Magazines are an accessible and immediate way to inspire reading for pleasure, reading diversely and improving reading stamina.

Run this challenge in your school to engage students’ interest and discover the full potential of magazines as they explore fun content and ideas from popular magazines titles that incorporate: BBC Top Of The Pops magazine, MEGA, Andy’s Amazing Adventures, Disney Stars and Girl Talk. Our resources will help you find out about the most important aspect of any magazine (the cover!), key content features and what readers really enjoy (quizzes!).

We've included a variety of content and examples that can be downloaded or screen-shared as you delve in to the structure and design of magazines, and we've provided teacher guidelines packed with ideas to help deliver the challenge.

The challenge has been designed flexibly to be suitable for students aged 5-14 years.

Ready to join the challenge?

We recommend that you:

Download and read through the Teacher Guidelines.

Familiarise yourself with the resources which are referenced in the guidelines. The magazine examples are organised according to content and come from BBC Top Of The Pops magazine, MEGA, Girl Talk, Disney Stars and Andy’s Amazing Adventures.

Present the different features of a magazine to your students. Discuss each feature in detail, tailoring this to the age group and capabilities of the group you are working with. There are two helpful videos for the class from Immediate Media members of staff, Chris and Carly, which give fantastic insights into their daily roles.

If you have time, test the students’ knowledge with a short quiz (Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2) or investigate their relationship with magazines (Key Stage 3)

Have fun looking at, and sampling, the different sorts of quizzes. Decide how you would like to complete the quiz challenge; size of group(s), quiz style and format, quiz topic. There are different templates to use to help complete a quiz.

Give your students time to create their quizzes and then enjoy testing them out on each other in class or other students in the school.

If your group develops a really popular quiz then why not photograph it and send it in to the competition. Details on how to enter are given below.

Have fun with this challenge!

Classroom or remote learning

This Immediate Magazine Reading Champions challenge works well in the classroom but will also work as a remote learning topic too. Why not task your students with finding magazines at home – they can be new or old editions – and ask for their feedback on identifying the various features discussed in the online classroom. Ask your students to design their own quiz using either the templates and ideas suggested or their own individual creativity. This is a really fun, investigative activity and will help students during time away from school and their friends. The latest version of your favourite magazine can be found in your local supermarket now.

Note for Key Stage 3 teachers

The magazine resources supplied are designed for a younger audience than many Key Stage 3 students. However, the challenge itself can be elevated for these older students by tasking them to approach the material in a more sophisticated way. You can ask them to examine the ways in which these magazines have been designed to match specific purposes and audiences. Their quizzes could be made more complex, the quiz subject matter could be aimed at older students or they could focus on writing lively and engaging quizzes for younger siblings or students.

There is also a section in the guidelines that sets out how to take the challenge further by creating not just a quiz but other magazine features too.

How to enter

If you have completed this challenge in your school by Friday 28 May 2021, you are invited to take a photo of your favourite quizzes and send them in with the name of your school to competitions@literacytrust.org.uk. In addition to the entry email, please can schools post entries on social media using the hashtag #Immediatemagchallenge and include @LiteracyTrust, @Immediate_Media to help create an Immediate Magazine Reading Champions community.

Your school will be entered into a random prize draw to win a bundle of Immediate Media magazines for your classroom kindly donated by Immediate Media!

You are, of course, welcome to complete the challenge without entering the prize draw. You can plan it for a different timeframe that suits you and we'll keep the resources available for you to access throughout the year.

You'll need to be logged in to your National Literacy Trust membership account or to sign up for free membership to download resources.

If you have any questions, please contact us at competitions@literacytrust.org.uk