Fourth Grade Newspaper

Last month I had  an idea of putting together a fourth grade newspaper.  I asked my teacher and she thought it was a good idea. I was going to be the editor and students in my class would participate. At the end, the newspaper would be handed out to the entire forth grade class.

As editor of the newspaper, I had many different tasks that I had to do. First, I had to come up with a title.  The title of my newspaper is Krauss' Korner because that is the name of my teacher.  I came up with a couple of different names and the class voted which one they liked best.  It is important for the editor to include the whole class in decisions and not be bossy.

Next, I had to come up with sections that are going in the newspaper. Sections that were in our newspaper were:   4th Grade News, Sports Section, Book Review, Games Section, Fun Facts and Story Section. We also needed a photographer to take photos and an artist to draw illustrations. The students that wanted to participate picked what they wanted to do and had to email their article by the deadline that I set.  The goal was to have a newspaper ready before Halloween.  If they didn't send in the article on time, it was not included. If the article didn't make sense, then I would send it back and ask them to make some changes to make it better. Some of the students made the necessary changes and then their article was included in the newspaper. In addition to being an editor, I also contributed an article about the 4th grade teachers and made a Halloween cross word puzzle. The cross word puzzle was a section that someone else was supposed to do, but did not complete. As an editor, I was responsible to make sure that all sections were completed even if that meant that I have to do it myself.

Once I received the article by email,  I would copy it into Microsoft Word,  read through it and edit it for spelling and grammar mistakes. I also created a border around each article to make it looked nice, and made sure that all the articles had the same font and font size.   My mom taught me how to insert clip art pictures from Microsoft Word to make the articles look more interesting. I first drew a text box in the location where the clip art needed to go and then I added artwork that fit with the article.  There were two students in our class that are great artists and they created some beautiful illustrations of  ghosts, skeletons, and pumpkins for the newspaper.  I had to scan the illustrations and insert them into the newspaper.  We also had one student that took photographs of school activities. I had to choose the best photos and place them in the correct places. It was also very important to give credit to the person that was responsible for either writing the article, drawing or taking the photos. The newspaper could not have been completed without everyone's hard work and participation.

At the end, my Mom and I proofed everything. I showed it to my teacher and she made the final corrections.  Then I printed one copy from my home computer. My teacher took my copy, photocopied it on orange paper and I gave it out to all the fourth grade students. The newspaper had 9 pages. Here are photos of some of the pages.

Cover Page

4th Grade News Section

Fun Facts Section

Book Review Section

Games section

What do you think of our newspaper? What sections do you recommend we do next time? Is there anything we should do differently next time?