Great Fire of London: Newspaper Reports

#TheCompleteSeries5lessons

Your class will explore the features of newspaper articles and gather facts about the Great Fire of London, before planning and writing their very own newspaper reports about this key historical event.

This set of five Year 2 Great Fire of London Newspaper Report English lessons comes with everything you need to successfully get your class writing newpaper reports. There are detailed lesson plans with differentiated activity ideas, slideshows for each of the whole-class teaching inputs and a range of fun, engaging and challenging printable teaching resources, including worksheets, model texts, challenge cards and checklists.

#Lesson1FullStopsandCapitalLetters

This full stops and capital letters KS1 English lesson gives your Year 2 class the chance to find out lots of facts about the Great Fire of London, all through badly punctuated sentences that are missing full stops and capital letters!

The included slideshow presentation goes through some examples together, introducing your Year 2 class to the idea that proper nouns need capital letters, as well as the start of a sentence. They will also practise spotting where two sentences need to be separated by a full stop.

During their independent learning activities, your children can then practise correcting sentences about the Great Fire of London by putting in missing capital letters and full stops, or sort sentences into those that have been correctly punctuated and those that haven't.

#Lesson2SequencingEvents

This Year 2 Great Fire of London Sequencing Events lesson will give your KS1 class the chance to become more familiar with the key events of the Great Fire of London in preparation for writing their newspaper reports.

During the teaching input, your class will be introduced to the 5Ws (who, what, when, where and why/how) and explore why these are important in newspaper reports. They will then go on to sequence the events of the Great Fire until they have a coherent timeline. The final challenge of the lesson is to identify the 5Ws of the Great Fire of London in the timeline they have established.

This lesson comes fully planned and ready to deliver to your Year 2 class. There's a detailed lesson plan, a slideshow for the teaching input, differentiated activity ideas and a range of printable teaching resources.

#Lesson3FeaturesofaNewspaper

This Features of a Newspaper lesson for Year 2 gives your class the chance to read a newspaper report about a historical event, identifying the features and language used, in preparation for writing their own newspaper articles about the Great Fire of London.

Your class will read the model text together, then go through the points on the provided slideshow explaining the features and why they are important for a newspaper report.

During their independent learning activities, they can then either sort sections of a newspaper into an appropriate order to create a report about familiar historical events, or create exciting headlines for familiar stories.

#Lesson4PlanningaNewspaperReport

Your Year 2 class will be planning a newspaper report about the Great Fire of London in this ready-to-teach KS1 English lesson. Your class will draw on everything they have learnt, both about the Great Fire of London and the features of newspaper reports, to plan their own report on the Great Fire, choosing a particular focus for their article.

The included slideshow presentation helps your class consider why planning a newspaper article is important and will help them narrow down a focus for their article. Will they write an article about the start of the fire, about the end of the fire, about the destruction of St Paul's Cathedral? Let them decide, then give them time to plan what information they will need to include.

This lesson comes fully prepared with a lesson plan, slideshow, differentiated activity ideas and a range of printable resources.

#Lesson5WritingaNewspaperReport

This Writing a Newspaper Report KS1 English lesson challenges your Year 2 class to follow the plans they created in the last lesson to write their newspaper reports about the Great Fire of London.

The included slideshow presentation goes through some of the things the children will need to think about as they write their newspaper reports and challenges them to include features such as noun phrases, exciting sentence starters and conjunctions in their work.

They will then work independently to write their newspaper reports, using the differentiated checklists provided to ensure they have included everything they need to include.

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Curriculum Objectives covered

• discussing the sequence of events in books and how items of information are related

• writing about real events
• writing for different purposes
• planning or saying out loud what they are going to write about
• writing down ideas and/or key words, including new vocabulary
• evaluating their writing with the teacher and other pupils
• re-reading to check that their writing makes sense and that verbs to indicate time are used correctly and consistently, including verbs in the continuous form
• proof-reading to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation [for example, ends of sentences punctuated correctly]
• read aloud what they have written with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear

• learning how to use both familiar and new punctuation correctly (see English Appendix 2), including full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks, question marks, commas for lists and apostrophes for contracted forms and the possessive (singular)
• expanded noun phrases to describe and specify [for example, the blue butterfly]
• the present and past tenses correctly and consistently including the progressive form
• subordination (using when, if, that, or because) and co-ordination (using or, and, or but)

• Subordination (using when, if, that, because) and co-ordination (using or, and, but)
• Expanded noun phrases for description and specification [for example, the blue butterfly, plain flour, the man in the moon]
• Correct choice and consistent use of present tense and past tense throughout writing
• Use of capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences