How to motivate newspaper students to write more topics

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Creative Writing Chatboard

How to motivate newspaper students to write more topics

by ArtMama

May 18, 2012

I am preparing for my third year teaching middle school newspaper at a low-income school. I enjoy the subject and have some experience working on high school/college papers but I am art certified so it has been a challenge to modify my art teaching skills for the literary arts. Initially, I organized the class much like my experience working on a high school paper where students each had different responsibilities but I found that at the middle school level they are not yet mature or self-motivated enough to handle such responsibility. I also had to deal with unhappy students who did not get the job they wanted and would refuse the do the work leaving holes in the paper. This year, I tried to level the playing field requiring all students to write one story, giving them the opportunity to do other things like take photos etc. if they turned in their story. Each student gets to choose their own topic and if more than one student writes about the same thing, the strongest story gets prin...See More

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Sara On 5/18/12, ArtMama wrote:

On the topics you could do it one of two ways. You could ask them to list what topics they'd like to write on or - you coul hand out a long list of topics and ask them to check ten that they're very interested in and choose one from a list of less popular subjects. Tell them no journalist just gets to write in t...See MoreOn 5/18/12, ArtMama wrote:

On the topics you could do it one of two ways. You could ask them to list what topics they'd like to write on or - you coul hand out a long list of topics and ask them to check ten that they're very interested in and choose one from a list of less popular subjects. Tell them no journalist just gets to write in their field of interest.

But you could branch out - journalism is but one kind of writing. You know art - have them choose from among the more intriguing artists and have them write biographies.

Or - make sure your list of topics is entirely interesting - there are enough interesting topics in the world. Scratch off the topics in which they've shown no interest and add new topics in which they're interested.

> I am preparing for my third year teaching middle school > newspaper at a low-income school. I enjoy the subject and > have some experience working on high school/college papers > but I am art certified so it has been a challenge to modify > my art teaching skills for the literary arts. Initially, I > organized the class much like my experience working on a > high school paper where students each had different > responsibilities but I found that at the middle school level > they are not yet mature or self-motivated enough to handle > such responsibility. I also had to deal with unhappy > students who did not get the job they wanted and would > refuse the do the work leaving holes in the paper. This > year, I tried to level the playing field requiring all > students to write one story, giving them the opportunity to > do other things like take photos etc. if they turned in > their story. Each student gets to choose their own topic and > if more than one student writes about the same thing, the > strongest story gets printed. For the most part this works > but there are times when too many pick the same, easy topic > and other less interesting things get neglected. How can I > ensure that more organizations/topics are featured and make > sure the work gets turned in? Also, can anyone recommend > good resources for junior high journalism?

Jun 10, 2012

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