EJ recruits junior reporters from MCS

MCS students take to the newsroom 

A week-long trip November 28 to December 2 to the Edmonton Journal proved very educational for the grade 6 students of Millwoods Christian School.

The students spent their first day at The Edmonton Journal with Sandy VanRiper. They enjoyed learning and taking a tour of the building. They examined an old Linotype, a printing press that created one line of newspaper print at a time. Then they looked at a Microfiche reader. Microfiche are little tape roles of photo reel that contain small pictures of newspapers that go into a reader and can be read like a normal newspaper.

The Edmonton Journal was also the headquarters for the students to learn and do various activities. They covered subjects of journalism, writing, editing and cartooning.

The students of Millwoods Christian School benefited greatly from the experience and learned a lot about the history of Edmonton and the newspaper. The Edmonton Journal is a big piece of our city’s recorded history.

Millwoods Christian students visit City Hall

A grade 6 class prepares to sit in on Tuesday’s city council meeting
at Edmonton’s City Hall to learn more about democracy in action.

Tuesday morning, the Millwoods Christian School students went to City Hall to learn about the building’s history and take an educational tour around City Hall.

After watching a Council meeting, the students explored City Hall. They learned about how the fourth City Hall was designed by Gene Dub and how he made it a family friendly place.  The building is made from materials from past City Halls.  The main motto at City Hall is, “Look to the future, take pride in the past.”

Later the class decided to do a mock council.  Students debated the issue of Edmonton implementing a curfew for children under the age of 18.  It was strongly defeated.

If you want more information on City Hall go online to www.edmonton.ca or call 311.

Grade 6 students experience CKUA radio station

On Tuesday afternoon, the grade 6 class looks back at
all the memories made at CKUA building.

Grade 6 students toured around CKUA radio station to learn about the station, on Tuesday afternoon.

A highlight was meeting Marketing Mark who recorded a station ID with the students.

Later, during a press conference with Monica Miller, it was discovered she has been working at CKUA for 39 years. She started as a part-time record librarian, but was soon used to filling in for people at the radio station and learned on the job. She found out that being a broadcaster was exactly what she wanted to do! She has two shows called “Mixtape” and “How I hear it”. Her favorite things are food, friends, books, and walking her dog.

The students left with words of inspiration from Monica. “It doesn't matter what you think you can do; it’s finding out what you want to do and doing it.”

Students from Millwoods Christian watch the ice float by on the
North Saskatchewan River, as they travel downtown on Thursday.

Grade 6 class at the Marian Center

6B carefully sketches the doorway to
honour the homeless across the street
from City Hall Thursday morning.

Millwoods Christian students went to the Marian Centre, on Thursday, to learn about generosity. Twelve people devoted to God live together giving their lives to serve the poor in downtown Edmonton.  Many residents live by the motto, “Love, love, love, never counting the cost.”

 The students had a short tour and saw the chapel where the residents go to pray twice a day with others. Another room they saw was the donation room where Zoyla Grace, a resident, works.  Here people in need can come to get clothing and other items. 

The last room they saw was a music room.  It was here that Steve Héroux, another resident, demonstrated his hammered dulcimer.  His love of music and God was evident as he played his handmade instrument for the students.

Steve Héroux prepares to demonstrate
 his ability to play his hammered dulcimer
as part of a tour at the Marian Centre.

The Marian Centre is a very special place that more people should know about. 

Greenfield School Journalists leave a mark on Downtown Edmonton

Our week at EJ School in late October was fantastic! We really enjoyed learning about the past, present and future. With Sandy VanRiper, we met many magnificent people and saw many landmarks of Edmonton and historical buildings, including CKUA in the Alberta hotel and the Hotel MacDonald. We were all inspired by the interesting people we interviewed! We went all over downtown to learn about history in our marvelous city. Overall, our week at the Edmonton Journal was amazing.   

New Journalists Head Downtown & Do Some Bench Rubbings

Rubbing Holly Newman's Flying Geese bench

 Abby Gottstein

We traveled downtown to some of the poetry benches. We took a pencil crayon and put our paper down on a rubbing of our choice. Lightly, we used the side of our pencil to recreate the artwork. When we were at the benches, we talked about the creator and the creative poetry. Each bench tells a story about a variety of different things that really shared how the artist felt. On some of the benches, it showed Canadian geese and faces that were happy, sad and ones with mixed emotions. Some of the poems made sense while other were confusing in many ways, but they all were very creative. 

Interviewing at EJ School

Tal

Interviewing Jeff Samsonow

In class we learned how to interview like a real reporter. We took notes about everything we saw and the notebook came everywhere we went. The notebook was a vital part of our journey and it held every bit of information we collected over the week. Names, dates, nouns, verbs, and actions all went inside. We learnt that the first question a reporter asks is “What is your name and can you please spell it?” We wrote down every word that came out of our subject’s mouth and we tried to look for quotes that they told us. We had to prepare questions before we came and sometimes to come up with them while we were interviewing. Some of us wrote 5-6 pages just about one topic. The subjects also gave us great advice and information about poverty and homelessness for our United Way project.

CKUA

Livi Palmer

Outside CKUA

During the week at EJ School our class went to CKUA. We learned so much about radio stations and how they work. There we created station IDs and that every few hours they are required to play identity tags so listeners know that the station is CKUA. When we finished listening to our recordings we all realized that our voices sound different than we think we sound. In the library we learned about all the different generations of music. We even heard some of the music and saw music players that were around from the 1880’s. That music was so interesting because they had no words. Next we had a press conference with Tony King. He had such an interesting and inspirational story.

Poverty in Edmonton

Livi Palmer

The Grade 6 students from Greenfield School have been working hard on trying to raise awareness to end poverty. We decided to order shirts with logos on them and go to High Schools and talk about how we can raise awareness. At EJ School we also talked more about it and how to get the audience's attention. We also talked to lots of the people to see what they felt about homelessness and poverty. They also gave us ways to be more confident in our work and presenting to a big group of kids that are older than us. This gave us more things to put into our presentation.

Grade six uses timeline to learn about the history of Edmonton. 

Time connections

During EJ School we met a nice man named Dan Rose who works at Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. He taught us about the downtown Edmonton history. We learned about the Hotel MacDonald, how it has been in terrible condition and about to be taken down. Did you know that McDougall Church was built in 1910 and over 105 years old? Learning with Dan was an amazing experience.  We built a timeline of buildings or moments in Edmonton. We put down facts like the Thistle Rink burning down in 1913 and the Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1938. We are very happy we had this experience to learn about the history of our city.