The 2012 year magazine

Introduction

In this webquest you are going to produce a Sunday magazine supplement for a
newspaper that recalls some of the important news events of 2004. The magazine is
called ‘The Year 2012’.

Task

You are a team of reporters who need to produce a Sunday newspaper magazine supplement on important events from the year 2012, called ‘The Year 2012’.
To produce ‘The Year 2012’ magazine, you will work in groups of 3, and do the following:
- From the BBC News Archives, choose two important news stories from 2012 for each of these categories (group work):
• Politics
• Health
• Crime
• Space exploration
• Business
• Sport

- Present a short summary of your news stories to the newspaper Editorial Board.

They will help you decide on the most important story for each category (group work).
- Write short articles about your final six news stories, and include graphics (individual work).
- Edit and produce The Year 2004 magazine. Show your magazine to other groups (group work).
• Do a questionnaire self-evaluation of your work (individual work).

Process

Process 1 – News stories from 20012

  • Think back over the year 2004. What important things happened in the news? Make a list of three important events that happened in 2004, and compare with a

partner. Have you chosen any of the same events?

  • Work in groups of 3.  Look at the BBC News site with archived stories from 2012. You will see that stories on this website are divided into 3 main categories: News Stories, Business Stories, and Sports Stories.

Your The Year 2012 magazine is going to have the following categories of news stories:

  • Politics
  • Health
  • Crime
  • Space exploration
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Choose two important news stories from the BBC News sitefor each of these categories. You can click on each story’s headline to read a bit more about it.http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthene… 
  • Assign each of your group members a letter – Student A, Student B or Student C. Prepare a short summary of each of the news stories you chose in Process 1:

Process 2 – News stories summaries to the editorial board

Student A - politics, health

Student B - sport, space exploration

Student C - business, crime

Tips for your summary:

  • Your summary should be short – between 100 and 120 words.
  • You may use graphics from the Internet to illustrate your summary.
  • Include at least three of the key words listed at the bottom of your article. (You can listen to these words to hear how they are pronounced).
  • Include the date on which your news story was published.
  • The Editorial Board is going to ask you extra questions about your news story make sure you know more than what you put in the summary.
  • Practice your presentations a couple of times out loud with your group, trying to make it as interesting as possible.

Useful language for your presentation:

This article is about …

One of the main events of 2012 was … You’ll remember how in [March 2012] … What happened was ….

We think this article is important because …
  • You are going to present your news story summaries to the Editorial Board of your newspaper.  (The Editorial Board is another group in the class – you too will act as the Editorial Board to another group.)
  • Present your summaries to the Board, trying to use you own words rather than directly reading your summaries. Remember to include your three key words in your verbal summary.
  • The Editorial Board will decide on which story is best of the two for each category, and tell you their decision at the end of the presentations.

Tips for the editorial board:

  • When deciding on the best story for each category, ask yourself:
  • Is the story newsworthy and interesting?
  • Is the summary clear, and is the language used accurate enough?
  • Are there any pictures presented with the summary and could they beused in the final magazine?
  • Once the presentation is over, ask a few extra questions about the story.
  • Overall, have you chosen a good range of stories for this group’s magazine? Think about the topics, and also the publication dates – do these articles offer a good overview of the year 2012?

Process 3 – Producing ‘The Year 2012’ magazine: writing news stories

  • You are now going to produce The Year 2012 magazine, with the one news story (approved by the Editorial Board) for each of the categories:
  • Politics
  • Health
  • Crime
  • Space exploration
  • Business
  • Sport
  • You may use your original summary as a basis for your final news story for your categories, but you will need to include more details this time. Remember that you can find out more by clicking on ‘Listen to the story’, or on ‘Read more about this story’ at the bottom of the page. Try to use your own words as far as possible, and include your three key words. Try to write about 200 to 250 words per article
  • Read the articles written by the other members of your group. Give each other feedback on:
  • Content: Is the article clear? Do we know exactly what happened, where, when and why?
  • Structure: Does the article have clear paragraphs, and is it wellstructured?
  • Language: Is the use of English as correct as possible? Are the tenses appropriate? Is there a good range of vocabulary? Are the three key words included correctly?
  • Rewrite and correct your own articles as needed.
  • Decide on what photos or illustrations you would like to use, and where you would like them to appear in the articles.

Process 4 – Producing ‘The Year 2012’ magazine: editing and reading

  • As the editing team of ‘The Year 2012’ magazine, you now need to put your separate articles together into one magazine. You will need to discuss the following issues with your group:
  • What will the cover of The Year 2012 magazine look like? What photos/illustrations will you use?
  • What order will you put the articles in?
  • What ‘look’ will the articles have? Will they all have the same headline font and style, the same layout, the same number of photos, or will each article style be different? What size paper will you use?
  • How will you put it together? Who will be responsible for printing and binding?

Once you have decided on this, you need to work together to produce the 2012 magazine.

  • Put all the magazines up around the class. Walk round and look at the others groups’ magazines. Were there any images or articles that appeared in more than one magazine?
Evaluation

 

weak 1

average 2

good 3

excellent 4

 

 

 

 

 

Summaries

Disorganised and difficult to follow; little data, few conclusions; intrusive errors of vocabulary and

grammar; no photos or illustrations

Clearly written, logically organised, including a representative range of facts and some conclusions; grammatical and lexical mistakes do not impede overall

intelligibility, few or no photos or illustrations

Carefully planned and checked text, including introduction; a good range of facts, and conclusions; logically linked and accurate in terms of grammar and lexis; good rage of vocabulary displayed;

good photos or illustrations

Engaging, original and well organised text, consisting of introduction, data (extensive) and conclusion. Few errors of grammar or vocabulary; consistent and appropriate style; photos or illustrations relevant and clear

 

 

Presentation

Presentation simply read aloud; not easy to follow,

poorly illustrated, and/or under-rehearsed; questions not handled

Presentation organised into stages, clearly illustrated and sufficiently detailed to give a general idea; evidence of rehearsal; some reading aloud, but some improvised “telling”; questions adequately handled

Well organised presentation, with clear rationale, showing evidence of thorough research and rehearsal; attractively illustrated; some reading aloud, but

some improvised

“telling”; questions handled well

Presentation presented in an engaging, even entertaining, way; technically impressive, well resourced; even distribution of work, each contribution harmoniously linked to make a coherent whole; report delivered with notes but not read aloud; questions handled effectively and spontaneously

 

 

Articles

Articles are confused and/or short and/or difficult to follow, poorly researched and/or minimally exemplified; intrusive errors of vocabulary and grammar and/or large chunks copied directly from website

Articles are basic but sufficient to present main arguments; divided into clear sections and generally easy to follow; research not exhaustive but sufficient; grammatical and lexical mistakes do not impede

overall intelligibility

Articles are thorough and clearly laid out; research has gone beyond the most basic source and there is ample evidence of original writing; high level of accuracy and a broad lexical range

Articles are exceptionally well argued, often committed, based on thorough research, clearly articulated and accurately expressed

 

 

The Year 2004 magazine

Short, clumsily put together; inaccurate to the point of

unintelligibility; work not well distributed between group members; little apparent liaison or collaboration, no illustrations or photos

Sufficiently detailed, balanced appraisal, covering all main categories; evidence of sufficient group collaboration even if workload not evenly distributed; grammatical and lexical mistakes do not impede overall

intelligibility; few but

sufficient illustrations or photos

Detailed, accurately and coherently written; all points covered and some in considerable depth; work well co-ordinated and evenly distributed; well illustrated

Extremely insightful detailed and wellrounded account; balanced and informed; written in engaging, accurate and stylistically appropriate style; visually attractive and original