A News Attitude – Year 5 Journalists in Action

August 14, 2023

Over the last few weeks, our Year 5 students have been developing their journalistic skills through their English topic, ‘A New’s Attitude!’.

The girls have explored a range of news articles in print and online and been exposed to stories that they could connect closely with.

When creating their own newspaper articles, they applied the layout and language features to report on familiar fairy tales, recent sporting adventures and various College events.

Year 5 Teacher, Lindsey Fitzgerald, says that a highlight for her was “the buzz the whole topic created – hearing the girls talk about news in its various forms, publishing articles professionally on Canva, exploring their own blogs and just having fun creating their own Santa Maria news shows.”

A highlight for many students was having Social Media Officer, Jake Tana, share his expertise on blogging. The girls thrived on the opportunity to delve into this world and have the chance to be on the College website.

More recently, students interviewed a panel of staff members about the College’s new Cultural Centre to provide them with information needed to write a news article.

The panel guests included College Principal, Jennifer Oaten, Director of Corporate Services, Tim Stewart, Head of Dance & Drama, Amanda Huxtable, Dance Teacher, Marissa Gangemi and Music Teacher, Jessica Del Borrello.

The students prepared interview style questions for the panel in order to collect quotes, facts and perspectives, to allow them to write an informative and engaging newspaper article. These questions addressed the 5 Ws – who, what, when, where and why. Some of the questions relating to the Cultural Centre included:

Where on the College grounds will it be?
How many people will it hold?
What will it look like?
Which architecture firm designed it?
Who will use the building?

Once the students had gathered the necessary information they began writing their newspaper articles, in order to inform their audience about the new build soon to commence at the College.

We spoke to some Year 5 students about the whole experience. Here’s what they had to say.

I learned how to create a newspaper article, how to write a blog and make a news shows. These activities were fun because I could decide on how the different forms would affect my audience. Anya Laing 5.2

A highlight for me was learning about blogs and creating my own blog about art day for the competition because it was fun doing it with my friends, but also competing against them at the same time. Holly Danaher 5.3

My punctuation has improved and I have better ideas. I can organise my newspaper articles more clearly with columns. Zoe Quigley 5.4

I like how creative I can be with topics like natural disasters, fairy tale crimes and school events. It’s fun writing articles using facts. Lily Edwards 5.5

ConnectingLearning2Life, Curiosity, Featured, year 5

Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.