In The News (Y8)
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Approach:  One to one
ACCESS
Level: Year 8
Focus: Thinking critically about news items; asking questions  
Resources:
Video on laptop computer
131Kb
Questions/instructions:  

This activity uses the computer.
In this activity you will be watching an item from the television news. As you watch, think about why it was shown on the news.
Click the In The News button.
[Television news item; various scenes during and after the event.]
 
 
voice-over:
Army Rescue Officer: None of these people thought when they woke up in the morning that they were going to die
that day.
Firefighter: This is a disaster that nobody has every experienced in Australia ever before.
News Reader: The Devil’s breath was too big and too fast to fight. It raced through the state at up to 100 kilometres an hour, fueled by high temperatures, high winds and tinder dry vegetation. At its peak, the flames were the height of an eight story building and, at its core, heat a thousand degrees celcius. People in their homes didn’t stand a chance. The fires left the landscape monochrome - black from the flames and white from the ash. The statistics from Black Saturday are shocking: nearly 2000 houses destroyed, 7000 people left homeless and half a millian hectares charred.
   
 
% responses
2009 ('05)
y4
y8
1. Why do you think this was shown on the news?    
lots of people and animals were killed 30
event was dramatic and scary 73
happened in Australia which is close to New Zealand
(and lots of New Zealanders live there)		 23
2. If you were a reporter, who would you want to interview to get different views about what happened?  
victims 88
relatives/friends of people affected
31
emergency services people who tried to control fire and/or clean up afterwards
56
government or local officials
10
fire expert 4
3. What questions would you ask?  
Questions would invite responses that would tell about:   what happened 62
immediate effects on people 56
longer term consequences 18
4. If you were still a reporter in a year’s time, what questions might you ask in a follow up story on the Australian bushfires?  
Questions would invite responses that would tell about: re-establishing in same place 32
choosing other places to live 8
replacing possessions other than homes 6
issues of physical/mental health
and happiness 		43
issues of policy and strategy for dealing
with fires like this 		15

Total score:
 10–13
  4
8–9
13
6–7
32
4–5
35
0–3 16
Subgroup Analysis [Click on charts to enlarge] :
Year 8

year 8
Commentary:
Year 8 students performed fairly well on this task. This is in strong contrast to the companion task given to year 4 students (p35). Here we see students being much more successful at coming up with ideas as to why the story was shown on television and at generating good questions to ask. Few Mäori students scored well, while the performance of Pasifika students varied markedly.