Establishing a purposeful school newspaper by Emma Seaton

Establishing a purposeful and valuable School Newspaper

by Emma Seaton

“Read all about it!” is a phrase which is synonymous with the old traditional-style newspapers; it is the sound of them being sold on street corners, announcing the latest headlines and creating an exciting buzz for the eager readers. Now, with the modern age of technology, where the latest headlines can pop up instantaneously on your screen and where social media spreads news like wildfire, the newspaper industry is already considered by many to be somewhat struggling, especially the more locallyfocused and subject-specific newspapers. At our school, we have always stressed the importance of children keeping up-to-date with current affairs and, where suitable, reading authentic newspaper articles on different topics; as a result, they learn to identify key features of journalistic writing, they understand how writing can be manipulated to show bias and they are able to explore topics of the past (and present) through the eyes of people who experience them. In Autumn Term 2018, as part of my school role as Community Leader, I was tasked with creating a new school newspaper, as whilst there had been one at our school many years previously, it was something our Junior Leadership Team had suggested and our Headteacher was committed to fulfilling this idea for them. As someone who once aspired to be a journalist as a teenager, I jumped at the opportunity to coordinate a team of children, who would be the eyes and ears of the school and therefore I could simply oversee the project with just an editorial and perhaps digitally-creative role. We began by selecting pupils to make up the School Newspaper Editorial Team; anyone can submit articles, artwork and pretty much anything else they find interesting to the school newspaper, but these children would be responsible for writing specific pieces on subjects suggested to them by their peers, such as reporting on school and community news, writing film reviews, or helping give child-friendly information on commonly-debated global affairs. As children across our large 4-form entry school began writing pieces, sending submissions and engaging with our new whole-school project, some of the first submissions came in the form of suggestions for a name for the newspaper; from the more traditional titles to more obscure and witty ones, finally The Bannockburn Bugle was chosen by the team members for its alliterative appeal and noble connotations. In our first year of publishing, the school newspaper was an open table for everyone on the team, but on finding myself sometimes spending hours editing font sizes and playing with text boxes to make the pages fuller (I must add I am not familiar with publishing software and so design everything using standard Microsoft Word), by the second year of circulation it was decided that each team member would be solely responsible for one page of the 8-page spread.

We devised a system where each team member became a specialist editor for their page’s spread, for example having titles such as Community Editor, Arts Editor, Eco Editor etc – titles which can change depending on where we see fit and appropriate as to what will feature in each termly edition. In weekly after-school meetings, the team and I read through the ideas and submissions sent in via the exclusively established school newspaper email address; we then collate them and discuss which pieces can suit each section of the paper and plan additional pieces of text that can be included on their respective pages. Ideas are shared and debated and over the course of approximately 10 weeks, a termly edition of the school newspaper is created. For the team and me, however, the true beauty comes from the final step of the process – publishing and printing it. We have been fortunate enough to have been able to afford a professional newspaper printing company to print our copies of our newspaper for us; the silky texture and off-white cast of the genuine newsprint paper makes the whole project feel that bit more professional and satisfying. That said, with the outbreak of Coronavirus preventing us from completing our Spring edition, we have decided to create a combined Spring/Summer 2020 online edition of The Bannockburn Bugle, which is another way we can help keep our school community connected at this difficult time. Copies of our school newspaper are made available to children, parents and any school visitors who request one. They are placed in reading corners in all classrooms and we even have some regular subscribers in the form of our School Governing Body. In the last few days of each term, the ‘Bugle Team’ eagerly await the end of the school day, when they can grab their newspaper bag filled with crisp copies and chant proudly across the playground “Come get your Bugle here!” and “Read all about it!” – the buzz of excitement on the playground makes all our hard work worthwhile. I would thoroughly recommend all schools try to establish something similar, to keep the fires of writing with purpose, reading for pleasure and the tradition of valuable community newspapers alight.

Emma Seaton is a MFL Teacher and Community & Partnerships Leader at Bannockburn Primary School, London.