GRADE 10A: The news Reporting events

About this unit

This unit is designed to guide your planning and teaching of English lessons. It provides a link between the standards for English and your lesson plans. The teaching and learning activities in this unit should help you to plan the content, pace and level of difficulty of lessons. You should adapt the ideas in the unit to meet the needs of your class. You can also supplement the ideas with appropriate activities from your schools textbooks and other resources. In this unit, students listen to the news and write a report of a news story from notes. They explore journalistic style and the work of a reporter.

UNIT 10A.9 9 hours

Resources
The main resources needed for this unit are: a recording of the news; a text of one of the news stories with no punctuation; two reading texts about the same news story, each taken from a different source; short excerpts about the same news story taken from a range of newspapers; an interview with a journalist on an issue related to journalism; a reading or listening text about privacy laws.

Expectations
By the end of the unit, most students will: understand a range of common affixes and roots and use them to guess the meanings of unknown words; follow and respond to narratives, descriptions, explanations, recounts and commentaries; recount, discuss and compare events; prepare and present an opinion or point of view to persuade an audience; plan and participate in discussions, speak at length, develop ideas, give examples, ask and answer questions from the group; express obligation and absence of obligation; skim and scan texts, and comparing and synthesising information from at least two sources; use the full range of punctuation with about 80% accuracy; report events using a range of narrative tenses. Students who progress further will: report a news story in journalistic style using a range of past tenses and accurate use of passive voice; identify bias in a news report. Students who make slower progress will: report a news story using a range of past tenses and passive; identify main ideas and details in a news report.

Key structures and functions

Present perfect for talking about recent activities where the present result (the effect) is more important than the past action: An earthquake has hit the central region of Passive voice to focus on the action rather than on who or what did it: A man has been arrested in connection with Expressing obligation and absence of obligation: Journalists have to be open-minded. They neednt be good at photography but it helps.

Vocabulary
The news: headlines, main story, report, bulletin, reporter, journalist, correspondent, eyewitness, etc. Reporting news: objective, sensational, biased, fair, impartial, etc. Other vocabulary will depend on the news at the time of teaching the unit.

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Standards for the unit

9 hours
2 hours The news 2 hours Investigating journalistic style 2 hours The job of a journalist 2 hours Privacy and the press 1 hour Extensive reading 9.6.4 Recognise contexts, purposes and features of formal English through reading, for example, notices and announcements, letters, reports, essays and critical reviews. 10A.5.4 10A.3.5 Consolidate understanding of a range of utterances constructed in the passive voice.

Unit 10A.9
CORE STANDARDS Grade 10A standards
10A.2.1 Understand elements of morphology in order to be able to guess the meanings of unknown words. Consolidate from G69 and extend ability to recognise, investigate, and spell root words with a range of affixes; generate new words and guess the meaning of unknown words from affixes, to extend vocabulary and support spelling.

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 9 standards

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 11A standards

10A.3.2. Understand and respond to descriptions and explanations of people, places, events and processes: identify detail accurately; note detail with sufficient precision to re-use without error; note logical progression. Recount and compare events, situations, narratives and personal experiences in the past, using the simple past, past continuous, past perfect and present perfect for the general past, as appropriate.

10A.5.16 Use ought for obligation and negative of need and have to to express absence of obligation. 10A.6.3 Recognise a range of features of formal written English through reading. Note in particular: purpose and intended audience; language features use of discourse markers for explicit logical organisation, complete sentences rather than elliptical forms, frequent use of modal verbs to express possibility, condition, politeness, use of more formal vocabulary items, use of passive voice. 11A.6.3 Recognise a wide range of features of formal written English through reading a variety of genres.

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9 hours

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 9 standards

10A.6.5

CORE STANDARDS Grade 10A standards

Use active reading strategies: use techniques (e.g. highlighting a paper text) to pick out key points and remain focused on the material; use indexes, pictures, tables of contents, and glossaries to help locate and assimilate information; skim and scan written and screen-based texts for information; discern the overall message or theme; consider alternative actions, outcomes, etc. to those in the text; compare and contrast text information; interpret a real-world application of text information; evaluate in relation to preferences or purposes.

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 11A standards

10A.7.8

Read a variety of discussion, debate and argument texts which present and balance arguments from differing viewpoints: understand the purpose and typical organisational features of these texts recognise and understand the use of typical language features.

10A.7.6

Read widely for information: prior to reading, identify key questions and possible sources; use skimming and scanning strategies to identify key information, distinguish relevant from irrelevant detail; synthesise information from at least three sources; make detailed legible notes in a form which suits the purpose written, diagrammatic, abbreviated sufficiently to structure an essay; evaluate at least three different texts on the same topic, the reliability and relevance of information from a given source.

11A.7.4

Read widely for information: compare and evaluate different texts on the same topics, information presented in different screen and hard-copy text forms.

10A.8.3

Independently apply a range of spelling strategies including: phonic segmentation of multi-syllabic words; breaking words into segments of meaning (e.g. suffixes and prefixes, words within words).

10A.8.4 10A.8.5 Independently review and edit own writing with the needs of an identified audience in mind. 10A.9.1

Use the full range of punctuation with approximately 80% accuracy. Independently compose texts of approximately 1015 to sentences in a coherent structure using: three connected and coherent paragraphs; varied sentence structure, and choice of words and phrases for precision and effect; connecting words and phrases to link sentences cohesively. 11A.9.1 Independently compose texts of at least 20 sentences in a coherent structure using: cohesion markers, such as lexical repetition, reference, ellipsis and substitution and use of pronouns for reference and cohesion.

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9 hours
10A.8.6

SUPPORTING STANDARDS including Grade 9 standards

Use common word-processing software such as Microsoft Word to plan, compose, edit and present own writing. 10A.9.7

CORE STANDARDS Grade 10A standards

Make detailed notes (either hand-written or on a computer) from listening or reading From these notes, present a coherent summary of approximately one third the length of the original. telegraphic or pictorial notes based on key words and the main ideas from a text for personal use; written, pictorial and diagrammatic notes to summarise or explain a text to others; a short coherent summary in the form most appropriate for ease of communication, which captures the main ideas in a sufficiently clear form for others to read and understand.

EXTENSION STANDARDS including Grade 11A standards

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Activities
Objectives
2 hours The news Students are able to: understand and respond to descriptions and explanations of people, places, events and processes; identify detail accurately; note detail with sufficient precision to re-use without error; note logical progression; use passive voice; recount, discuss and compare events, situations, narratives and personal experiences in the past, using the simple past, past continuous, past perfect and present perfect for the general past, as appropriate.

Unit 10A.9
Possible teaching activities
Introduce the topic and objectives for the unit. Tell students that they are going to listen to the news and ask them to work in pairs and predict the stories that they will hear. Elicit ideas and feed in key vocabulary when and as required. Elicit as many details as possible at this stage as this will make the listening activity that follows easier. Students listen to the news from beginning to end without stopping. They identify the number of stories. Elicit the main details of the stories which students can compare with their predictions. Number the stories, give each a heading and elicit related vocabulary and notes on the story on the board under each heading. Students listen a second time to get more information about the stories. In pairs, students practise retelling the stories from their notes. They make questions to find the missing information. Students form groups of eight and ask each other questions to complete the news stories. Play the recording a third time, stopping after each news story. Students check the information they have and add any missing information. Using examples from the listening text, discuss the use of tenses. Highlight the use of present perfect to talk about recent activities where the present result (the effect) is more important than the past action, for example: An earthquake has hit the central region of A man has been arrested in connection with Compare and contrast use of the past simple when the interest is in the action or the time of the action, not the effect: Early this morning an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit the Last night police arrested Also explore use of the passive the interest is in the action rather than in who or what did it: A man has been arrested in connection with Last night police arrested In pairs, students report on one of the news stories, paying special attention to use of tenses.

Notes
Look for a recording of the news which should be very recent (not more than 24 hours old) and ideally present the news headlines followed by details of the stories. The BBC World Service news is an excellent source for this kind of activity. Recordings can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.html Discussing ideas in pairs is important to give students a chance to rehearse their sentences and build their confidence before speaking in front of the whole class.

School resources
This column is blank for schools to note their own resources (e.g. textbooks, worksheets).

2 hours Investigating journalistic style Students are able to: use the full range of punctuation with about 80% accuracy; [continued]

Prepare one of the news stories from the listening activity with no punctuation. Give the unpunctuated text to students who read it and add the punctuation. Students read and compare two texts about the same news item, taken from different sources. They compare and contrast features such as use of vocabulary, use of direct speech, the information given, logical organisation, length of text, use of images, etc. Find two texts on the same news story, one from each of two sources showing different journalistic styles. Texts can be found by searching newspaper websites (e.g. the Sun or Daily Mail on one side and The Guardian or Independent on the other).

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Objectives
[continued] compare and evaluate at least two different texts on the same topic. 2 hours The job of a journalist Students are able to: express obligation and absence of obligation; work out the meaning of unknown words from context, roots and affixes.

Possible teaching activities

Discuss a recent story involving politics. Take excerpts from four or five newspaper stories reporting the story and ask students to identify the political sympathies of the newspapers. Introduce relevant vocabulary (e.g. bias, sympathy, support). Write the words journalist, correspondent and reporter on the board. Students use their dictionaries to check the meaning of the words and collocations. Examine the root of the each word and the associated verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. Students practise spelling new words by breaking words into segments of meaning (e.g. suffixes and prefixes, words within words). Students read or listen to an interview with a war correspondent or other journalist. about issues in journalism. They complete comprehension questions.

Notes

School resources

Listening and reading texts on issues in journalism such as impartiality, privacy, accuracy and truth can be found on the BBC webpage Inside BBC Journalism at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ programmes/bbc_journalism

Students work out the meaning of unknown words in the text by guessing from context or by examining their affixes and roots. In groups, students discuss the job of a journalist and prepare a poster listing the personal qualities and skills necessary for the job. Review language for expressing obligation and absence of obligation as necessary. In turns, groups present their posters, giving reasons to support their opinions. They compare and contrast their lists. In their groups, students discuss and agree on the most important skill and the most important quality necessary to be a journalist. Discuss in whole-class work arrangement. 2 hours Privacy and the press Students are able to: use ought for obligation and negative of need and have to to express absence of obligation; compose texts of approximately 1015 sentences in a coherent structure. Students read a text on the topic of privacy of the rich and famous or listen to a paparazzi talking about his or her work. They identify the opinion of the writer or speaker and respond to comprehension questions. In groups, students discuss case studies involving privacy of the rich and famous, for example, cases involving the paparazzi and the British royal family, the selling of information about David Beckhams family by his childrens nanny, etc. They conclude by deciding what constitutes news, what the public have a right to know, etc. In groups, students draft a code of conduct for journalists. They display their writing and compare with other groups. Links to audio and written texts on the topic can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ magazine/4408365.stm.

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Objectives
1 hour Extensive reading Students are able to: read extensively from graded readers and other appropriately levelled texts in 2500 key word range, in a variety of genres and organised in paragraphs and chapters.

Possible teaching activities

Students read a book from a range of graded or appropriately levelled readers within the 2500+ key word range. They may be given time to read their book in class and reading should be set for homework. Set a time within which students should complete a certain number of pages or chapters of the book and an activity that shows their understanding of the book. Activities will depend on the content of the book and can include: writing a book review asking for a summary and their opinion of the story and/or characters; responding to questions to show understanding of the main ideas; completing a table, graph or other diagram; language-focus work (e.g. tense, use of adjectives); role-playing characters in the book; writing a letter as if from a character in the book; developing a story map and illustrations.

Notes

School resources

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Assessment
Examples of assessment tasks and questions
Listening Students listen to a news broadcast and answer true/false questions.

Unit 10A.9
Notes
Listening carries approximately 20% of the assessment weighting for this grade. Questions should be designed to assess the comprehension of gist and details.

School resources

Speaking

Students compare and contrast two different newspaper reports about the same news story.

Speaking carries approximately 30% of the assessment weighting for this grade. Assessment scales should include both accuracy and fluency criteria.

Reading Writing

Students read and order a jumbled report of a news story. Students write a report of a recent event for a school magazine.

Reading carries approximately 30% of the assessment weighting for this grade. Writing carries approximately 20% of the assessment weighting for this grade.

126 | Qatar English scheme of work | Grade 10A | Unit 10A.9 | The news

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