SC-L18 Making a Magazine

Making a Magazine by Dolores Vasquez

What does it take to make a magazine? Our class was getting ready to find out. We had decided to plan and publish our own magazine.

First, we would learn everything that’s **required** to make a magazine. We’d need to choose story ideas. Then we’d do research and gather facts. We’d write stories and take photographs to go with them.

To get started, we looked at other magazines for ideas. We read the stories. We studied the pictures. We began to discuss plans for our own magazine. What sort of articles should be in the magazine? How should it look?

@@@

Learning from an Expert

"Students," said Mr. Gomez, "I'd like to introduce the best magazine writer in the nation. This is Annie Smith. She travels around the world writing about exciting events. Still, when she first started work, she was closer to home."

Annie told us about her first job. She worked at a magazine in the small town where she grew up. She wrote about interesting people who lived there. Her favorite story was about an old man who ran a bakery. People came from far away to buy his cakes, but they did not know his background. He had once worked as a chef at the White House!

Annie's story about the old man won a prize. That really helped her career take off.

@@@

Planning Stories

Annie gave us many **insights** into what makes a good magazine story. Now it was time for us to come up with our own story ideas. We decided to follow Annie’s **formula**. We’d interview interesting people in our own neighborhood.

We talked about people who lived and worked nearby. Everyone suggested ideas. Then we chose our favorites. We picked three people to interview.

The class split up into three teams of writers. Each would interview one person and write a story.

@@@

My team had come up with a great idea for the magazine. Although we lived in the city, we would write about activities that usually take place in the country.

Shana knew a family who lived near the park. They kept bees. Paul had an uncle who raised chickens.

"Nobody is interested in chickens," said Shana.

"Any subject can be interesting if the writer makes it interesting," said Mr. Gomez. Then he reminded us about the community garden that many of us passed each day on the way to school. How could we find out who had started it? What did people grow there?

"That's a great idea, Mr. G," I said.

@@@

Conducting an Interview

My team went to the community garden. We asked around and found that it was started by a woman named Laura Antonio. We searched her out. She told us that the garden used to be an empty lot. Now twenty different families grew food there. Laura grew enough tomatoes to make ten gallons of tomato sauce each summer!

We asked Laura about her background. How did she learn how to grow things? Laura explained that she grew up on a farm in Italy. When she moved to the United States, she missed growing things. She decided to start the community garden. She helped other city families grow vegetables there, too.

@@@

Putting It All Together

The interview with Laura gave us great insights into how a community garden works. We learned why gardens are great for the community.

There was still more work to do. We did research in the library and on the Internet. We learned more facts about community gardens to add to our story. Then we wrote the story. We checked to make sure all the information was correct. Finally, we reread the story and made a few changes to improve it.

We had a lot of photographs, and we couldn't decide which ones to use. So, we showed them to another team. Together, we worked out which ones were best.

@@@

Publishing the Magazine

At last, we had all finished our stories. Nobody has ever worked so hard! We were ready to put our words and photographs together on the computer. When we were finished, we printed out one copy of the new magazine. We checked it to make sure there were no mistakes. There were mistakes! We fixed them. Then we printed out lots of copies for our friends, families, and other students at school.

We had published our first magazine! We learned a lot and had fun, too. Maybe some of us will be famous magazine writers some day!

@@@