Publish Neighborhood Newsletters

Social Studies/Language Arts

Children will write short articles about events that have taken place in their neighborhoods and assemble the articles to form neighborhood newsletters.

What You Need

• Writing paper
• Pencils (regular and colored), crayons, and markers
• Photos taken at neighborhood events (optional)
• Stapler

What To Do

1. Divide the class into groups of four or five. Tell the children that you would like them to be neighborhood reporters. Explain that a reporter who writes a news story always answers these six questions in the story: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Write those six questions on the board.
2. Next, ask the children to think about newsworthy events that have taken place recently in their neighborhoods. To help children get started, you might want to mention some of these events: someone moved into or away from the neighborhood; someone brought a new baby home; someone ran for public office; someone was hurt, became ill, or recovered from an illness; someone got a new pet; someone won an award; someone took a neat trip; the neighborhood held a block party; everyone worked together to plant a community garden.
3. Tell the class that each child in the group should choose a different event to report, and then write a short news story about that event. Remind everyone to include an attention-grabbing headline and to be sure to answer each of the six reporters' questions in their stories. Also encourage children to include a drawing or photo to illustrate the event for their readers.
4. Have each group assemble its stories into a newsletter, stapling the pages together and adding the title "Neighborhood News" to the first newsletter page. Then ask the groups to share their newsletters with the class, either orally or by putting the newsletters on a shelf where everyone can read them.