As the year is coming to an end, one of the new additions to Maclay middle school is the publication “Maclay In the Middle”. They had their final and second ever release of the 2022-2023 school year on Thursday, May 18 at 8:30 a.m. in Mrs. Kutter’s room.
The celebration brought many middle schoolers together to honor all the hard work put in to make the publication party possible. The students got to enjoy signing their friends’ issues, eating donuts and playing outside with beach balls. World Geography teacher Martha Kutter, Language Arts teacher Rikki Overstreet and Art teacher Kim Daniel helped the students put together the photos and stories to create the issue which was centered around “Piecing Together”.
“[My favorite thing is] definitely seeing how much they have grown as writers,” Dr. Overstreet said. “I think looking at what we did in the first issue compared to this one is just insane how much they’ve grown. I think all of them have done a better job planning, the structure of their text, a lot better hooks, better descriptive writing and embedding quotes. It was really cool to see them challenge themselves.”
The purpose of the publication is to help develop the students’ humanity skills. There are multiple different aspects and by working on journalism, art and design students are able to grow their writing, research, graphic design and photography
The issue featured 30 different news and sports stories that are related to middle school and even high school. Eighth grader Lilly Smith wrote about the robotics program in the middle school.
“I think the interview portion [was my favorite] because I got to learn a lot not just about the class but about Mr. G as well,” Smith said. “It was really fun to talk to him. He’s a cool guy.”
Another story was written by eighth grader Lauren Ferraro about the Student Astronaut Challenge in middle school.
“My favorite part was getting the quote from Mrs. Barton,” Ferraro said. “I got to talk to her one on one and I really appreciated doing that. I’ve gotten more comfortable doing interviews, working with my writing and also working with graphic design.”
Maclay In the Middle looks to continue, improve and engage with the middle school student body as the next few years come.
