Successfully engaging schools with a news literacy project

By Sorcha Hughes, NewsWise Project Coordinator, The Guardian Foundation

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, schools and teachers have faced challenge after challenge, with frequent disruptions to daily school life. From repeated and short-notice closures during the pandemic to staffing shortages to some teachers taking strike action, navigating the educational landscape in the UK requires sensitivity and flexibility. Teachers and schools are overcoming these challenges against a backdrop of ongoing major news stories – the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and the earthquake in Turkey and Syria – the combination of these stories and the threat of mis- and disinformation is affecting pupils’ wellbeing and underlining the importance of news and media literacy. Working with schools can be challenging at times, but since 2018 we’ve gained extensive experience and expertise in doing it successfully.

Teachers are contending with a tightly-packed curriculum to make up for the disruption of the pandemic closures, focusing on core reading and writing skills. The year 5s we are currently working with were in year 2 when the pandemic started, so most of their Key Stage 2 education has been disrupted. Schools frequently report not having time to fit anything extra into their curriculum. This becomes particularly acute with year 6 teachers in England as their attention focuses overwhelmingly on SATs. In a perfect illustration of the impact of all of these challenges, this blog is being written at a time when teacher workloads are at the forefront of the national conversation – teachers across the UK are taking strike action in response to their heavy workload and staffing shortages.

So how do we navigate these challenges and get teachers working with us on the NewsWise programme?

Firstly, despite all of the challenges they’re facing, teachers understand how important this is! Teachers in our training sessions mention concerns about information their pupils are coming across online. They tell us about worrying content their children are accessing on platforms such as TikTok, the impact major news stories have on pupils’ wellbeing (at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, many teachers reported their pupils being worried that world war three was about to begin), and wanting to equip their pupils with media and news literacy skills as they begin to use the internet and devices independently.

The NewsWise project makes it easy for teachers to address these concerns. Our high quality resources have all been developed by education, literacy, journalism and PSHE experts from The Guardian Foundation, the National Literacy Trust and the PSHE Association. Jam-packed with all that expertise, the unit of work is also mapped to the curricula of the four UK nations. Each lesson plan clearly outlines how it is linked to the curriculum, so teachers are reassured they are meeting their pupils’ English/literacy, PSHE and digital literacy curriculum needs. Acknowledging that every teacher and class is different, the lesson plans have been designed to be adaptable for each class, and the teacher can deliver them in the way they know will work best for their pupils, whilst addressing the core competencies at the heart of the programme.

The project is also exciting and fun; the resources are all based on interesting, challenging (but always child-friendly!) news reports which provoke discussion and ignite children’s fierce sense of social justice. We’re often told that our lesson on the Windrush scandal has particularly caught pupils’ attention, prompting extensive discussion and strong feelings from pupils. We build excitement at the beginning with an interactive Enter the Newsroom workshop, introducing pupils to the key skills of investigating a story and working in role as editorial teams to produce a news bulletin. Pupils are enrolled into Journalist Training School and even get to meet real journalists in Q&A sessions set up by us; at the end of the project, pupils receive certificates signed by the editor-in-chief of the Guardian.

As a cross curricular unit of work covering English, PSHE education and digital literacy, NewsWise also helps to improve pupils’ reading, writing and critical literacy skills. By dissecting and analysing news reports, pupils become familiar with how they are constructed, considering how the structure, language and layout is very different from other types of writing. In the final lessons of the project, pupils apply everything they have learned to produce their own report about a real news story happening in their community or in the wider world. Recently, we’ve enjoyed reading pupil news reports about school fields being sold to build houses, issues with dog poo around a school, the opening of a new prayer room at school as well as reports about a comet passing by Earth and the impact of the cost of living crisis. Writing a real news report for a real audience gives pupils’ work a purpose, and encourages them to produce factually accurate and fair reports, and teachers report better writing outcomes when children write about something they care about.

To complement the lesson plans, resources and workshops, we provide a pre-project training session for all teachers involved in the project. As well as giving background to NewsWise and outlining the importance of news and media literacy in the classroom, the training session covers the practicalities of the workshop. We share inspiration for creating an immersive newsroom experience in the classroom, highlighting ideas that have worked well for other teachers. Crucially, we also share advice about producing authentic, realistic news reports, drawing on expertise gained from being based in the Guardian newsroom and learning from real journalists.

We’re offering teachers a brilliant package of resources designed to easily fit into the curriculum, but the key to actually making it work for them is communication. Setting up the randomised control trial with the a team from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues and School of Education at the University of Birmingham, we began recruiting and onboarding schools as early as March 2022, with a view to them beginning the project in September 2022. This lead-in time enabled us to build relationships with schools’ leadership teams to ensure buy-in for the duration of the project, which straddles two academic years for some. We ensure all information is relayed clearly so teachers know exactly what is expected of them and there are no surprises along the way. Our understanding of teachers’ workload and how they plan their year means we send them everything they need to know as early as possible, giving them ample time to plan the project into their curriculum. The teacher training session is packed with everything they need to know so they are thoroughly prepared for the project. Crucially, teachers are also aware that the passionate, enthusiastic and friendly NewsWise team is always available for support, whenever they need us.