IndyKids

Event: creating the current IndyKids issue

Location: Indypendent Media Office W.43^rd st

Amount of hours: 3- 2 hour meetings (6 hours altogether)

Reflection:Creating the current IndyKids issue was a very thought provoking group of events to attend. There was three meetings all together, the first was a brainstorm, where we came up with the ideas for what was going to be included in the current issue, the second meetings was to edit the articles that were created for the issue, and then the final meeting was to copy edit the pages of the new issue. I was also able to connect and implement much of what I learned and discussed in the meetings, into my lessons and unit plan that I am currently doing.

During the first meeting, we met with the editors and coordinator for the paper in the Indypendent Media Office (the Indypendent is the newspaper for adult readers, that the IndyKids was based off of), we started off just talking about what issues we thought should be included in this issue. We talked a lot about how to include the economic crisis and presidential race into the paper. Since the paper was going to be coming out a few weeks after the presidential race, we talked about whether a larger of a portion should be dedicated to the presidential race, which would be old news or the economic crisis, which is a somewhat difficult and a less engaging topic. Ultimately we decided that there should be a larger emphasis on the economy, since it would most likely be more relevant to the current situations, when the paper actually came out. We also brainstormed other topics for the newspaper, for example, we talked about Haiti and the hurricanes, street vendors in DR, Bangladesh Farmers, Banned Books Week, A book review of the Young People’s History of the US, along with an interview with Howard Zinn, Kid’s opinions on Standardized Testing to correspond with an article on how the state was to institute standardized testing in Kindergarten.

 This meeting was very interesting, because I am doing a current events unit in my student teaching classroom, and part of my plan was to have the students make a class newspaper at the end of the semester, so seeing this brainstorming process made me aware of that face that my students needed more knowledge of what is actually going on in the world before I ask them what they think should be in the newspaper. I also realized that I am not as informed of current social injustices that are going on in the world today. Although, I did feel like I could contribute, due to the fact that I am working with my students on current events, I felt like I had a better understanding of what my students are interested in, and what they understand about newspaper articles and what they do not.

Another part of this meeting was delegating who was going to write the articles for the paper. I was able to volunteer to write the book review of the Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, the recipe for the back page, and I also was able to take on the opinion section and letters to the editor, so that I could include my students as well. My students were SO excited to be included in the paper. I worked with a small group of students from my class, and we did a few lessons on what standardized testing is, and I had them brainstorm pros and cons. From there they wrote their opinions, revised them, and then typed them up. I also had the students select and article from the paper that they could respond to and ask a question about. The whole process took about two weeks to complete, but they came out really great, and they were so proud of their work.

During the second meeting we edited all the articles that were written for the paper, and planned how to put it all together. It was really interesting to see everything that we talked about in the previous meeting, actually come together. However, in the third meeting we were really able to see it all set up on the pages with the pictures and other graphics. This meeting was particularly interesting, because we were putting together the teacher’s guide for the current issue. It was fun to think of activities to correspond with the articles, especially since I had use the previous IndyKids issue and taught many lessons off of it. I also felt like I was able to tap into many of the activities and lessons we talked about in class, and connect those to the articles.

Overall, the experience of creating the newspaper was very rewarding, and fun! My students are also very excited about their contributions to the newspaper. I was able to get a class set for both the 4/5 classes, and when I passed it out they were so excited that they got their own copy, since before we were just looking at the one I got in class. The students’ thought it was so cool that their classmates were in the newspaper, that they were all begging me to be included in the next issue. The students’ that had been featured in the newspaper were running around showing every teacher in the school, singing, “we’re famous!” as they went down the hall. It was really nice to see the students get so excited about writing in a newspaper.