Sixth Graders Learn Newspaper

Business Is Hard Work

By Tanjua Damon

Sixth graders at Newtown Middle School published their own newspapers, doing all the legwork – writing, editing, and layout – and discovering that it was no easy task.

The interdisciplinary newspaper project provides students with many lessons, according to sixth grade language arts teacher Albert Finelli. The students are exposed to the processes of writing, editing, and publishing, all at the same time.

“We try to tie in whatever we can with math, science, social studies, and language arts,” Mr Finelli said. “We attribute it to the kids’ ingenuity and creativity. All of us in our own way showed them the newspaper process.”

The students had to include various articles in their final newspapers. They worked in groups of four or five students. Their newspapers included editorials, research-based articles, lead stories, and entertainment pieces. All of the stories had to be typed, but students could make the appearance of the paper be whatever they thought would be effective.

Some papers reflected the standard black and white style of newspapers, while other groups added colors and other eye-catching strategies to portray their papers.

“It was about the process,” Mr Finelli said. “It is beginning exposure for some of them.”

Group work of critiquing also was a part of the project, according to Mr Finelli. Students “value-added” to their classmates’ work. They would read each other’s articles and add something of value to it.

Maggie Hemingway realized how difficult the layout process can be when putting together a newspaper.

“It’s hard work to get it all laid out,” she said.

Writing intrigued Ethan Breitling, but he also understood that writing was not any easy task.

“It’s tough,” he said. “My sister always liked stuff like this. It was lots of fun writing it. That was exciting.”

Sam Paproski agreed that newspapers are hard work.

Asked about what challenged him, Sam replied, “Putting it together and laying it out. It took a lot of work to write everything out.”

The sixth graders learned that there are different types of writing that require different styles and strategies to gain information about certain topics.

“I liked writing the most,” Jennifer Iassogna said. “I’ve always loved to write. I didn’t really like the interview. I liked editorials where you can put your opinion in.”

Sammie Ciaccia found that she liked doing the interview process over the editorial because with the interview she already had something to focus on in her article.

“I thought that the editorial was hard because I had to think of something to write about and express my feelings about it,” she said. “It was kind of hard. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy the interview, but I got to interview the lunch lady and I learned about what they do.”

Feature articles seemed to be popular with many sixth graders because of the research that needs to be done sometimes to complete a story, particularly in the sports area.

“I enjoyed my feature article going back and researching,” Joe Bowen said. “One of these newspapers took us a few weeks. For a real newspaper it would be much harder to do every day or every week.”

Some students were even surprised with how the professionals actually accomplish producing a newspaper on a weekly or daily basis.

“It really amazed me that people do this daily,” Alex Hennessey said. “I learned a lot about writing a feature article more than I knew. I did a sports feature and I learned you have to research.”

The finished product brought a great sense of accomplishment for the students.

“It was definitely like we accomplished something,” Shannon Hayes said. “We actually found out how people do a newspaper and how long it takes. I enjoyed writing editorials. I was just me writing it.”

Some of the students’ newspapers will be featured at the C.H. Booth Library after the holidays and many can be viewed in May at Cultural Arts Day.