Topical Tuesdays: Teaching with Technology – KS2 News Story and Reading and Writing Activity Sheet from The Week Junior

Lockdown has shown us just how useful computers are when it comes to learning. Of course, they are no substitute for in-class lessons with a qualified teacher, but they do offer great opportunities for supporting our learning. Therefore, shouldn’t they be given free to each and every pupil?

This resources pack includes an article from The Week Junior magazine, along with a sheet of activities designed to get children thinking, talking and writing about what the story means to them.

Activities include:

• Debate the pros and cons of giving free laptops to all students.
• Imagine you are someone from the ancient world who has just invented writing on paper or something similar, such as papyrus. Remember, up until this point, the only communication would have been through word of mouth or by carving on heavy stone or clay tablets. Write a persuasive advertisement, promoting your amazing new invention.
• How we write on things like text messaging applications is very different from how we would write more formally. For example, people often use emojis or abbreviations, such as ‘ur’ for your or ‘btw’ for by the way. Write a paragraph about a famous figure from history, first as if it were part of a report in a textbook and then translate it into a text as if you were messaging a good friend.
• If you have access to both pencil and paper and an electronic device for writing, such as a word processor on a computer, time your writing speed. Find a section of text that is 100 words long and copy it out, first using one method, then the other. On which one were you faster? How many mistakes did you make? How easy was it to read what you had written, especially when using pencil and paper?

Find the entire series of Topical Tuesday resources to download here.

What is The Week Junior?

The Week Junior magazine looks at current affairs and helps children make sense of the world, provides context and clarity to complex issues, improves general knowledge and encourages discussion and debate.

To find out more about The Week Junior and to download its free resources, please go to schools.theweekjunior.co.uk.

• News story
• Activities sheet