This year, we started with a visit to the Chief Newspaper here in Squamish so that students could learn what it takes to produce a newspaper. They talked about how to choose ideas and photos with the staff there and got to see how all is done virtually.
Afterwards, students brainstormed what they wanted to do differently this year. I think their best suggestion was the addition of staff profiles. Each month, 2 or 3 staff members are interviewed so that the school community can get to know them. I now know which parents read our newspaper because I have had many talks with parents about what they read about me in my interview.
Most of the articles are about what we are doing around the school, with some community or event focused articles. Our photographers really enjoy being able to take photos of all that is going on in our school. We are still working on getting more of our photos in focus, with different perspectives, and less selfies!
After December, we move onto other ADST topics, but keep running the school newspaper in between projects. It becomes a challenge to find time to do everything properly, and we sometimes get a paper out every 2 months instead of each month. Also, at this time of year, it gets harder to motivate students when I have a small class. This year, each student is working on the project every month. Last year, with more students, students did each role twice in the year allowing for more variety. We also had a Monitrice de langue that came and worked with students on the journal so that I could work on other projects with the other students.
Things I am looking at to make this easier next year with another small class is having the french teacher work on the articles in her class to get the spelling and syntax to an acceptable level for publishing. I find it keeps me on my toes that every year is different. However, I would really like to find a model that works that i don't have to reinvent year after year, just tweak a bit!
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This post is powered by Hot chocolate - because it's Easter :)