Community Story Sleuthing

Overview

Students are introduced to investigative journalism as a way to uncover community issues through careful text reading, questioning, and ethical storytelling. They explore how journalism texts are shaped by purpose and context, and they begin to notice how language and structure influence audience understanding.

Learning intentions

• Students will learn what investigative journalism is and what roles journalists play in communities.
• Students will identify how journalistic texts use structure and language features to meet their purpose.
• Students will discuss how objective and subjective language can show bias or fairness in reporting.
• Students will practise comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning from short journalism samples.

Success criteria

• I can explain the difference between factual reporting and opinion/commentary.
• I can identify at least two features of a journalism text (for example, headline, lead, quotes, images, headings) and describe how they help the purpose.
• I can use questioning to infer what the text creator might want me to think or do.
• I can recognise when word choices are objective or subjective and explain why that matters.

Curriculum links

• Students examine how media texts represent ideas and events and identify how they reflect the context in which they were created.
• Students analyse how text structures and language features work together to meet the purpose of a text and engage/influence audiences.
• Students use comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning to build literal and inferred meaning.
• Students understand uses of objective and subjective language and identify bias.

Lesson structure (60 minutes)

1. 0–5 min · Hook (community mystery). Teacher reads a short, teacher-made “news tease” about a made-up local issue (for example, a playground problem) and asks: “What would you want to know before you believe this report?” Students share quick answers in pairs.

2. 5–15 min · Mini-lesson: What is investigative journalism? Teacher explains: journalists gather information, ask questions, check facts, and tell stories ethically so communities can understand issues. Students watch/listen for key ideas and add one “journalist job” to a class anchor chart (for example, investigate, verify, interview, report).

3. 15–25 min · Text types around the same issue. Teacher displays two short samples on the board/print (teacher-prepared):

• Sample A: a factual news report paragraph with a neutral lead and quoted witness
• Sample B: an editorial/opinion-style commentary about the same issue Students complete a quick comparison: circle objective statements in A and identify subjective wording in B.

4. 25–38 min · Guided analysis: structure + language working together. Teacher models a think-aloud using one sample: highlight headline/lead, the use of quotes, and a concluding purpose (inform, persuade, call for action). Students then work in small groups of 3–4 with a half-page chart: “What is the purpose? What features help? What evidence do we see?” Groups share one feature and its effect.

5. 38–50 min · Ethical journalism talk: fair and accurate. Teacher poses three ethics prompts:

• “Should journalists name people if it harms them?”
• “What should happen if information is uncertain?”
• “How can a journalist be fair when they strongly disagree?” Students participate in structured discussion using sentence starters: “I think this because…”, “A fair reporter would…”, “A biased choice might be…”.

6. 50–57 min · Comprehension strategy practice (question grid). Teacher introduces a “Question Grid” with three categories: What happened? Who says/feels that? What makes me unsure? Students generate 4 questions for the factual sample, aiming for both literal and inferred questions.

7. 57–60 min · Exit ticket (quick check). Students answer: “Write one sentence from the report that sounds objective and explain what word choice makes it that way,” plus “Name one structure feature that helped you understand the purpose.”

Resources

• Teacher-made short journalism extracts (one factual report, one opinion/editorial) about the same local issue
• Projector/board or printed text copies
• Comparison chart: objective vs subjective, and purpose clues
• Guided analysis chart: structure feature → purpose → effect
• Question Grid printable (or laminated template)
• Sentence starters for discussion
• Exit ticket slips or digital form

Assessment

• Formative: teacher circulates during small-group text feature analysis, checking students’ ability to connect structure/language to purpose.
• Formative: listen to ethics discussion for accurate understanding of fairness and uncertainty.
• Summative for the lesson: exit ticket responses identifying objective vs subjective language and one structural feature.

Differentiation

• Support: provide sentence starters and word bank (neutral, suggests, claims, evidence, opinion, however, some people, according to) to help identify objective/subjective language.
• Support: allow students to highlight evidence in the text first, then write explanations using a frame: “This is objective because…”
• Extension: students who finish early add one additional question in the “What makes me unsure?” category and predict what evidence would confirm or challenge it.
• EAL/SEN: offer reduced text length options (same format, fewer sentences) while keeping the same task goals; pair students strategically so they can discuss before writing.