friday's workshop to stop, question, check and decide if the news we were reading was true. The children were super sleuths at finding the fakes! This ability to think critically about information being presented as fact is going to be such an important skill when they start to enter the world of social media so its great to see them developing these skills now.
We then moved on to learn about how photographs are not always what they seem... Looking at real examples again from online news sources we decided if pictures were actually correct. We found out that sometimes pictures are miscaptioned, so the image is real, but not from the time or event it states it is from. We also discovered that photos are cropped or photoshopped to make a news story. We finally explored how perspective can be played around with to make objects appear larger- or smaller than they really are. We learnt about this practically by making our own images! Have a flick through, the children got quite inventive!
The workshop then moved on again and we learnt how information is targeted to our interests because of the algorithms on the websites and platforms we are using online. This is again another critical skill the children need to grasp to ensure their news feeds are fed by reliable sources, giving positive and appropriate information.
The jam packed morning was rounded off with the children creating and filming a brief broadcast of factual information on the ipads about an escaped orangutan from the zoo!
All of the children were so engaged throughout both the workshops. They worked fantastically in their teams and were respectful of other people and their ideas. This has been a really important project to be part off and we are looking forward to now moving forward with our own newsreporting over the next couple of weeks!
Have a wonderful weekend! We look forward to seeing you all for another jam packed week next week!
Mrs Lewis and Miss Rogers