Newspaper Report Writing Unit | Years 3 & 4 | LKS2

A fifteen-lesson KS2 newspaper report writing unit for LKS2, built around a fictional news event: people across the country have mysteriously lost their shadows.

This newspaper report writing unit gives pupils a genuine reason to write, an unusual story that needs reporting while covering a range of LKS2 English writing skills. It works as a standalone English unit or alongside a KS2 Science topic on light and shadows, where it sits naturally with work on how shadows are formed.

The unit is structured so that pupils build their understanding of newspaper reports before being asked to produce one. Three differentiated model texts introduce the key features and are revisited throughout, giving pupils a consistent reference point at every stage. From there, lessons move through word, sentence and text-level work in sequence. Vocabulary and grammar first, the structural features of a report and finally extended writing. By the time pupils reach the planning and drafting stages, they’ve already practised the component skills. The final five lessons give students opportunities to write and publish their own newspaper report on the same story.

Every lesson includes differentiated activities and success criteria.

What’s included:

• Hook lesson with a treasure hunt to introduce the fictional story
• Identifying and sorting newspaper report features using three differentiated model texts
• Understanding facts and opinions
• Writing snappy headlines with appropriate vocabulary
• Creating captions with prepositions
• Identifying and generating appropriate vocabulary for newspaper reports
• Using fronted adverbials
• Using conjunctions to alter the meaning of sentences
• Writing in the correct tense for newspaper reports
• Writing and punctuating direct speech, including a hot-seating activity
• Three lessons for planning, drafting and writing the introduction, main body and conclusion
• Two lessons for editing and publishing using newspaper templates

A fully resourced newspaper report unit for LKS2 — fifteen lessons from hook to published piece.

All resources are downloaded as PPT or PDF files only.