Newzcrew

Pupils at All Saints CE Primary School and Sidley Community Primary School taking part in the Newzcrew project.

Newzcrew was designed in collaboration with the local Observer Newspaper Group to enable young people to think about, and voice, their views on a variety of topics – in school and out – through written and audio media. The project set the following aims:

To develop young people’s basic journalist and writing skills
To increase young people’s self esteem, confidence and communication skills
To increase young people’s understanding of how a newspaper works
To further develop relations between the school and the Observer Group.

The Newzcrew pilot project was designed with Peter Lindsay, Observer Group Editor to develop young people’s investigative, communication and writing skills. Creative Partnerships appointed journalists Paula Snyder, and Robin and Pauline Thompson, to lead a short series of sessions in the three selected schools.

Each school had a different project focus. Robin and Pauline worked with year 9 students at Hillcrest School to develop their reporting skills so the school newspaper, ‘The Hillcrest Hawk,’ could be confidently re-launched. At All Saints and Sidley Schools, they worked with a mixed spread of gifted and talented children from year 5 and 6 to explore Bexhill’s desire to become a Fair Trade town. This group of students, named ‘The Sidley Stringers’ learnt note taking and interview skills and how to find stories in their everyday life. Paula worked with pupils from year 3 and 4 at Freda Gardham to develop their understanding of what newspapers did, from headlines to house styles.

Each school partnered with the local newspaper in their area to run a double page editorial of pupils’ writings and invited pupils to the newspaper to see how pages were designed on screen. A journalist from each paper also visited the school and took part in one, or several, sessions.

Pupil confidence and communication skills were with a greater value put on words and stories. Pupils enjoyed the opportunity to investigate and report and were excited to see their own work in print which could be shared with parents and other pupils. Schools were glad for the positive profile and the chance to strengthen links with their local newspaper.

For the Observer newspaper group, encouraging young people to have a voice on their pages enabled the paper to engage with young people in the community in a direct and effective manner. It also developed relations with local schools.

The Newzcrew project also gave those who found the process the most rewarding the chance to develop ideas about their future and consider a career in writing, journalism and communications which might not have occurred otherwise.