Why the Student Adver? (From Swindon Advertiser)

Why pupils from Kilmington Primary School got involved

1:27pm Wednesday 11th February 2009 in Student Adver By Kilmington Primary School

As part of my PGCE course at the University of Exeter, I recently completed a placement at Kilmington Primary School, near Axminster in Devon. For the past five weeks I have been involved with Coly class (made up of years 4, 5 and 6), taking on a role in their teaching. Their humanities topic this half-term was a geography unit on a contrasting UK locality. I was the lead teacher for this unit, and decided to compare their village to my home town.

I designed a number of activities to allow the children to learn about the town as it currently is, as well as its history. These activities ranged from using a map to locate various buildings and features in the town, to designing pamphlets to persuade people to come to Swindon. In doing this I hoped to immerse the children in the town and help them to identify the major differences between a large town and a smaller village.

For the last session, I decided to introduce the children to the Student Adver. I wanted them to see how children played a role in the news in Swindon, and get them thinking about how a feature like that in their local paper would appeal to them. I provided copies of both the printed paper and the website, and allowed them the chance to explore before moving them onto a task. The children were all very interested in the Student Adver, and could not believe that all of the stories were written by children their age. They all said how much they wanted to see something similar in their own local paper.
By Christopher Tye