Class: Humanities
Grade: 6th
Teacher: Kristin FitzGerald
We are less than a month into the new school year and students in Kristin FitzGerald’s 6th Grade Humanities class have already published not one but two issues of “The Cheesecake Times”*—a weekly class newsletter not about cheesecakes but about nearly everything else.
The intended audience: the larger Beaver community, which FitzGerald called “an authentic and heterogeneous audience.”
The topics: a range of the student interests from books to sports to fashion to Jeff Probst.
The goals of writing and publishing a weekly class newsletter are (1) to build community through shared narratives, (2) to share identities and beliefs and learn about others’ perspectives, (3) to build a writing portfolio, (4) to strengthen writing stamina and fluency, and (5) to write for an authentic audience. — Kristin FitzGerald, Humanities teacher
As a class, students brainstormed the topic ideas for the newsletter and then each writer choose what they wanted to focus on. Students will be assessed on both their storytelling abilities and the mechanics of their writing.
Issues of The Cheesecake Times:
*The newsletter name was decided and voted on by the class.