Yearbook I & II: An Introduction to Photojournalism

(Trimesters 1 & 2: students in this class must make a two-trimester commitment) A course in yearbook journalism has two primary objectives: 1) to teach students the skills required to create the book and 2) to produce a book that reflects journalistic standards. To accomplish these objectives, students will learn the rights and responsibilities of student journalists, the basics of photography composition and photo editing, become proficient with desktop publishing, including the basic elements of layout and design. Students will learn to write high quality copy and captions to accurately record the history and highlights of the school year.

Newspaper

Report for the official school newspaper. Learn the fundamentals of journalism and basic journalistic writing styles, including hard news, features, opinion and in-depth reports. Learn how to gather information through interviews, surveys and research before organizing the information into relevant, high interest stories that will be distributed to your peers. To make our newspaper visually attractive, you may contribute photographs, graphics, comics, and artwork, and participate in the layout and design of the school newspaper.

Creative Writing

Calling all authors! In this writer's workshop, you will have time to write about topics that matter to you, with special focus on fiction and poetry writing techniques, and writing-based grammar lessons based on writers' needs. The teacher will act as a writing coach, having frequent one-on-one conferences with writers with the goal of preparing writing for publication. If you are a writer who is overflowing with ideas or a writer who would benefit from more time to work on your writing, this is the class for you!