Local Students Become Patch Reporters

This story written by: Carmel McDermott, Riley Bazaar, Jessica Brandt, Sawyer Reed, Aidan McDermott, Aaron Brotmann, Mia DiChiara, Casey Slepian and Caio Jafet.

A group of nine fourth and fifth graders at Katonah Elementary School published their first news story on Patch after attending a workshop as part of the school's "Do the Write Thing" program, a writing conference for students.

Students learned news writing basics from Patch editor Lisa Buchman, and Jessica Jafet, a news and features writer and current communications manager at the Community Center of Northern Westchester.

Students said they learned how to research a story, how to write a headline, how to make a story interesting and how the news affects people around the world and in their backyard.

They also practiced interviewing each other.

"I learned that information can come from different kinds of sources, and you can put them together to write a news article," said Mia DiChiara, a fourth grader.

Students has 14 workshops to choose from—writing TV commercials, how to blog and writing poetry, among others—but said they chose the Patch newswriting session because they liked seeing the immediate results of their efforts.

"I thought it would be cool to write something today, then read it online tomorrow," said Riley Bazaar, a fourth-grader. Her classmate, Carmel McDermott, agreed.

Other students found learning key components of a news story especially helpful.

"My favorite part was learning about the 5Ws [who, what, when, where and how] and writing the lead paragraph," said Sawyer Reed.

Caio Jafet said he'll remember that writing has to be "credible" and "catch the eye" to grab the reader, especially in today's digital world with so much information surrounding news consumers.

Their instructors said based on their questions and their small group writing sessions, they students seemed to grasp the importance of learning journalism skills.

"Young people need to know how to communicate in a digital world—and that means more than using Facebook to check on their friends," said Buchman. "They need to know how to read, analyze information and write for the web."

Jafet agreed, noting the skills would benefit them no matter what path they chose.

"They may end up in science, engineering, government or a nonprofit, like I am now," she said. "Being able to share information in a compelling way is a critical skill for the 21st century."

Editor's Note: This story was produced by a group of fourth and fifth graders at Katonah Elementary School during a newswriting workshop held Tuesday and led by Lisa Buchman and Jessie Jafet.