Newspaper Project Showcases Diverse Student Skills

By Jeff White

Ostensibly, the collection of student-produced newspapers that lined a florid, rectangular section toward the end of middle school’s B-Wing hallway this week was a typical class assignment. But flipping through the vivid pages yielded a contrary conclusion: the students of computer teacher Jennifer Tarabulski had produced something quite extraordinary.

For her annual project, Mrs Tarabulski had her seventh-grade class assemble into small groups and create their publications. But the criteria she set for the project reached across a variety of disciplines, including English, social studies and science.

The assignment was first and foremost a computer assignment, and students were required to master spreadsheets, page layout, column sizing, clip art, word processing and desktop publishing.

Although the content of the newspapers was essentially up to the students’ choosing, Mrs Tarabulski did insist that her students reach outside room B-5 and draw upon skills from other classes.

Knowing that her students were working on persuasive essays in their English classes, the four-year teaching veteran required each group member to supply a persuasive story for their newspaper.

“It makes the [work they do] relevant, and it gives them a chance to practice,” she said of her decision to combine her students’ English lessons with her class project.

Each group had to supply a detailed graph with one of their stories, a skill Mrs Tarabulski said was important not only in computer-generated projects but also in science classes. There also had to be a story in each paper that was tied directly to a geographical map, either of a city (utilizing a Street Atlas USA program) or a particular country.

Students were required to go in search of data to incorporate into their news stories and visual aides, often turning to the Internet for a detailed map of Oklahoma for a tornado story, or an aerial view of Europe.

“I think the kids had fun with it,” Mrs Tarabulski said.

Complementing each persuasive story and illustration was a wide assortment of international, national and local news, with spaces on pages peppered with advice columns, weather forecasts and middle school issues of interest.

Gary Saage and his partner, Jason Graves, covered a devastating tsunami that hit Japan and an equally horrific Oklahoma earthquake in their issue of The Truth.

“It was fun, how you could place things, how you could write what you wanted to write,” said Gary of the project.

In her editorial on page one of Fashion Buzz, Megan Regnery asked the question, “Teachers’ Attitudes: Have they gone too far?”

David LaMarche and Jon Butler compared Macintosh computers to PCs; Chris Straight, Dylan DeSimone and Mark Meehan looked into the easy money of the World Series; and Amanda Shevlin and Stacey Shpunt addressed the hype behind Y2K.

The showy banners on each newspaper reflected the variety of copy splashed on its pages. There were Essentially Gastric Magazine, The School Girl’s Times, The Horseman’s Times, On the Beat, and The Seventh-grade Daily, among others.

Besides challenging students to master the skills that drive computer projects and English essays, the newspapers showed how much Newtown headline news funnels down into the thought and consideration of middle school students.

In an editorial, Andrea Szabo described the crowding problem at the middle school as a call for a new fifth- and sixth-grade school. Sara Zehell looked into whether or not there should be seat belts on buses. Alicia Rogers and Alyssa McIntyre wrote about the all-too-timely issue of whether or not Fairfield Hills should be torn down. In a graph that accompanied the story, the two students discovered that the majority they polled felt no, it should not.

In each of her years teaching at the Queen Street building, Mrs Tarabulski has assigned her newspaper project, and she said this week that students typically look forward to it. She said she tries as much as possible to incorporate skills from other classes into her projects and assignments. Though Mrs Tarabulski admits she does not necessarily work with other teachers, she does keep her ears on the alert.

Specifically about the student newspapers, Mrs smiled at their apparent success. “I like [the activity] because in incorporates a lot of the skills that are taught [throughout the school].”