Homework - Researching a school magazine.

After looking through different magazines from different schools i decided to look at Weald Of Kent Grammer School. Here is the link to view the magazine;
its called

THE GRAPEVINE

http://www.wealdofkent.kent.sch.uk/LearningSystem/PortalHome/preDefault.asp?Resource=9A03D2EC-23F3-489F-A6FA-DA7449FE4EA9&ResourceID=7230

this magazine is well thought out and the layout is very neat, having the same theme of the vine on each page gives the magazine a flow.

the magazine has a variety of serious news and entertainment. theres advice on careers and gcse options.

there is infomation and reviews on previous trips, opinions and thoughts of pupils that went on these trips, giving advice to the year below, if they are thinking of going on the same trips.

there is a balance of images and writing, there is alot of colour giving me the impression this is aimed at younger pupils that sixth form, such as key stage 4.

there is infomation of shows that are coming up and that have past. there is a good educational value, such as book reviews.

there are gig and live entertainment and music reviews of outside of school, therefore there is a social aspect.

there are album reviews of recent albums that have been released to let people know of new things to try out.

there is even a guide about how to start eating healthy, and as people are trying to aim it at younget people so they dont get into bad eating habits this would be very interesting and useful.

i think there is a good use of colour and a balance of text and images, the content is very useful and entertaining to the pupils and i imagine proves very popular.

here is just an example of the colour and images used, attracting the target audience.

Monday 26th January 2009

Today we had to do a rough copy of what our groups student magazine would look like, we included a masthead of 'Taylor's Tribe', a medium close up shot of Mr. Taylor this was for our lead story of how Mr. Taylor the sixth form head of year raised funding for the redecoration of the sixth form block and common room. This story is relevant as our target audience will be to the sixth form students, we decided as a group that it will come out fortnightly and will be 80p each and will be on sale on the break time in the common room and corridor of the sixth form block.
We included a menu at the side and little snip its of larger stories inside the magazine, there is an advertisement for a 10% discount in a fashionable clothes shop, we thought that would be ideal for the age group.

i think it is very important to have a pitch and a mock-up, this is so that we get the practise and start to think of ideas for both our preliminary task and our music magazine, like things we would like to include and so on. i learned by the feedback at the end that publishing as often as we did would be good, but maybe a little more expensive, as it is for sixth formers. It is important that we took notice of what our class mates where saying as they are in the sixth form too and this would help us if our task we do is aimed at there age group it will be relevant and very useful.

Friday 23rd January 2009

Today in class, in our groups we had to present our pitch to the class, then answer any questions from either Mrs Howlett or other classmates.
I think our pitch did go quite well i think producing the magazine fortnightly was a good idea as we would have our own studying to do i think it would have been too much to be doing, also would be hard to find the information and entertainment to find.
i think we could of included in our pitch more detail of the content of the magazine.

Wednesday 23rd January 2009

Today in class we looked at a university newspaper produced for the students that go there, this was called the sheaf, the website was www.thesheaf.com
as you can see to the left i have inserted the homepage of The Sheaf, they have split there newspaper into information and section B is more for entertainment.

The newspaper is written and edited by the students that go to the university too, also the payment comes out of the students tuition therefore they don't have to pay for it when it is issued.

this was to give us an insight into what we could include in both our preliminary task and the main one.

i also realised that time is very important, and to make sure that i try and get some new information every time i do work so that it is not wasted.

We then had to get into groups and make a pitch for a students magazine/newspaper, this helped us think of things that our target audience would be interested in and what we would include.

we will be showing our pitch to the rest of the class on Friday 23rd Jan 09.