NewsWise

Resource type: Lesson plans and teaching aids, CPD course, Projects, programmes and workshops

Price band: Free

Key stage: KS2

Region(s): All of UK

The NewsWise project is designed to help pupils in Years 5 and 6 develop the skills to access, understand, analyse and participate in the news. It has been set up as a collaboration between The Guardian Foundation, the National Literacy Trust and the PSHE Association.

The project consists of three elements:

Free lesson plans and supporting online resources – a downloadable, cross-curricular, flexible unit of work that lasts for three weeks and covers three main themes: understanding the news – including managing feelings about the news; navigating the news; and reporting the news.
Online news literacy webinars for teachers – a series of four free webinars that support and complement the teaching plans. Teachers can sign up for just one webinar or the entire series on the website. Booking is required.
Free workshops for schools that meet the selection criteria – schools with a higher than national average percentage of free school meals can register to be considered for free workshops and the opportunity to work with a journalist. In the workshops, members of the NewsWise team will work with pupils to transform the classroom into a busy newsroom. There is also a CPD session for teachers at the end of the day.

Cost: Free (but teachers must book a place on the webinars and apply for the workshops).

About The Guardian Foundation:The Guardian Foundation is a charity that promotes global press freedom and access to liberal journalism. They work with journalists, news organisations, audiences and educators, in schools and across communities to enhance people’s ability to evaluate news critically, facilitate opportunities for inclusion in media and build media capacity.

About National Literacy Trust: NLT is an independent literacy charity working with schools and communities to give disadvantaged children the literacy skills to succeed in life. The charity runs literacy programmes, CPD training courses for teachers, and provides online resources and tools to its members. It also undertakes research into all aspects of literacy and campaigns to raise awareness of literacy issues.

About PSHE Association: The PSHE Association is the national body for personal, social, health and economic education.

Literacy Hive Likes:

NewsWise has been developed by a team of specialists in news literacy, primary English and PSHE working alongside journalists.
Each lesson addresses core objectives within the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland curricula, as well as the PSHE Association Programme of Study.
NewsWise aims to provide an immersive learning experience that incorporates authentic skills from the newsroom to help build a real-life context for learning.
With more and more children accessing news via digital media, developing the critical skills to distinguish between news and ‘fake news’ has never been more important.
For pupils in secondary school, see the Behind the Headlines programme.
NewsWise and Behind the Headlines won the WAN-IFRA European Digital Media Awards 2021 for ‘Best Project for News Literacy’.