Newspaper in Education hits Malta Elementary School

National Newspaper in Education (NIE)week starts across the country on March 6, but students across Phillips County have been participating since the end of January and two grades at Malta Elementary School are at the head of the class.

Each week, nearly 200 copies of the Phillips County News is delivered to all four Phillips County Schools for free and at Malta Elementary School, fourth and fifth grade teachers Julie Henry and Barb Buechler are combining the newspapers with up-to-the-minute technology. Each Friday when the school receives their newspapers, fifth grade students are tasked with picking an article to read and then to write a summary of what they’ve gleaned from the selection. The students use Google Classroom applications to write their summaries. The teachers can check the status of student’s progress on the assignment and when the rough drafts are complete, they can suggest edits and grammatical changes to make.

“I read them and give them corrections to make before they turn in their final revisions all from the computer,” Mrs. Buechler said. “This Google Classroom is really slick. It’s nice to be able to collaborate. They can read (the PCN) there, write it here and then revise it and read it to the class.”

Mrs. Henry had her students read two stories — on the Mustangs and the other on the M-ettes – and then asked them two chart the selections out to show they understood what happened at each sporting event. Once the chart is done, the students use their Chrome Books to record videos of themselves giving a rundown of what they learned. Each students in the two grades have their own Google Chrome Books (similar to a laptop) thanks to monies raised by students through the sales of chocolate bars and donations made to the school from the Mustang Foundation.

“We use these to death,” Mrs. Buechler said of the computers.

Mrs. Henry said that some of the students are okay with reading the newspaper each week, but others dreaded the assignment. She said that many of them hadn’t read a newspaper prior to the NIE and just holding the newspaper correctly is an acquired skill.

“At the beginning, they did not even know how to read the newspaper,” she said. “They didn’t know the terminology, how to unfold it or where to go to get to the next section or how to find a story's continuation. I think it is a great experience for the kids.”

One highlight for the students with their newspaper assignments is reading their names in stories, or, even better, getting their picture in the pages of the PCN.

“That has been a big thing,” Mrs. Henry said. “You’ll hear them say ‘hey, look’ or ‘I made the paper’.”

NIE first started in the late 1930’s by the New York Times and Milwaukee Journal as the two news organizations started delivering newspapers to area schools free of charge. Currently, more than 950 NIE programs are delivering newspapers to nearly 40-percent of all public schools in the United States. The PCN is proud to now be a part of NIE and will continue the tradition from this day forward.