Jeff Davis Elementary After School News Team
Eva Hiers
Jeff Davis County Schools
Hazlehurst, Ga
Looking for a new activity for our After School Program, we decided to break ground and start a news show. With the advice from Presenters of the Technology Conference, we soon learned making a news show would not be difficult and we put action into motion.
After attending the Fall Technology Conference, I really wanted to start a News Show at our school. The presenters really made it sound easy and fun. With the information I brought back home, I found out just how right they were.
I sat in on some wonderful workshops, two workshops in particular that helped me get started in the right direction were: So, you have to do a Morning News Show! By Mary Tidrick, from Cobb and Got Morning News by Susan Lawhorn. They made it seem so easy and hassle free. They were right! We took their advice and first formulated a team.
Our news team is comprised of fifth grade students. Their suggestions were to have the following:
- Anchor Boy
- Anchor Girl
- Lead reporter
- Producer
- Weather girl
- Script Writers
- Camera Man
- Cue Card Holders
- Production Team
They also suggested we have signed parental forms. So we designed a form for parents to sign to allow their children to be filmed.
Now the task was to set up our time schedule. Because we are doing this as an activity for After School, we had to work around the school's schedule. We choose to use our computer lab time. Monday through Wednesday, the crew is busy writing and getting all our news together.
Thursday, we film. To help these students learn about presentation, their stance, how they conduct themselves and speak, we enlisted the help of our local community D.J. and myself. The students spend a lot of time on the computers and learn to work as a team. The GaETC presenters also suggested having a plan as to when we would air our shows. Because of our limited time, we choose to present our show on Monday mornings.
They shared some very helpful suggestions as to what to air on the morning shows, we combined their ideas with ours and came up some of the following:
- Mission Statement and Belief Statement
- Lunch Menu
- School activities
- Sports
- Web site of the week
- Interview teachers
- Weather
- Skits
- Character Word of the Week and Word of Wisdom
- Pledge
They said we could start small, and small we were
- One Camcorder
- Amplifier
- Microphone
Some ideas to format this to Video was to use Movie Maker, PowerPoint or Word - - we did and it works great!
We are into our fourth week and we are having a blast. Both students and staff members look forward to the weekly programs. Staff members and students suggest story ideas for the program. If you want to start a news show at your school…go ahead! Its really easy and lots of fun.
I really look forward to attending future technology conferences. I know I will always be able to bring back fresh new exciting information to our school system. Thank you to the 21st Century CCLC Grant and great job GaETC!
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