Welcome to week two of the Washington Square News work with the East Harlem News, a newspaper staff of sixth grade students at Isaac Newton Middle School. Throughout the semester, the students will be learning about journalism and creating a newspaper using what they learned.

October 18th, they met in the newsroom for their second lesson. Before beginning, they reviewed the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) that they learned in the week before. They did this by watching a video clip and writing a paragraph about it.

Then they met in the middle of the room to have their first editorial meeting. During the editorial meeting, Ms. Piccione and Miss DeVito led the class in talking about some of the challenges that journalists encounter during interviews. The students came up with challenges such as asking the right questions, taking detailed notes, and listening to what they’re being told.

Next, the class participated in an activity in question asking. Miss DeVito told the class two truthful statements and one lie, and it was the goal of the student journalists to ask the right questions to determine which statement was the lie. The student who guessed first, was able to repeat the exercise with their own statements.

Now that the students had an idea of interviewing, they paired up with each other to interview one another about either a birthday party or a fight that they encountered. Once they felt they had enough information, they wrote their first articles about the interview.

During the third session on October 25th, the students will learn about the types of articles that journalists write and how they make up a newspaper.