Students at WREC Create Student Newspaper

Students at WREC Create Student Newspaper
Posted on 07/15/2022
Student NewspaperA group of gifted students at the West Reading Elementary Center began working on a school newspaper earlier in the year. With the help of many peers and teacher Mrs. Easteadt, the students successfully published a student-run newspaper.

Earlier this year, students participated in a kindness project for SPARK which, in turn, sparked the idea to start a student-led school newspaper to highlight events happening at WREC. Aubrey Maryniak, Bella Karchevsky, Olivia Epler, Naomi Wert, and William Combs were a few students who took the initial lead on starting the paper. They began by drafting what the paper could look like, and giving it a name; West Reading Writers. As the students began to plan their visions of what the newspaper would be, they recruited more students along the way including some fifth-grade students with the hopes of training them to take over next year when the sixth-graders move up to the high school.

Each edition of the newspaper features a comic section created by the students, a culture corner highlighting cultural holidays happening throughout the month, a game of the month, and two to three articles relating to school events. The students, who call themselves the “News Crew” work to divide up the workload to keep themselves organized. Some of the jobs each student could take on are: editor, article writer, interviewer, google form organizer, comic creator, and culture researcher and writer. Most of the students working to create the newspaper find the comics and story writing to be the most interesting. While this group features many different students, the core group of five students did not expect the paper to take off the way that it did.

The “News Crew” found themselves also planning school-wide events such as dodgeball tournaments, march madness competitions, and mini bowl as a recreation of the super bowl. The students will be putting out their last edition for June with the hopes of having a section of “wish lists” for the fifth graders from the sixth graders. Through this opportunity, the students have learned how to work together, stay organized, developed interview skills, enhancing their public speaking skills, and many other valuable lessons that they will carry with them.