Newspaper Issue #1 of 11.11.13.

This is indeed so, we have finally been able to issue our very first official school newspaper, and it has been both a thrilling and busy day for us as we tried to coordinate everything in order to deliver a good impression of our cause, and most importantly, have people enjoy our work. As stated in a previous post, we are planning to make the paper a bi-weekly edition, although if we struggle with the timings we may revert to a tri-weekly scheme. 

Front page

For the primary edition, we have been able to gather a wide variety of gripping articles from students of differing ages, all the way from year 7 to year 13. Our issue contained an editors' note reflecting the purpose of our enterprise and thanking the students for taking time to read our newspaper, although this notice was placed on the final page whereas usually the editor's column goes on the front page, so for the next issue we may consider transferring it. The creative writing showcase consisted of three very diverse pieces: we had a descriptive article on snow, a poem, and a story in many parts which we will publish consecutively in every issue. We had informative writing on skating opportunities in Moscow, along with a captivating article commenting on the death of a fascinating artist named Lou Reed. Two entries constituted the list of so-called 'personal' contributions: a confession of a student on their love of singing, and the expectations of a young year 7 upon their arrival in high school. We've had some discussion-based writing on the matter of celebrating disparate occasions, an encouraging article written by Cveta herself asking students and teacher to join in the Movember phenomenon to raise funds for charity, and a book review produced by a devoted reader. A few advertisements went up concerning the Art and Literature Expo which is being organised by Cveta yet again, although I have volunteered to write a welcoming entry piece boosting people to attend it, and a comic strip competition hosted by the newspaper. Finally, we have included a 'guess the teacher' rubric which features images of teachers at a young age, an art focus commenting upon recently produced school artwork, and a crossword, all of which has been formalized by Cveta. 

First double page

Unfortunately I was off sick for the whole of last week and therefore unable to aid Cveta with many preparations for issuing the newspaper; this time I shall most certainly put my best effort into helping her with this grand project of ours. Due to lack of coordination on our behalf, we ended up printing the papers on Monday morning, although that was when we were supposed to hand them out; ultimately, we distributed them during class which was incorrect for we disrupted lessons, and this is why next time we shall prepare the copies in advance so that they can be administered for the long registration period on Monday.

Second double page

Another significant improvement that should be made is to ensure that our supervisor examines the final draft of the paper before it is issued, so that if any problems occur concerning the material, then logically the teacher and not the students will be held responsible; for this issue we ended up printing it without finalizing the content with our main editor, which could potentially cause some concern, hence next time we shall agree on everything prior to setting the edition into stone.

Final page

Albeit I believe that we have done a good job for a first ever issue of a complete newspaper; we may have experienced some trouble with formatting it since the software that was being used wasn't acting exceptionally user-friendly, however that is a minor issue that could easily be averted next time. What's most important is that we have tried to adopt a more liberal approach, allowing our correspondents to compose on a topic of their choice, yet we were successfully able to edit the material so that we excluded some inappropriate or provocative parts (which is a very important ethical issue, especially in our multinational institution), although we didn't fully deface the work submitted to us. Both me and Cveta look forward to the following issue and we shall work hard to improve the quality of our service, hopefully making the newspaper more appealing every time. 

Expanding our newspapers' benefits

That's right, just as the title suggests, Cveta and I have decided to extend our newspaper to not only cover its natural purposes of delivering information to the eager readers, but to also enable us to be more ecologically-friendly and well-aware of the surrounding world. With the additions, we hope to encourage the population of our school to seek and use any opportunity they can to aid our planet and its peoples.

The first advancement is the idea of recycling the newspaper; it may seem trivial, albeit we will be issuing around 200 copies of about 4-5 A4 sheets, which would otherwise simply end up in dustbins when that significant amount of paper could be reused with a benefit to the environment; moreover, we will ask both the students and the teachers to contribute to the general pile with newspapers brought in from home, for it is evident that there must be allegiant readers in a fair few families. The collected material we will then transfer to the nearest recycling facility, with a small portion being donated to the art department for further creative usage. To make the compiling process more efficient, I have decided to make a special box which will be used as a drop-off facility: I began with some plain cardboard which I then decorated with old newspapers (I believe that too counts as recycling...) and a fancy label welcoming people to dispose of unwanted material.  

The attractive label

Overall view of the box

The other change that we have decided to implement into our work is a fund-raiser: we realised that it is of vital importance for the school as a community to donate money to those in great need, and gathering finances through our service seemed like a workable idea. As of right now, we don't have a concrete charity or cause that we will be collecting the funds for, albeit we plan to find one as soon as possible; we chose to set up a coin jar in the hallway of the school, next to the recycling box, to attract greater attention from the students and the teachers; through the newspaper itself we shall alert them both of the significance of our enterprise and our desire to get everyone involved. The jar has been designed and renovated by me in attempt to make it noticeable and potentially capable of collecting large amounts; as a sort of an encouragement, I have placed a few coins and a note into it so that it wouldn't appear empty upon placement.

Frontal shot of coin jar

Piggy-bank style opening

I will further keep updating information concerning both the recycling and fund-raising activities in order to create a legible account of their progressions. We may add a few more tweaks to the newspaper because we see it as a great opportunity to expand our knowledge of the school population and involve everyone in various beneficial events.

Flickr beginnings

A while ago I finally decided to commence a photo stream through the use of a famous website, flickr.com; I have become interested in photography only recently, and in order to somehow enhance my ability to take reputable images and to turn my constant camera shots into something more fruitful, I chose to set up an online image bank so that people could view my work and hopefully become interested in what I do.

As of right now, my page contains only a petite amount of images, albeit I plan to expand it to house tens of pictures which will reflect my surroundings as well as my personal feelings. Instead of just uploading photos in a disorderly manner, I will work towards creating streams of related pieces corresponding to, for example, the season of autumn, or a certain place I may have visited; that way I hope to make my page more alluring for those interested in photography. In order to expand the amount of material available for editing and display, I shall ensure that my camera will accompany me almost everywhere I will go, and I intend to offer the services of a photographer at different events being held both within and outside my school. 

Screenshot of my page

My photo stream can be viewed here; I hope to update it regularly, and I shall post new entries on my thread concerning any developments that I may make or any projects I may become involved in. I will also track what will hopefully become a development in my image skills so that I will have something to show for my work.

Newspaper agency meeting

Today at lunchtime me and Cveta held the very first meeting of all those pupils who were willing to get involved in our project; many of them have approached us in the hallways asking if they could participate whilst the others were recommended to us by the English department as excellent students. We had a total of 9 volunteers, which for me is a significant improvement from the one lonely person that I have in French club. 

The purpose of this meeting was to become acquainted with our participants and to introduce them into the concept which we have developed, for running a school newspaper is rather challenging because deadlines have to be met and the content has to be moderated, just like it would be with a global newspaper agency. We drew up a set of ideas on the whiteboard so that everyone could form a better understanding of what it is that we will demand of them; afterwards, in order to show greater care towards our fellow 'staff members', we gave them the freedom to chose one of the topics on which they would like to compose an article. That triggered great enthusiasm amongst everyone, and it had been very pleasing to observe for we weren't expecting such a rush of excitement on what was the very first day. 

Our assemblage

On the whole, I think that our meeting had gone relatively well for a first experience because we weren't exactly familiar with how to manipulate a gathering of people, all of whom are willing to contribute at the same time and find it difficult to concentrate for too long. We managed to engage them, as it seemed, which was probably the main target for us; furthermore, we were able to allocate tasks for the upcoming issue, the deadline for which had been postponed to the 11th of November. We have gathered enough material to work with, and hopefully what we have collected will make a decent first publishing that will appeal to our rather fastidious audience. 

We asked a fellow IBDP student who had attended our assembly if they had any suggestions or evaluations to offer upon the organisation of the matter, and they have told us that next time we should invest greater effort into systematising our narrations since some people tended to talk over us and pay limited attention overall. Also, we had forgotten to ask for people's emails, which was very inconvenient for we will require them to monitor their progression with the articles; this is why next time we have a meeting, we should plan it more thoroughly in order to avoid fatuous mistakes occurring and to make the outcome of the discussion much more effective. 

Ultimate decisions for first issue

French club returns

After the half-term break we have indeed decided to continue with our club as it seems to be assisting our only student greatly, and we hope to further extend our service by encouraging more pupils to attend the activity; after all, with a larger number of participants it will be easier to conduct the tutoring for we could organise them into groups for the completing of certain tasks which would make the sessions more interactive and potentially more rewarding.

Unfortunately, our student has been absent today and we were unable to run the club, although I have prepared some worksheets for them beforehand (courtesy to languagesonline.org.uk): the handout consists of two sheets on the simple future, one of which is a reminder of how to form that tense and what exceptions apply to it, whilst the second sheet contains a number of exercises which help practice its use. I was supposed to have given out this information to our student about a week before the holiday, which shows the lack of consistency in my contribution to the club; this is certainly an area in which I will have to make concrete improvements for I not only want to aid Natalia, but I also wish to support the one participant we currently have so that they can apprentice greater knowledge which will expectantly benefit them during their exams. 

First sheet of handout

Second part of handout

Despite the fact that I try to provide our pupil with worksheets to be used for practice and future references, I might try to integrate some of my own examples into the exercises instead of just using the ones provided by the language website which I constantly refer to; in that way I will be developing my own skills in French by building sentences which pertain to a given grammatical rule. In addition, I could share some of my older work with our student so that they can obtain a better understanding of the way the French language works at IGCSE level. We also ought to give them some sort of tests occasionally in order to determine their progress and identify areas which may require greater attention; once they complete the worksheet on simple future, we may give them a small assessment on the two tenses which we have covered in the past month for it will be very relevant to our current studies. 

Swimming day 1

Today I was finally able to attend my gym for a swimming session, which had been previously mentioned on my CAS plan for this term. I should've managed my time better in order to involve myself more actively in this sport for it is not only a very good way of exercising, but is also an area in which I could improve greatly to achieve worthier results. After all, I would love to develop my skills in swimming since I really enjoy this sport, and find it more of a refreshing recreational activity rather than an obligatory workout. 

This time around, I decided to revert to my most comfortable style which is breaststroke; I did 1.25 kilometres in about 42 minutes, which was slightly disappointing since I was expecting to complete that distance in at most 40 minutes, since that is the average time I tend to require. The fact that in this session it look slightly longer shows that my stamina has reduced due to very flimsy visits to the gym; consequently, this is definitely something I will have to improve upon if I wish to continue evolving my swimming abilities. Although I was surprised at how I could quite freely maintain a constant speed without having to pause for more than one rest sometime in the middle of the course; I guess that, after all, not all hope is lost. 

The pool just as I was leaving

Next time that I will attend the gym, which I plan to do this weekend, I will continue working on my breaststroke by decreasing the time it takes for the same distance back down to 40 minutes, and from there onward I will attempt to lower it even further. Additionally, I shall try to arrange sessions with a professional trainer who will hopefully aid me in developing my swimming skills by learning new techniques correctly, considering that I do not wish to memorise styles inexactly, which may happen if I train without the help of a tutor. 

International Day bulletin

Since Cveta and I had arranged to run a school newspaper, we positioned ourselves as people who are greatly interested in writing and reporting to a greater audience than just our English teacher; for that very reason, I presume, we have been approached by the IBDP coordinator who asked us to produce a bulletin based upon the events of this year's International Day. The idea was to attach this bulletin to a letter which would be given out to all of the students, so that it would act as a pleasant reminder of the grandiose celebration and possibly an invitation to those students and parents who hadn't been able to attend this time to participate in the event the following year. 

In order to complete the task laid upon us, we divided our responsibilities: both of us contributed to writing the actual text of the document, however Cveta took over the layout of the future bulletin, whilst I provided her with some of the images I took on the occasion. We tried to balance the material that we had gathered by including interviews of different people (i.e. teachers, students and parents) to convey a more personal perspective, and also to make the information more reliable instead of everything just coming from our own experience. Ultimately, I think that we've managed to create a very colourful and appealing bulletin which is not only informative, but also entertaining to read.

The bulletin itself

In spite of the first draft looking great, we may be asked to amend a few aspects of it to increase its quality even further. We also realised that if we were to do something of this sort again, we should be more careful with our style of language: being able to compose in a very complex manner through the use of a wide range of vocabulary is neat, albeit we must consider our audience which does include relative young children as well as parents who may not be very familiar with the English language, therefore it is our duty to make the wording understandable enough for people of all levels, at the same time making it a pleasant and enjoyable read.