| Teaching and learning purpose
To help the students to explore Barb Wired and:
• identify how the online resource is structured
• recognise the differing characteristics of writing from different categories
• read and respond to feature articles. Teaching and learning Key competency: Thinking 1. Ask the students to browse newspapers (in print or online). Hand out the reading response guide to guide future discussion and to record comments. 2. As a class, talk about how to recognise and identify facts and opinions in a piece of writing. Introduce the concept that feature articles often combine both facts and opinions. Discuss how effective writers express and develop their points of view and support them by evidence. 3. Run a short newspaper/magazine based quiz. Select 10 extracts drawn from feature articles. Students are to classify these as facts or opinions, then justify their classifications. 4. Ask students to read
Featur-ing_TheGingaStereotype (Word 25KB)
feature article from Barb Wired. Many learners, including English language learners, will benefit from opportunity to familiarise themselves with the vocabulary from the feature article ‘The Ginga Stereotype’ and ‘Eat Up – It’s Got To Be Good For You’
beforehand. 5. In pairs or small groups, use the questions on ‘
Featur-ing_TheGingaStereotypeDiscussionSheet (Word 20KB)
to guide the discussion and to record comments. 6. As a whole class, discuss whether ‘The Ginga Stereotype’ could be classified as ‘good writing’. Key competency: using language, symbols and texts 7. Ask the students to give examples of writing they liked from the article. 8. Discuss which characteristics of these examples might earn a ‘good writing’ classification. Is the writing effective because of: [eg] the use of humour; interesting ideas and development of argument, skilful expression and use of language? Look closely at several examples of effective sentence structures and word selections the writer has made. 9. What criticisms do the students have of this piece? How do they think it could be improved? 10. Ask students to identify examples of information about ‘gingas’ from other sources. Classify these pieces of information. For example, historical details about ‘gingas’, unusual details, scientific details. 11. Ask students to consider and describe the approach they might take when they write their articles. 12. Ask students to select two topics from the initial topics list from their ‘Barb Wired’ Reading Response Guide
. Have the students complete a quick computer-based search for three or four pieces of information that they could potentially incorporate into feature articles on these topics. Their search and the information they locate should be guided by the tone and approach they might take in their articles. (Information collected for a serious article is likely to differ from that collected for a humorous piece.) 13. When students make firm decisions about the topics for their own feature articles, they should widen their search to include library and other relevant sources to locate information that could be included.
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