Type: News report
Individual or group work: Pairs
Levels of assessments: Five, seven and eight
Number of lessons: Six
Number of homeworks: Three
The New India assessment is a thinking and creative activity culminating in students producing a news report for a television magasine, radio or television; students decide the final format of their report. The topic for the board game is changing India and is designed to challenge stereotypical viewpoints. If used towards the end of Key Stage Three it provides an ideal opportunity for students to draw on many geographical concepts.
The assessment has four distinct phases of planning and drafting, producing, presenting and evaluating. All stages require working in groups of between four and six with the final evaluation being written by each individual. Writing frames are available to support both the report and evaluation. Whilst this assessment requires a lot of time, six lessons and three homeworks, it is very much assessment for learning and also requires the assessment of citizenship. It should be noted that both the geography and citizenship assessment criteria vary greatly between levels five and eight. Success in completing news reports will be dependent upon good organisation of classwork and homework time from the outset (resource sheet C5 helps with this) as well as good working together skills.
Resources available for this assessment are:
For level five
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Resource Sheet A5 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet B - Using Sources
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Resource Sheet C5 - Plan
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Resource Sheet D5 - Summary of News Report
For level seven
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Resource Sheet A7 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet B7 - Using Sources
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Resource Sheet C6-8 - Plan
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Resource Sheet D7 - Summary of News Report
For level eight
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Resource Sheet A8 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet C6-8 - Plan
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Resource Sheet D8 - Summary of News Repor
It is advised that Resource Sheets B, C, and D5 are enlarged to A3 for writing on.
The assessment is written at three different levels - five, seven and eight. For level five students follow a plan (Resource Sheet C5) and for levels seven and eight students produce their own plan; it is advisable to check level student plans before they start their work. A guide to planning would be:
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Lesson one - set up, start research
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Lesson two - individual research
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Homework - write up draft sections
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Lesson three + homework - Assemble News Report
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Lesson four - News Report Presentations*
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Lesson five - Produce group summary (Resource Sheet D)
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Lesson six - Own reflections on what has been learnt (Resource Sheet D)
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Homework - Completing evaluation and gathering papers for assessment.
* Television News Reports need to be presented to the class. Written magazine or radio transcript reports just need to be shown to the class with a brief description of how it was achieved.
Writing frames are provided to help capture information and to structure writing. The style of students' writing should change from description of characteristics and their changes to analysis of them. Presentation of work is of paramount importance in terms of layout, neatness and accuracy. Word processing and digital images would help here.