About three weeks ago, Kinkade DeJoseph's fifth-grade class at Bordewich Bray Elementary School thought up an idea for a school newspaper. That thought is now a reality.
The newspaper is called "Delphinius Eloquentia." It means "the eloquent dolphin," which sounded elegant, according to some fifth-graders. The school mascot is a dolphin, hence the "Delphinius."
The class decided to put a paper together because the school didn't have one and they thought it'd be fun, which it was. We finally plowed through our first edition. It was hard work, what with writing the articles, taking the pictures and editing. But it paid off in the end.
We've been planning to do a paper every month - one every week would be too hectic and we probably wouldn't have all the articles in by that time. One a month is perfect, so we could determine who's writing what and if we have enough room for a certain article or picture.
The eight-page paper features sports reports, interviews, original stories, a fashion article and more. Every classroom gets one copy and every student in DeJoseph's class will receive one copy each. We would love to give one out to every student so parents can see it, but we can't for the simple reason that it costs too much.
Everyone has a job.
Every edition of the paper will have different people working on different subjects. For example: In the first edition, a student might have done an editorial. In the second edition, the same student might do a sports report.
Every student has different subjects they can write about, like front page news, sports, editorials and lots more. This time, I wrote a front-page news article on Hurricane Katrina. There are lots of jobs to choose from, so nobody gets bored.
We started thinking about the paper and what we wanted to write about almost three weeks ago, so we were pretty sure who wanted to write what. The rest of the time was devoted to writing articles, getting pictures to go along with them and editing stories. We had many stories written in a couple weeks, ready to position on paper.
Of course, the process wasn't smooth all the way. Even the day before DeJoseph printed the paper, there was editing to be done, and many stories needed pictures to accompany them. Also, a few students didn't bring stories in on time.
We are very excited about the "Delphinius Eloquentia" and can't wait to go on to the second edition.
In the news
What: The Delphinius Eloquentia is a newly created school newspaper at Bordewich-Bray Elementary School.
When: The paper comes out once a month and is delivered to each classroom in the school.
Who: Kinkade DeJoseph's fifth-grade class wrote, edited, and photographed the articles for the paper.
- Information supplied by fifth-grader
Mckennah Tackett
