Making a class newspaper is a great way to develop writing, collaboration, and creativity skills. A step-by-step guide to doing it.The class newspaper is an educational experience that excites many young people. It is a tool that gives the possibility of introducing students to a form of mass communication. Furthermore, it is possible to experiment with a division of roles, tasks and responsibilities in the editorial organization.
Modern technology allows you to create a class newspaper quite easily. It can be created using free software tools such as Windows Word, Openoffice, etc. All students can collaborate on this type of activity because word processing makes it easy to create paper models and publish them. By reading this guide you can get some useful advice and correct information on how to do this group work.
Assigning tasks
The first thing to do is to make the student editors responsible by dividing up the various tasks. Each student must have a clear idea of how to write an article and what the outline is to follow. It is essential to bring a newspaper to class to highlight the various professional figures and indicate the purposes of the newspaper. After laying the foundations, we move on to assigning the tasks. It is advisable to create a mix of topics that concern the school environment and the territory. The editor-in-chief chooses the product to include, who must write the texts and who must correct the drafts. The executive work can be done with free Windows tools or Wordpad.
Collection of material
When each student has the news to develop, it is necessary to proceed with the collection of information for the drafting of the article. The material to be collected must be accompanied by photos. In addition to the articles, the newspaper must have the name of the editor in chief, the coordinator, the publisher and the collaborators. It is essential to create spaces where games can be inserted and a section dedicated to mail. When the first newspaper is published, it is advisable to include an editorial, that is, an introductory article written by the school principal. Each student must feel involved in the creation of a product of common utility. He must tell his own experiences, actively collaborating in cultural and social growth.
Structure of the newspaper
After having created the basic structure of the newspaper, you need to start laying it out. Sometimes this activity does not directly involve the children, especially if primary and secondary classes participate in the project. If you do not have great knowledge of graphics, you can use the formats and models of some writing programs. Alternatively, you can use layout programs such as Microsoft Office Publisher or Inkscape (completely free).
You must establish the title with the consent of all the collaborators, decide the graphic aspect and the number of pages of the newspaper. You can choose to export it in PDF format both to maintain the originality of the document and to publish it on the Internet. In this way any student can print it whenever they want.
Distribution of the newspaper
After all the texts have been transcribed, the photographs or drawings of the archive that have been acquired, using the scanner, must be attached. Students must be educated on the use of the various software in order to ensure uniformity of the various pages of the class newspaper that is formed.
Once the magazine is laid out, it can be distributed within the school. For printing, you can use A3 sheets folded in two. If you have funds available and want to create a more sophisticated product, you should contact a printing house. If you carefully follow all the instructions in this guide, you can easily create a class magazine.
