Topical Tuesdays: A New Old Favourite – KS2 News Story and Reading and Writing Activity Sheet from The Week Junior

Film company Warner Bros has announced it is making a prequel to the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

While most people would not have a problem with screen adaptations of books, even if they stray from the original here and there, should they be allowed to create entirely new stories out of characters lifted from popular novels, like the makers of this new Willy Wonka film are clearly doing?

This resources pack includes an article from The Week Junior magazine, along with a sheet of activities designed to get children thinking, talking and writing about what the story means to them.

Activities include:

• Isn’t it just lazy to use someone else’s fictional personalities? Or does it not really matter? Could it, in fact, inspire people to re-read the original books? What do you think? Debate as a class or in groups.
• Write your own outline of a possible new story for characters from a book you know well.
• Write one-sentence summaries of four or five books or films you know well without giving away the title or naming the main characters. See if someone you know can guess which stories you are describing.
• Investigate and list five films based on a book which have a different title from the original. Give both titles.

Find the entire series of Topical Tuesday resources to download here.

What is The Week Junior?

The Week Junior magazine looks at current affairs and helps children make sense of the world, provides context and clarity to complex issues, improves general knowledge and encourages discussion and debate.

To find out more about The Week Junior and to download its free resources, please go to schools.theweekjunior.co.uk.

This resource is part of the News Activities Archive collection.
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• News story
• Activities sheet