WOULD you like free, hands-on classroom support for your school?

Schools ordering any of our current Newspapers in Education resources are welcome to invite NIE co-ordinator Rita Shaw to run newspaper activities or to support other newspaper related school events, free of charge.

Rhyddings High School in Oswaldtwistle followed up their use of our Pick and Mix resource with a newspaper making challenge, designed and run by Rita Shaw, for students in year eight.

And head of English Richard Ferley wrote to say how much his students enjoyed the experience, saying: "I write to thank you for coming into school to work with our year 8 students on the "deadline" project.

"Their involvement with the work was such as to reverse the normal problem of keeping them 'on task'. At the end of the session they had to be prised away from their work!

"There was the feel of a real newsroom about the Learning Resource Centre. "Lucy Edmundson, a student teacher from St Martin's College, Lancaster, observed that it not only provided opportunities for the pupils to use their language skills, but the process of selecting articles to feature in their own newspaper encouraged them to read a wide variety of material and to discuss the content with their colleagues. This extended their understanding of the style of newspaper writing.

"Julie Murphy, our literacy co-ordinator, also found the ideas in the 'Pick and Mix' booklet, which we used earlier in the term, very useful in planning the scheme of work for year 7 literacy hour.

"I look forward to working closely with the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in the future and would be grateful if you would convey my thanks to Jack Barry for giving so generously of his time to talk to our students about news photography."

For a no obligation visit allowing teachers to look through our NIE resources in their own schools, please contact Rita Shaw.