How to Start a Newspaper at an Elementary School
K.T. SOLIS
CLASS
The students at your elementary school would love to write for a school newspaper. Kids love seeing their words and drawings in print, and being able to show their work to their friends and family is a big plus. If you'd like to start a newspaper at your elementary school, it's easy to get started. Working on a newspaper staff allows students to learn valuable lessons about writing, editing, working as a team and being good listeners. Help your students take part in such a worthwhile activity by creating a newspaper for your school.
- Receive permission from the school principal
- Announce to the student body
- Create a permission slip
- Schedule the first newspaper staff meeting
- Brainstorm possible newspaper names and story ideas with your newspaper staff
- Assign articles to your students
- Decide whether you
- Compile all of the articles
- Print the newspaper
- Distribute the newspaper to students
1 Receive permission from the school principal
Receive permission from the school principal to start an elementary school newspaper. Once the principal agrees to the idea, you will be ready to start.
2 Announce to the student body
Announce to the student body that you are looking for kids to write for the school newspaper. Ask teachers to nominate one student from their class to be a regular staff writer for the newspaper.
3 Create a permission slip
Create a permission slip to be given to each student selected to join the newspaper staff. Parents must sign and date the permission slip granting permission for their children to participate.
4 Schedule the first newspaper staff meeting
Schedule the first newspaper staff meeting. Have the meeting before or after school, according to the time that is most convenient for you and your staff.
5 Brainstorm possible newspaper names and story ideas with your newspaper staff
Brainstorm possible newspaper names and story ideas with your newspaper staff. Articles can be about school-wide news, book reviews, movie reviews and more.
6 Assign articles to your students
Assign articles to your students. Warn them about the dangers of plagiarism and explain the term to your students. Provide them with a deadline for their articles. Make the deadline reasonable. Since they are elementary school students, they will probably need at least a couple of weeks to complete their articles.
7 Decide whether you
Decide whether you will type the articles into a word processing document or whether you will leave this task up to your staff. Some students know how to type quickly while others haven't learned keyboarding yet. Be sure you run spell check and proofread the articles.
8 Compile all of the articles
Compile all of the articles into a word processing document. Use a newsletter layout to make the document look more like a newspaper.
9 Print the newspaper
Print the newspaper using a school printer. You can also take the document to a commercial printer, but this will cost a lot of money. If you can get the PTA to sponsor the paper, it will save you money. You can also get local businesses to donate their services. With your principal's permission, you can have local business place advertisements in your paper. This advertisement is essentially a sponsorship. The businesses provide funds in exchange for having their ads placed in the school paper.
10 Distribute the newspaper to students
Distribute the newspaper to students after it is ready to be released to the school. You may want to get permission from the principal to sell copies of the newspaper for about 25 cents each, though most school papers are free.
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