Be a Reporter!

For our second meeting meeting of April, we visited the Grand River Sachem Office to work on the Reporting Badge.

The Grand River Sachem is one of Canada's oldest newspapers, having been in existence since 1856. The Sachem has operated out of the same office since 1865, making it Canada's longest-operating-in-the-same-building newspaper!

Senior Reporter Tamara Botting talked to the girls about the newspaper and the jobs involved in producing a weekly paper (reporter, editor, publisher). They learned that a reporter's day can change suddenly with the need to cover breaking news stories and how sometimes stories have to be held over until a future issue in order to make space for more time-sensitive stories. We also discussed censorship, libel, and editorials vs. news stories.

The girls were shown how a page layout is put together and a mock-up of the front page was done with a photo of the group. They also learned how a story is uploaded on to the website.

We then split the girls up into their Patrols and had each one write their own news story about anything they wished. When they read out their stories, the other girls had to identify the five W's - who, what, when, where, and why. As we had some time left, we had each Patrol make up their own "breaking news" report and act it out for the rest of us.

Reporting & Business Communications Badges

At our meeting on April 2nd the Guides worked on completing their Reporting and Business Communications Badges.

As the girls arrived they were asked to decorate a postcard, leaving the back blank. Later in the evening we asked them to write a message to a Lone Guide on the back of the card. These cards will be sent to the Lone Guides in Ontario as friendship cards.

To finish up the Business Communications Badge, we used a white board to write a business letter as a group. The example we used was asking someone from the fire department to come to a meeting and do a presentation on fire safety to help the girls earn their Fire Safety Badge.

We also talked about Braille communication and where you can find examples in everyday life. Each patrol then had to solve a message written in Braille.

To complete the Reporting Badge each girl created a newspaper front page, complete with newspaper name, picture, and article.

Visit to The Sachem Office (Reporting Badge)

On Wednesday, March 20th the 2nd Caledonia Guides visited the offices of The Sachem to work on their Reporting badge. Tamara, a reporter for The Sachem, was our host for the evening and did a super job of presenting information to the girls and showing them how a newspaper layout is created.

The girls learned about some of the different jobs involved in producing a newspaper - reporter, publisher, printer, selling advertising, designing layouts. They also found out how a reporter's story gets into a newspaper and how all the pieces of a front page layout. A group photo was taken and a mock-up front page created to show the girls how this is done on the computer, then each girl received a copy to take home.

We talked about the 5Ws and an H (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) and the importance of being factual and accurate when writing news articles. The story of Cinderella was used to demonstrate the inclusion of the Ws/H. As the story was told, the girls held up signs with Who, What, Where, When, Why or How on them each time one of those questions was answered in the story.

Later, we talked about the difference between a news story and an editorial and about what censorship and liable mean and how they apply to newspapers.

We will be completing the Reporting badge in April with our own "Be a Reporter" night and the creation of a unit newspaper!