As a piece of original writing coursework you are going to compose a newspaper report of the death of Charles Kingshaw.
Layout:
- A headline either tabloid style or broadsheet (think of your audience) E.g. Bullied boy kills himself or Child suicide in country village and for section 2 (see below) Bullying: the secret horror of our children
- Side bar headings (sub headings) at intervals throughout your article.
- Paragraphs – in tabloids these are often only one sentence long, in broadsheets usually no more than two or three.
- Columns – two or three; word-processed or hand written
- Style of vocabulary – tabloid will be more dramatic, emotive and full of human interest, people’s feelings, thoughts, speculations will be much more personal etc, broadsheets will be more factual, less emotive, more dispassionate, interested in causes, statistics and detail, will be more general
- Write in the past tense for section one, present for section 2
What to include:
- Where found; who by; under what circumstances, when etc
- Facts about his life, parents, schools, home life, how they’d come to Warings
- Facts known about his death and the reasons for it – here you can, if you wish, discover that Mrs Boland found both the notes (but remember this is not true!!) and this would lead you to an investigation into the bullying or you can just interview the other characters and speculate on the reasons for his death from reading between the lines
- Interviews with Mr Hooper, Mrs Kingshaw, Edmund, Mrs Boland and Fielding. You might also include interviews with Devereux or Charles’ headmaster at St Vincent’s.
- And a second section on child suicide – for this you must do some research, find out some statistics, facts and reasons. Do a general piece on bullying, how to spot the signs in your child, friends etc and suggestions of what to do about it
- Pictures, graph, map
- So the first section will be writing to entertain but the second section will be writing to inform so make sure the styles and layout are quite different. 800 – 1000 words, one or two sheets, single or double-sided.