Creating catchy newspaper articles with kids

I did a really fun writing activity recently with a group of children. I cut out lots of pictures of people from magazines and then asked the kids to chose one picture each. After discussing what a journalist does, I split the group into pairs and one person took on the role of journalist and the other, the person whose picture they had chosen. After giving them some time to think of both good questions (journalist) and interesting tales to tell (character), the journalist conducted an informal interview before they swapped roles and finally wrote the stories up.

This activity really got the children thinking hard as I stressed to them that people only want to read articles in newspapers and magazines that they find interesting (and would then report back to their friends later, You won’t believe what I read in the paper earlier), so not only did the character have to think of a story that would hook the reader’s attention, but the journalist also had to think about the best way to present their material, using catchy headlines and quotes as well as the five W’s (who / where / when / what / why.)