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• How To Write A Newspaper Report Ks2 English Resources

KS2 newspaper report – Best activities & resources

Extra! Extra! Boost students' non-fiction writing skills with these newspaper report templates, guidelines, formats, tips, worksheets and more…

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a fresh face in the teaching world, these creative and educational KS2 newspaper report ideas and resources will not only inspire your students but also make learning about news reporting an exciting adventure.

So, let’s dive in and transform your classroom into a bustling newsroom…

Newspaper writing activity ideas for KS2

Ks2 newspaper report resources.

Investigate word choice and non-fiction writing with your very own school newspaper project, explains teacher Karen Hart…

In my school, this KS2 newspaper report activity formed part of a ‘looking at information texts’ literacy project. The activity delivered great results. Children contributed imaginative language to stories that were both inventive and genuinely funny.

Preparing for the activity

Although many newspaper reports are not suitable for general reading at KS2, most local papers or specialist children’s newspapers contain plenty of suitable content.

Prior to this activity, look at some newspapers in detail and talk about their constituent parts, such as:

• advice columns
• sports section
• business news

Information texts

Start with a whole-class activity. Look at a few news stories covering a range of subjects. Our session included a story about the London Marathon; one about healthy eating and a report of a T-Rex skeleton that was going to auction.

Lead a discussion. Encourage children to talk about why these subjects are interesting to people. How does the language used make the written stories seem both interesting and exciting?  

Exciting writing

Next, look at these stories in more detail. Write lists of the words children think were chosen specifically to add interest.

For example, our T-Rex story included words such as  menacing pose , and  bloodthirsty stance . Get the pupils to work in groups to write their own short news story using the title, ‘Giant, hairy creature spotted in [your location]’. Aim to make it as exciting as possible.

Each group might have a different take on the topic. You can also do this as a whole-class activity.  

Write a KS2 newspaper report

Now, working in groups of two to three, give the children an envelope containing two short news story cuttings, plus two unrelated newspaper picture cuttings.

We used stories about ‘King Charles visits Dunfermline’ and ‘Twins grow record-breaking pumpkin’, plus pictures of a squirrel and a wedding cake. 

Support the pupils to write their own short news stories combining at least two of their given cuttings.

Remind them to consider elements they’ve already covered, such as language choice, and to think about how they can combine seemingly unrelated things (such as a squirrel and King Charles’ Dunfermline visit) in a funny or unexpected way.  

Structuring writing

To help structure their stories, give children a simple framework to work with, and display it on the board.

• headline  (title)
• byline  (names of people writing the article)
• location  (explains where the story takes place at the beginning of the story)
• story  (the main part – who, what, when, why, and how
• supporting information  (any extra facts that are relevant)

Make sure to talk about all these terms and what they mean. 

Newsreader activity

Pupils can create their own images to accompany their news stories, and then finish off the workshop with a fun newsreader activity.

Staying in their groups, ask children to pretend to be newsreaders, taking turns to read their stories to the rest of the class. Be mindful that not everyone likes to read in front of others.

For the finale, work to combine all the news stories into a class newspaper.  

Karen Hart is an independent drama teacher, author and freelance writer.

Newspaper front page template

When it comes to writing a KS2 newspaper report, a great place to start is to have a free, printable template to work from. So we’ve created one for you to download and print.

BFG newspaper report

Roald Dahl’s beloved BFG story provides the perfect opportunity to tackle newspaper report writing. This engaging activity involves acting as journalists to investigate and write a newspaper report about Sophie’s disappearance based on evidence found at the scene.

Write a magical Harry Potter report

Enliven the process of teaching newspaper reports for KS2 by imagining you are journalists reporting on a magical story within the world of Harry Potter with this free lesson plan .

Topical Tuesdays with First News

If you want to expose children to the language and layouts of newspaper but you’re worried about them coming across unsuitable material, try a specialist children’s newspaper such as First News.

Literary resources website Plazoom has a large collection of news story clippings from the paper that you can download for free , alongside Topical Tuesdays activity sheets that help you explore the chosen news report as a class.

‘Hack’ and edit websites

This free lesson plan uses a free tool called  Hackasaurus , which allows you to change the content of other people’s websites.

Using Hackasaurus, you can ‘hack’ any website and change it to display the content that you provide (this works particularly well with news providers). It is extremely easy to do and will look more authentic than creating a whole website from scratch.

But don’t worry, although it will look genuine, the website won’t really be hacked – it’s just a very real-looking copy. The internet police won’t be knocking on your door.

Newspaper report presentation with video

In this lesson from Oak Teacher Hub’s Spiderman unit , pupils will revise all the features of a newspaper report and write their own. The resource contains a presentation and a video.

Layout devices teaching sequence

This KS2 grammar teaching sequence for layout devices from Plazoom helps children familiarise themselves with different types of newspaper report layouts, before trying the techniques out themselves to present three key facts about a topic they know well.

Features of a newspaper report

This BBC Bitesize guide goes over all the basics about newspaper articles in a short, snappy video, plus there’s a quick interactive activity where children label a front page with the correct terms such as ‘headline’, ‘caption’ and ‘title’.

News report writing tips

This post from First News features ten top tips for writing a newspaper report to help pupils perfect their articles.

Fact or opinion worksheet

This simple worksheet is divided into three sections. The first presents a number of statements for pupils to decide whether they’re fact or opinion.

The second asks them to write their own facts and opinions on various things. The third features three passages where they need to pick out the facts and opinions.

Plus, there’s an extension activity that asks them to write their own newspaper article and then underline the facts and opinions in different colours.

Analyse the presentation of newspaper articles

This lesson plan was designed for a mixed-ability Year 7 class, so should be easily adaptable for upper-KS2. It involves looking closely at a newspaper article and identifying language and presentational features that support meaning in non-fiction text.

Opening lines

This Word document features a number of headlines and opening sentences to newspaper articles and tasks students to match them together.

It then gives them a number of important questions to answer and tasks to do, from picking out keywords to considering what they think each article will be about or what the main photo might be.

Click here to download.

Use drama to explore the stories behind newspaper headlines

This free unit of work lets KS2 pupils use drama to explore the stories  behind  newspaper headlines. It focuses on creating story, looking at pivotal moments, exploring character and feelings, reporting, representing and recording news items.

The scheme is presented as one long unit but you can easily divide it into shorter lessons.

Newspaper reports example articles

For a wealth of free downloadable reports and recounts, head over to  Literacy Wagoll  where you’ll find reports of dragons on the loose and Jack climbing the beanstalk, as well as reports on topics such as WW2 and the Rugby World Cup final.

More activities

Over at Teachit Primary there’s a great selection of newspaper-related activities for KS2.

There’s this one that explains the concept of the  inverted news pyramid , where all essential information is stacked at the front of the article.

There’s this one on  avoiding ambiguity , and one on  refraining from repetition , plus this one on  the art of alliteration in headlines .

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Newspaper report- I didn't do my homework because...

An engaging newspaper comprehension task. Children read an article based on events in the picture book I Didn't Do My Homework Because... by Davide Cali and Benjamin Chaud. They then answer questions requiring retrieval and inference skills.

A follow-up writing task challenges children to choose another excuse from the book to create their own entertaining newspaper article.

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55 Coast Guard Academy cadets disciplined over homework cheating accusations

Officials say 55 U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets have been disciplined for sharing homework answers in violation of academy policy

NEW LONDON, Conn. -- Fifty-five U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets have been disciplined for sharing homework answers in violation of academy policy, Coast Guard officials announced.

After a series of disciplinary hearings, six of the cadets failed the course and 48 got lowered grades, officials said Wednesday.

The cadets were accused of cheating by sharing answers for two separate homework assignments electronically.

“The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity, honor, and accountability,” said Capt. Edward Hernaez, commandant of the academy. “Misconduct like this undermines trust and those found to have violated our principles were held accountable for their actions.”

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I tutor the children of some of Dubai's richest people. One of them paid me $3,000 to do his homework.

• A 25-year-old private tutor told BI about his experiences working in the UAE.
• He said he had taught the children of some of Dubai's richest people.
• One of his pupils paid him $3,000 to do his homework, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 25-year-old private tutor and academic governor in Dubai. They were granted anonymity to speak freely about their experiences. This essay has been edited for length and clarity. The names of children have been removed to protect their identity.

I moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2020 to work for an international tutoring agency.

I've since taught children from some of Dubai's most elite families — millionaires and billionaires who had made their money from oil investments, tech startups, and other entrepreneurial ventures.

One of the families I taught lived in one of Dubai's most expensive apartments, which boasted an art room, a massage room, a gym, and a cinema. It was spread over five floors and also had a private elevator and guard dogs on the door.

Families like these often had dozens of staff, including security, maids, drivers, cooks, nannies, and, of course, tutors.

The parents often weren't around, but those I did encounter were almost always friendly to me.

I had most contact with the nannies, who were at the children's beck and call.

They would cook me dinner and bring me drinks, and I almost felt like I was a part of the family, sort of like a big brother.

One of my younger pupils had his own bespoke classroom in the family house — it was better equipped than anything you'd ever see in a normal school.

Having finished an arts and crafts class with him one time, I said we needed to clean up the mess.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I do not pay you to clean. I pay her to clean," as he pointed at the nanny.

With another child, who was around seven at the time, we had been studying birds in biology and he demanded we get an owl to observe it.

The next time I went to the house, an owl was perched on the kitchen counter.

Another student was told by his brother to "not bother doing any work" because "Dad would sort it out." He then paid me $3,000 to do his homework for him.

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But this was normal behavior in Dubai, as the kids were used to extreme wealth.

The families would give me with gifts

These sorts of financial "incentives" were by no means rare.

Sometimes, the parents would go to great lengths to start a bidding war with one another.

If they knew I would be at one client's house at a time they wanted, they would offer to pay double, triple, or even more to convince me to come to them instead.

And each time I thought I'd seen it all, the job would find new ways of surprising me.

One time, my car broke down, and I turned up late for a lesson with one of my regular pupils. I told the mother the reason I was late, and the next time I had a class with that child, she gave me $7,000 in cash to pay for repairs.

The same family gave me a huge tip of more than $20,000 at the end of the year.

I spent the summer sailing the Italian coast on a yacht

Last summer, I was hired to look after two brothers, who were four and six years old. Their family had planned a trip on their private yacht and were looking to sail along the Italian coast for two months.

A few weeks after signing the contract, I found myself in a speedboat heading across the Mediterranean toward a superyacht the size of a ferry.

As I joined my new employers on the deck, uniformed staff offered Champagne (although I was not allowed to drink while working), and I spent the next few months jet-skiing, paddle-boarding, touring vineyards, and eating expensive foods.

This family was from Russia, and there was a marked difference in the way they treated me, often wanting to keep me out of sight.

While they partied on the upper levels, I was told to stay below deck.

They had hired me to be a kind of glorified babysitter for their kids, playing with them and keeping them entertained while speaking English to them.

For the Russian elite, having someone who speaks English with a native accent is a big boasting point.

Perhaps one of the funnier moments was when we returned to their villa on the south coast of France. On either side of the front door were two stone busts of the father's face.

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Newspaper Headlines Worksheet

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

22 February 2018

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Taylor Swift is now a class at the University of Miami. What will the students learn?

MIAMI — A University of Miami dean’s own homework assignment last year — learn all you can about Taylor Swift’s songs as fast as you can — has led to one of the coming fall semester’s hottest classes on the Coral Gables campus.

Students were more than ready for it. The UM’s “Mastermind Taylor Swift Brand” strategic communication class filled up at a pace almost as fast as tickets sold out last August for the superstar’s three South Florida concerts in October 2023. Those shows open the second U.S. leg of Swift’s Eras Tour at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium.

When registration opened earlier this month at UM for the 150-capacity class that’s open to all majors and begins Aug. 20, all seats filled within four days. The school raised the cap to 175. There is now a waiting list for STC 290. UM may add more seats for the Tuesday-Thursday 75-minute class.

How a UM Swift class was born

For Alyse Lancaster, UM’s vice dean for academic affairs in the School of Communication, that “Mastermind Taylor Swift Brand” class she formulated and will teach is a family affair.

The class is happening because her daughter Gabi planted the idea. And her son Sydney, a sophomore at the University of Florida majoring in interior design, designed the class’s promotional poster that UM students have seen around campus since March.

“Taylor Swift has been a staple in my house since my now-17-year-old daughter was 4 years old,” Lancaster told the Miami Herald in an email interview. “But it wasn’t until we were able to purchase presale tickets for the Eras Tour concert that things changed on my end. My daughter told me that I needed to learn all of the songs on the Eras Tour set list, plus most of Taylor’s other songs — ‘because you never know what the two surprise songs she will perform at the concert’ and I need to be ready.”

Gabi made her mom a playlist. Lancaster listened intently.

“Don’t blame me, love made me crazy/ If it doesn’t, you ain’t doin’ it right” blasting on Lancaster’s exercise walks.

“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise/ So casually cruel in the name of being honest,” Taylor’s dig at ex-beau Jake Gyllenhaal, coming from Lancaster’s car stereo on those drives to and from campus in Miami’s infernal traffic jams.

All this cramming of Swift’s music gave the educator plenty of contemplative and creative time.

“Then she and I went to see the Eras Tour movie and while watching this incredible woman perform for 3.5 hours straight, through nine eras of her music, interacting with her over-the-moon-excited, completely engaged audience, I finally understood what the big deal is,” Lancaster said.

On one of those walks, the idea for the class hit Lancaster like an immediate, enchanted revelation, much like words and music come to Swift. She knew she had to teach a communication strategy class at UM built around Swift’s brand.

Swift in academia from UF to Harvard

Other places of higher education have designed courses around the pop star.

Last fall, the University of Miami’s School of Law had an adjunct professor teach a seven-week intensive class called “Intellectual Property Law Through the Lens of Taylor Swift.”

The University of Florida’s one-credit discussion-based spring 2024 class, “ Musical Storytelling With Taylor Swift and Other Iconic Female Artists,” filled its 15 spots in 10 seconds when early registration opened last fall, the campus newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator reported.

In the last year, Stanford University has offered “All Too Well (Ten Week Version),” a course analyzing Swift’s 10-minute masterpiece, “All Too Well” and “The Last Great American Songwriter: Storytelling With Taylor Swift Through the Eras.”

Harvard’s Department of English opened its “ Taylor Swift and Her World “ course this spring, promising to cover “illicit affairs and hoaxes” and “champagne problems and incomplete closure.”

Berklee College of Music in Boston offers a “Songs of Taylor Swift” class with a focus on the performer’s music composition and lyrics, The Boston Globe reported.

In addition to Lancaster’s coming UM class, Arizona State University, Brigham Young University, Houston’s Rice University, the University of Delaware and the University of California, Berkeley all plan Swift-inspired courses in 2024, according to Best Colleges.

“I typically teach courses in advertising strategy development and social media strategies,” Lancaster said. “These classes focus on brand-building, identifying and communicating with the desired target audience, building brand loyalty, and using social media to build a long-lasting relationship between the brand and its loyal audience. And it occurred to me that Taylor Swift has successfully built a billion-dollar brand with a multicultural, multigenerational, global audience of millions of loyal fans.

“So why not use Taylor Swift’s success and business prowess as the foundation for teaching students about brand-building, audience-building, and the importance of communication in achieving those relationships? And just like that, the class was born,” Lancaster said.

What students will learn

Students who managed to secure a seat for UM’s STC 290 in the fall will learn about the marketing and communication strategies Swift has used to build her billion-dollar brand via “the most diverse and loyal group of fans many of us have ever seen,” Lancaster said.

Take Emma Craig, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering at UM. “It’s going to be a ‘Cruel Summer’ waiting until fall for the new Taylor Swift class coming to UM,” the student told The Miami Hurricane campus paper in anticipation of registration for the course.

“For “Mastermind,” the class title borrowed from one of Swift’s “Midnights” tracks, Lancaster’s lectures aim to teach students how to use promotional, persuasive and strategic communication to build a connection with a target audience, and how to get that audience invested in the brand, Lancaster said as she builds her syllabus. School of Communication issues like freedom of expression, the right to privacy for public figures, and the legal limits of using artificial intelligence to alter images are also on the course agenda.

“These are skills students can use not only in the industry, but also in building their own personal brands after graduation,” Lancaster said.

Swift’s own education path

For Swift, 34, that brand-building began inside a classroom in Hendersonville, Tennessee, when she was a high school freshman in a math class, she told the Miami Herald in an interview published in January 2008, just a month after she turned 18.

While her peers listened to the teacher lecture about algebra a few years earlier, Swift said she scribbled the lyrics to her first two hits, “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” in her notebook and sneaked out of class to record voice memos into her telephone.

At 17, signed to her first label, Swift already directed nearly every aspect of her career, from the images on her album covers and press photos, to the songs’ sequencing on her albums. Swift said nothing was released to the marketplace that she hadn’t approved.

“When teachers conducted random notebook checks, they’d be freaked out — but they learned to deal with me,” Swift mused in that long-ago interview.

Knowledge retention

Taylor Swift, Lancaster says, is “in essence, a phenomenon who truly understands many of the important constructs we cover in higher education, including persuasive communication, branding, storytelling, intellectual property, and the power of music.”

One reason universities like UM and UF have taken to teaching Swift, aside from the Eras-like sellout registrations for classes, is they give professors an opportunity to teach concepts that students may actually remember after graduation.

“If students can connect the information they learn to something that’s of great interest to them, they will not only remember that information, but they will be reminded of it whenever the topic of interest comes up. Using Taylor Swift as the impetus for teaching important concepts increases attention, learning, and retention. And plus, it makes learning fun,” Lancaster said.

“I’ve never been more excited to teach a class than I am to teach this one!”

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Despite masters finish, tiger woods encouraged and eyeing next three majors.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. – First, the good news.

Tiger Woods played 72 holes in an official PGA Tour event for the first time since February 2023, and the weekend at a major for the first time since the 2022 Masters. Given the physical challenges he’s faced since having subtalar fusion surgery on his right ankle last April, making the cut at the year’s most demanding walk is a moral victory by any measure.

“It was a good week. It was a good week all around,” the five-time Masters champion said following a closing 77 on Sunday at Augusta National. “I think that coming in here, not having played a full tournament in a very long time, it was a good fight on Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately, yesterday it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to.”

For those inclined to view life through an optimistic lens, Woods also offered an encouraging take on what the rest of his season might look like. “This is a golf course I knew going into it, so I’m going to do my homework going forward at Pinehurst [U.S. Open], Valhalla [PGA Championship] and Troon [Open Championship], but that’s kind of the game plan,” he added.

Now the bad news.

Woods’ 60 th -place finish (dead last) was his worst at the year’s first major since he missed the cut in 1996 as an amateur and his third-round 82 was the highest 18-hole score of his major championship career as a professional.

“I think that just the wind and what it was doing out here to the golf shots and the balls and putting, how difficult the course was playing, it doesn’t take much to get out of position here,” he said. “Unfortunately, I got out of position a lot yesterday and a couple times today.”

Although Woods’ 5-over closing round was an improvement over Saturday’s effort, it was still eventful with bogeys at Nos. 3, 6 and 15 and a triple-bogey 7 at the fifth hole.

Despite those struggles, the week proved to be a step in the right direction for Woods, who withdrew from the Genesis Invitational with an unknown illness earlier this season and managed just 36 holes at last year’s Masters before withdrawing with an ankle injury.

“Just keep lifting, keep the motor going, keep the body moving, keep getting stronger, keep progressing. Hopefully the practice sessions will keep getting longer,” he said when asked how he would prepare for next month’s PGA Championship.