The Idea Men are Plotting…

“Students learn to craft articles for newspaper”

11/14/07
Agnes Hagin

Continuing on with my theme of student newspapers, censorship, and promotion of student writing, I found this article titled “Students learn to craft articles for newspaper” by Agnes Hagin.  She has wrote an article about Rockmart Middle School in Rockmart, GA which has a newspaper.  Yah, big whoop huh…well, yes it is…to me at least!  In terms of a Middle School newspaper, I can’t say that I have heard of one.  On top of that, I can’t say that I have ever heard of a journalism teacher for middle school.

In 310, we have done a lot of discussion on the writing process and how it is on going.  It is a process involving brainstorming, editing, writing, more editing, and finalizing.  In this journalism class taught by Nicole Seymour, she teaches many things including the writing process.  This is a breakdown of how a full semester goes:

1)     Review the writing process which includes basically what we discussed in class.  Work from brainstorming up to publishing.

2)     The school paper is divided into 6 categories such as sports, editorials, A & E, etc and each student gets to decide on what they write.

3)     They have computer labs to do research in of an approved list of material.  Once completed, it is inserted into appropriate column.

From the article, there is a quote that Seymour said that I liked.  She said “There is a method to writing an article. It is not let’s write something.”  This reminds me of the conversation we had about Elbow and his methods of writing.  Where Elbow is all about writing and getting the garbage out, it seems that Seymour is more about using the writing process.  I think that is ok though because writing an article is more for the audience versus coming up with what matters to author.  Of course the writer’s views can be translated in but not in an opinion-esk manor.

“The primary focus is to learn how to craft a well-written piece.”…which means what overall?  Overall, a well crafted piece of work brought through the writing process will help these students greatly on more standardized writing.  So despite thoughts that journalism doesn’t help it does.  Through learning about what makes a good article and the writing process, students will be much better off in the end.

**NOTE** The link for the article redircts to the article but the article doesn’t show up.  I tried to google the article to give a link but I can’t find it.  If anyone would like to actually read the article, I can email it out.
THANKS