Next, start the role play activity. Choose six participants to be the characters in the headline story
‘Dog Bites Man’. Each receives a card with a description of the character they are assigned to play
First, the facilitator or a young people reads out the news article ‘Dog Bites Man’ from ‘The Lying
Times’
Then ask each character to read their individual headlines to the rest of the group. The headline
is in bold text and tells their involvement in the story.
Their card also contains other information about the incident or their connection to it, but they
must not reveal this unless they are asked an open question about the incident from the group.
Therestofgrouparejournalists.UsingtheirREALchecklistandopenquestionsfromtheHelpSheet,
they find out as much of the story as they can. They have to decide what facts they think are real,
which are fake, which are mistakes and which are rumours. They then write a news story in four lines
with a headline to tell the story. Ask the six characters to write their story as a short opinion piece.