When was the last time you got curious?
We’re not talking about the last time you asked your parents a question, they gave an answer and you thought that was enough.
We mean asked-your-parents-and-your-teacher, searched-the-internet, checked-out-a-book-at-the-library-curious. That’s radical curiosity and, if you’ve got it, we want you to be a junior reporter for No Adults Allowed.
Reporters are also known as journalists, and when we’re lucky – and good at our jobs – we get to do all sorts of cool things. It starts with curiosity though and, really, curiosity is just being brave enough to ask questions we don’t know the answers to.
Step 1: Be our eyes and ears in your school.
Are you working on a cool art project in school? Is your class raising money or collecting donations for a good cause? Do you have an awesome teacher or school librarian you want other people to know about? All of those are good starting points, but the subject of your story can be anything that made you brave enough to start asking questions.
Step 2: Start reporting
Once you have your topic, you need to focus on answering six questions: who, why, what, when, where and how. These are the questions you’ll need to answer when you’re writing your story.
You can answer these questions in a couple of ways.
The first way is through observations. If you are reporting on class pets, spend a couple minutes a day over a few days watching what they do. Tell us what happens and how you think the world might look through their eyes.
The second way is through interviews. Find out who knows the most about the topic you are reporting on, then ask if they have a few minutes to talk. Start asking those six questions and get the information you need to write a story.
The last way to answer those questions is through research. Books are always a good place to start, but the internet can be a good resource if you don’t mind asking an adult for help.
Step 3: Write
After you’ve collected all the information, you need to write your article. We don’t care how you do
it, just make sure you answer all the questions in the story. If you need help with this, you can ask one of our reporters by sending an email to [email protected]. You can send completed stories to that same address.
What’s in it for you
If you do all that work, you’ll earn your very own Keizertimes junior press badge and a special edition Reporter’s Notepad in addition to seeing your name and story in No Adults Allowed.