Students learn the key to sticking to a series of mini-deadlines throughout the day as they organise their newsgathering, technical requirements, editing and finally, broadcasting.
Here's how the day went at Charters School near Ascot in Berkshire when their Year 8 students ran a practice News Day under the supervision of Year 10 editors.
Students pieced together a series of short news flashes to build up several reports and worked towards a publishing deadline of 2.15pm.
Below is an outline of the day's activities which teachers may wish to adapt for their own News Day.
Students met in the school library where they were introduced to their editors and split into two groups:
National and international news team The editors had been involved in a similar news event, run annually by the school for Year 10 students.
9.05am
 Anna reads her homework. |
Students looked at one another's homework which was to write a news story from a series of short news flashes. At first sight, the story appeared to be about a road closure, but as each consecutive news flash built upon the first, it became apparent the cause was really the escape of three Bengal tigers.
Editors suggested improvements to the opening paragraph, including ways of grabbing people's attention and incorporating the key facts.
Editor Roshan said: "Laura managed to do the lead paragraph quite well.
"She managed to include all the W's you're supposed to use in the lead paragraph - who, what, where, when and why."
Having discussed the structure of individual reports, students went on to discuss the style and tone of their news web pages. They were keen to adopt a design which appealed to an audience of Year 8 students.
9.30am
 Kirsty researches stories on the web |
The previous day, English teacher Sue Wright had scripted around 12 stories (six concerning school news and six national and international stories). Each story consisted of six news flashes, each one more recent than the last.
At 9.30am, she emailed the first news flash to an inbox on the school intranet, for the students to read.
The others she sent at five minute intervals throughout the morning.
Of the news flash idea, Sue said: "It just adds to the constant demand that they're under."
Other teachers may prefer to emulate this method by cutting and pasting sections of reports on the BBC News or Newsround websites. Click on the links on the left-hand side of this page.
One member of each team was given the role of communications reporter. It was their job to gather the news flashes relevant to their team's type of news (school-based or national and international).
These were passed onto the editor who assigned pairs of students to each story.
9.45am
By this time students had gathered enough information to start researching the stories. The national and international news team searched the internet to establish the facts, using the bank of computers in the library.
They soon discovered that not all websites report the facts accurately.
Emily and Josh said: "If two websites say the same thing, you know it's more likely to be correct."
Michael and Brett interviewed Dr Child about the creation of an environmental pond at the school.
Teachers involved in a variety of school events and projects visited the library throughout the morning to be interviewed by the school news team.
They said: "We tried to get a balance of facts and opinion."
Brett and Michael also developed an effective method for preparing interview questions and recording the answers on paper.
Leaving a gap between each question, they filled in the answers using a different coloured pen.
They commented: "When we type it up it will be easier for us to read it and make it clearer."
10.30am
 The home page of the Charters school news website |
Having researched their stories, students wrote their reports on screen.
The news flashes continued to arrive and students rose to the challenge to add the new information and alter their words accordingly while still keeping a close eye on the clock and being mindful of looming deadlines.
The reward would be soon seeing their words published.
12.00noon
 Brett and Michael take photographs at the school's pond |
One student from each team was given the role of web designer. Using computer software, they created a home page, splitting the page into two sections - one for school news and the other for national and international news. A variety of software to create web pages is available including Microsoft's FrontPage and Dreamweaver from Adobe Systems]
Students emailed their completed reports to their web designer as they finished them.
 The sun graphic being designed by the students |
Each of them was copied, pasted and formatted into an individual web page which was linked to from the home page. After submitting their words, students began to look for illustrative pictures.
Brett and Michael borrowed the school's digital camera to take a photograph of Dr Child by the pond.
The national and international news team received guidance from a BBC journalist about which photographs they could download from the BBC News website.
Anna, Emily, Josh and Kirsty didn't have permission to use any of the weather graphics from the BBC News website, so they designed their own!
Emily said: "I learnt that if you create an image yourself then it belongs to you and you can use it on your website."
All the images were sent to the team's web designer and added to the news web pages.
2.15pm
The web pages were finished. The school's assistant network manager Rob Dunford was brought into the mix and added a link from the home page of the school intranet site to the teams' web pages.
This meant the whole school could view their work.
On BBC News School Report News Day, that website is also plotted on a map and can be accessed via the School Report website.
2.30pm Editors Roshan and Rachel evaluated the Year 8's journalistic achievement.
Addressing her group, Rachel said: "I thought we worked really well as a team.
She added: "I thought the day went really well because you all learnt new skills."
Students had the chance to reflect on the day, sharing what they enjoyed and what they learned.
Stacey said: "My favourite part was probably seeing our newspaper reports on the internet as it felt like you were a real journalist."
Rebecca added: "I learnt how to structure a news article properly."
Sue Wright, who organised the day, stressed the News Day helped develop "social interaction and confidence" as well as the students' English skills.
She said: "It covers all aspects of reading, writing, speaking and listening, particularly giving the students confidence in speaking and listening and writing."
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