Reading comprehensions: FAKE NEWS - April Fool! Bonus writing material

AMUSING, ENTERTAINING AND EDUCATIONAL!

These reading comprehensions will test your students’ reading skills as they explore the four greatest April Fools of all time, as ranked by the Museum of Hoaxes. Using research skills and their reporter’s notebooks, the young journalists will find out about:

Spaghetti growing on trees in Switzerland
A fake volcanic eruption in Alaska
Instant Colour TV in Sweden
An iceberg in Sydney Harbour

Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements. They will also generate lively and fun classroom discussion. Would your students fall for these pranks? Can they come up with anything better?

A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display.

As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material.

Contents:

3: SWISS SPAGHETTI HARVEST
4: INSTANT COLOUR TV
5: ERUPTION OF MOUNT EDGECUMBE
6: THE SYDNEY ICEBERG
7-10: Questions
11-14: Answers
15: How to write a newspaper article
16: Newspaper template
17-20: Posters for display