Context

Writing is a current focus of our School Development Plan and we are looking for ways to raise standards of writing throughout the school. We were keen to develop ways of providing children with a meaningful purpose to write in order to enthuse and engage them. We had previously held a successful whole school Literacy focus day in the form of World Book Day where each class participated in exciting book related activities, such as a book treasure hunt. We felt that this day had been particularly successful because of the way the children had been working in mixed age groups and so wanted to work with a similar idea for a writing project.

Aims & principles

• To enthuse and motivate children to write. Our focus was on a particular group in each class in KS2 who were not making the expected progress.
• To enable children to see themselves as writers
• To create an excitement and a desire to write
• To provide a purpose for writing
• To provide opportunities for children to write about things that interest them

Summary

The Literacy co-ordinators came up with the initial idea of making a school TV programme. The project was then developed in a staff meeting and a plan for the event finalised.

We decided that the two-day project would involve the children in writing activities as they prepared to produce and present a TV news programme. Each class would become a different department in the television centre. The programme would include sections on sport, fashion and media news, school news, weather, art and culture (poetry and fine art) and advertising.

In Practice

We kickstarted the project with an exciting whole school assembly where we screened a bespoke film telling the children about how a news programme is made at the BBC. The children were delighted to be addressed directly by Gordon Burns! This created a real buzz and the children were then really keen to start ‘working’ at Moss Hey TV for two days.

Here is a summary of each year group’s involvement in the project.

Year 6

Year 6 were responsible for the TV production office.

Outcomes

• Adverts to go with the programme using persuasive language
• Presenters filming links to go between the individual sections made by the rest of the school

Main activities on the day

• Links written to go between each film for the presenters
• Two Year 6 children were allocated to each class on the two days to help the younger children and to film.
• Film edited using Windows Movie Maker
• Credits for the end of the programme written
• Marketing team used persuasive writing techniques to write adverts to go with the news bulletin
• Autocues written

Year 5

Sport and Entertainment

Outcomes

• A film about weekend football matches
• A film about current fashion trends

Main activities on the day

• Small groups interviewed people who had watched the England match to get different opinions and quotes. Questions were written beforehand.
• Children wrote “Match of the Day” style commentaries while watching sections of the match. They were then filmed giving commentaries while other children recreated sections of the match outside.
• Fashion news. Children researched current trends and interviewed Libby May from Libby’s in Bramhall (a fashionable clothes shop). Children brought in their own clothes the following day and held a fashion show showcasing the trends. The interview was written and required note-taking skills.

Other writing opportunities

• Writing match reports
• Writing newspaper adverts for Libby’s
• Designing clothes labels (lots of examples were provided to give children inspiration)
• Album and single reviews

Year 4

Memories - School News

Outcomes

• A filmed report about ‘old Moss Hey’.
• A filmed report about what reception thought of school, including interviews with reception children and teachers.

Main activities on the day

• People with memories of Moss Hey Primary School came in to be interviewed. Children wrote questions to ask them before they came in.
• On the second day children received a dusty old suitcase full of old photos to inspire further writing.
• A special news team reported on ‘Moss Hey Today’. They interviewed the reception class and asked them what they thought about school.

Other writing opportunities

• Children wrote their own post-it / e-mail memories.

Preparation

• A ‘memory board’ was set up in the entrance hall. Parents and people with memories of Moss Hey added their memories to the wall on post-it notes. People also e-mailed in their memories.

Year 3

Weather and advertising

Outcomes

• A filmed weather bulletin
• A sponsor advert to go before the weather bulletin

Main activities on the day

• Using the BBC weather website, children researched and made notes on the weather for the week in different locations.
• Children wrote a report on the weather around the world. We planned that they would dress up as if they were in those locations (e.g. one child wearing an anorak with water being sprayed at them, another wearing sunglasses on a sun lounger), but unfortunately we didn’t manage to make this happen.
• Children made references to people and events in the weather bulletin (e.g. “if Mrs Wilson is expecting to visit her family in Scotland his weekend, she’d better pack her umbrella” and “Wimbledon will be a scorcher”).
• The teacher brought in an interesting object and ask the children to try and sell it by making up an advert for it. At first, children had to make up the advert just in speech and orally presented it to each other.
• Children then wrote the script for the advert.
• Children produced posters to be displayed around the school to go with the advert.
• The group wrote a weather jingle.

Preparation

• Found weather reports with examples of jingle and sponsor adverts (on the internet or recorded from home)
• Collected costumes (anoraks, sunglasses)

Year 2

Documentary

Outcomes

• A short documentary-style film on life in India.

Main activities on the day

• Children researched life in India and made notes. They then turned this into a script.
• Children wrote about food, art and culture and Indian schools
• Children made and tasted some Indian food

Other writing opportunities

• Writing Indian recipes to go with the cooking activity

Year 1

Arts and culture

• Children created Sea and Shore artwork based upon 3 artists - Seurat, Hockney and Van Gogh. (refer to Art Medium Term Planning)
• Visited Manchester Art Gallery- experienced firsthand what an art gallery is like
• Children were involved in creating an exhibition of their own artwork.

Main activities on the day

• Making private view tickets to send home to parents
• Competition to name the art exhibition
• Making an art gallery sign using clay
• Artist statements
• Leaflets about the exhibition
• Parents exchange their ticket for a ‘post it’ in the shape of a fish or boat and could put it on a response board with a written comment

Other writing opportunities

• Writing on pebbles - describing water/sea creatures/artists
• Writing using glue and sand
• Writing on waves - using marbled pieces of paper
• Listening to wave/sea music - dancing and finger painting in the air - discussing words to describe the sounds and the feelings created by the sounds
• All the children’s pebbles, sand and waves were used to create a large outside collage of a sea and shore scene.

Final piece for filming:

• What was the exhibition about?- a written piece as a class
• Discussion of paintings - ideas from children
• Footage of actual exhibition
• Parent interviews and comments from the response board

Reception

Interviewing pirates

Outcomes

• The children were in role as pirates and were interviewed by Year 4 pupils.

Main activities on the day

• Children talked, wrote and produced pictures about what they like about school
• They dressed up as pirates (to emphasise the topic based teaching we do)

Other writing opportunities

• Writing in the sand

Preparation

• Pirate costumes

The film the children produced was then ‘premiered’ in a whole school assembly.

Partnerships

We sent a letter out to parents inviting anyone with experience in broadcasting and media to come in and help us with the project, to which we received a good response. As a result we formed a partnership with a company called MSHG who went to the BBC news department and created the film specifically for us which we showed in assembly. They also became involved on the days and made a film of the project.

Parents with media experience came in to junior and infant classes before the project to talk to the children about making television and further enthuse the children. They were involved in a question and answer session which the children wrote the questions for. We had fantastic parental support throughout the two days as well.

A fashion expert who owns a local boutique came in to discuss current trends and be interviewed by the year 5 children. Her input was invaluable for their subsequent fashion piece.

Outcomes

We were delighted by the way the children and staff rose to the occasion and fully immersed themselves in the role play of the project.

Children:

• enjoyed the experience of producing a film entirely unaided
• were enthused and excited about writing
• saw themselves as writers
• experienced writing for a purpose
• experienced writing about things which interest them
• saw how the literacy skills they were learning could be transferred to real life

The film has been on display in the school entrance hall for visitors to watch. Children’s work from the project is displayed in the entrance hall as well.

As writing is a focus of the School Development Plan, smaller projects are continuing throughout the school. We would consider embarking on school-wide writing project again, this having been so successful, but this time we would be keen to try something completely different!

Resources

Windows Movie Maker
Digital Flip Cameras
Newsround website -  http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews
BBC Weather website - http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather

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