4th Graders Take Over Journalism 

At TCS, fourth-graders embark on a new writing unit centered on journalism. Students immerse themselves in writing school-related news stories during the month of November.

Fourth-grade students focus on the bases of journalism during this new writing unit. It is the first year the journalism unit is taught in fourth grade,  and it will work in conjunction with the high school to publish final pieces of writing in the TCS newspaper. 

“We are currently teaching readers and writers workshop tied to journalism thanks to the new curriculum at elementary school called the If-Then curriculum,” Tracy Goettsch, Grade 4 team leader and the 4D teacher, said. 

Goettsch and her team of 4th-grade teachers work on the project equally with each class and are currently focusing exclusively on producing content so that it can be edited and finalized further on.

“We teachers in 4th grade are all teaching this project equally, the goal for our first two parts of the unit is that they produce, then the goal will be to edit and revise to publish a perfect, final piece in the school newspaper,” Goettsch said.  

The student’s positive response to the new journalism unit has made their engagement in the learning process grow more by the minute. 

“The goal is right now is creating stories that the students like and really enjoy writing so that they can succeed in their writing skills,” Goettsch said. 

Fourth grader’s enthusiasm towards the journalism project has been very important and has marked a key difference in their learning. 

“They feel very excited, we gave them the unit that is much more thrilling to students because it gets them out of the traditional essay style writing that has always been thought to them,” Goettsch said. 

 The project involves students being active and working on their social skills during interviews with their classmates. 

“I feel comfortable because this time I can write about something I want and I like interviewing my classmates.” Elena Osorio, 4D student, said. 

Neither the less, teachers have encountered several skills to be improved amongst some student’s writing process. 

“We have found that students have trouble transitioning into third-person writing, they need to work on getting themselves out of the story which is new to them,” Goettsch said. 

To conclude, teachers in the fourth-grade plan to continue teaching this new unit during the upcoming years thanks to the great response they’ve had in such little time. 

“It’s a way to bridge new writing units in a much productive way, rather than using the usual units of writing we have always had,” Goettsch said.