My wife and I finished a 9-week fifth-grade newspaper after-school course after our fifth-grade granddaughter asked us (and after she marched into her principal's office and demanded such a course). We met once a week, for an hour, and produced three 8-page letter-sized issues, printed at Staples.
What I learned from teaching fifth graders:
- they are a tough crowd, with all sorts of diversity in maturity, experience, and physical size
- they are smart, engaged and funny (duh!)
- they can understand and begin actually doing journalism, and I taught them basically the very same skills I would teach ninth graders, or college freshmen, for that matter.
So here's the secret to ensuring the future of student media: start kids thinking like journalists at a young age.
BTW, our third-grade granddaughter joined the staff, offering to do a quick story when someone else dropped the ball. Her writing voice and observations were as good as or better than many of the fifth graders. She ended up doing all the same exercises and assignments.
What if every elementary school in America began teaching journalism (in all sorts of forms, with all sorts of media) in third grade? The old Newspaper In Education programs had it right. They just didn't go far enough.
BTW, our third-grade granddaughter joined the staff, offering to do a quick story when someone else dropped the ball. Her writing voice and observations were as good as or better than many of the fifth graders. She ended up doing all the same exercises and assignments.
What if every elementary school in America began teaching journalism (in all sorts of forms, with all sorts of media) in third grade? The old Newspaper In Education programs had it right. They just didn't go far enough.
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