Cover lesson · English · Year 8 · Intermediate
DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content
Name: Class: Date:
What this practises: evaluating a piece of web content against clear rules and improving it for the people who will read it, mostly parents on phones. Pupils check a school blog post against 9 website style rules, measure it (total words, mean sentence length, the share of over-long sentences and the reading time), rewrite it with a headline, subheadings, shorter sentences, a clear deadline, proper link text and alt text, then measure their own version and compare. The calculations must show working. The school and the post are invented; the museum is real.
Print: this sheet, one per pupil, and the stimulus sheet “The school blog post, as it appears on the website”, one between two. Pupils need a calculator. No computers are needed.
Run: 8 min Step 1, check the rules · 12 min Step 2, measure the post · 15 min Step 3, rewrite it · 8 min Step 4, measure your version · 7 min Step 5, judge the improvement. Total 50 minutes. Pupils may talk quietly in pairs in Steps 1 and 2; Steps 3 to 5 are done alone.
Collect: this sheet.
Quick checks: Step 1: the post keeps rule 2 (the first sentence does say who, what, where and when, even though it is far too long) and breaks the other 8: the headline Step 1: the post breaks rules 1, 2 (no headline-worthy first sentence is fine for who/what/where/when, but it is 55 words long), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.ldquo;TripStep 1: the post breaks rules 1, 2 (no headline-worthy first sentence is fine for who/what/where/when, but it is 55 words long), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.rdquo; says nothing, the sentences are too long, the whole post is 1 paragraph with no subheadings, the deadline is hidden in the last sentence, the link says Step 1: the post breaks rules 1, 2 (no headline-worthy first sentence is fine for who/what/where/when, but it is 55 words long), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.ldquo;hereStep 1: the post breaks rules 1, 2 (no headline-worthy first sentence is fine for who/what/where/when, but it is 55 words long), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.rdquo;, the alt text is a file name and there is no reading time. Step 2: the 5 missing counts are 6, 6, 7, 21, 35; total 309 words; mean 30.9 words per sentence; longest 55, shortest 6, range 49; 6 sentences over 25 words = 60%; reading time 309 ÷ 200 = 1.545 minutes = 1 minute 33 seconds, shown as 2 min read. Step 4 answers vary; the model rewrite has 201 words in 15 sentences, a mean of 13.4 and a 1 min read. The worked example has every answer.
A school website is digital content like any other: if it is hard to read, people stop reading. Mr Hughes’s post about the Year 8 trip is accurate, but 9 parents have phoned the school because they could not find the deadline in it. You will check it against the website’s rules, use numbers to prove what is wrong, improve it, then use the same numbers to prove your version is better.
Key words:
Read the post and the 9 style rules on the stimulus sheet. For each rule, tick whether the post keeps it or breaks it, and give your evidence.
| Rule | Keeps | Breaks | Evidence from the post |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |||
| 2 | |||
| 3 | (you will prove this in Step 2) | ||
| 4 | |||
| 5 | |||
| 6 | |||
| 7 | |||
| 8 | |||
| 9 |
(a) Here is the post split into its 10 sentences. 5 have been counted for you. Count the words in the other 5, using the counting rules on the stimulus sheet.
| No. | Sentence | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | On Thursday 12 March, all 86 pupils in Year 8 at Ysgol Rhyd y Celyn travelled by coach to the National Slate Museum in Llanberis, which is in the old workshops of the Dinorwig Quarry beside Llyn Padarn, as part of their History and English work on the lives of quarry workers and their families. | 55 |
| 2 | The weather was cold and wet. | |
| 3 | When we arrived, our guide, who had worked in a quarry himself for many years before he became a guide at the museum, showed us the giant waterwheel that once powered all the machines in the workshops, and he explained how the whole quarry depended on it. | 47 |
| 4 | Next we watched a slate-splitting demonstration. | |
| 5 | The craftsman split a thick block of slate into thinner and thinner pieces using only a chisel and a mallet, and many pupils said afterwards that this was the best part of the whole day because it looked so easy but was actually incredibly skilled work. | 46 |
| 6 | After lunch, which we ate in the picnic area because the café was very busy, we visited a row of quarry workers’ houses that had been moved to the museum, each one furnished to show a different time in the past. | 41 |
| 7 | Pupils took notes for their diary-writing project. | |
| 8 | Mr Hughes said he was very proud of how everyone behaved and how many good questions people asked during the visit. | |
| 9 | We would like to thank the museum staff for making us so welcome and our parents and carers for helping with the cost of the coach, which was much appreciated by everyone in the school. | |
| 10 | Please note that the reply slip and payment of £8 for the Year 8 theatre trip to Venue Cymru in Llandudno on 2 April must be returned to form tutors by Friday 20 March, and you can find the letter about it by clicking here. | 45 |
Show your working for each part.
(b) Total number of words in the post:
Total = __________ words
(c) Mean sentence length, to 1 decimal place:
Mean = __________ words per sentence
(d) Longest sentence: ______ words. Shortest: ______ words. Range: ______ words.
(e) How many sentences are longer than 25 words? ______ What percentage of the sentences is that? ______ %
(f) Reading time at 200 words per minute. Give it as a decimal, then in minutes and seconds (to the nearest second), then as the label the website would show.
______ minutes = ______ minutes ______ seconds. Label: “______ min read”
Rewrite the post so it keeps all 9 rules. You may cut details that parents do not need, but keep every fact they do need. Include:
Reading time label: ______ Headline:
Link text:
Alt text:
Count your own version using the same rules, and fill in the table. Show your working underneath.
| Measure | Original post | My version |
|---|---|---|
| Total words | ||
| Number of sentences | 10 | |
| Mean sentence length (1 decimal place) | ||
| Longest sentence | ||
| Sentences over 25 words | ||
| Reading time label |
Working:
Write 3 or 4 sentences to Mrs Watkins. Use at least 2 of your measurements to prove your version is better, and say which one change will stop parents phoning the office, and why.