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SciJourner News: Steven Marsey, a volunteer editor with SciJourn, talks to students in Bobby Hughes’ science classes at Hazelwood West High School about topics for their SciJourn articles. Future issues of the SciJourner newsletter will feature student-written stories.

Students in Bobby Hughes’ science classes at Hazelwood West High School have started the process of writing their own articles for SciJourn.

Funded by a four-year, $3.5 million National Science Foundation grant to the University of Missouri-St. Louis, SciJourn is a research project that aims to teach secondary school students the basics of science reporting via an innovative yet adjustable curriculum.

In Hughes’ class, SciJourn volunteer editor Steven Marsey talked to the students about selecting topics. He encouraged them to think about ones that are science-related and current, not historical. After students find one that interests them; they will perform research to evaluate the reliability and validity of the source material; write the article using journalistic techniques, source attribution and scientific merit before submitting it to SciJourn for editing. These drafts will become 500-word science articles for publication in future issues of SciJourner, a newsletter. The next edition comes out this month.

Marsey encouraged them to spend time with their topic, whether they write about non-fiction or science and technology. Students can change topics for their articles; they are not locked into one subject. Brainstorming, Marsey asked students in one class whether they played sports or hunted and came up with these ideas:

• Stretching before exercise – is it effective or is it harmful?

• Should deer baiting be allowed in Missouri?

•Why there are different types of tire treads – slicks, all-season, snow and off-road.

• Grocery stores offer sanitary wipes for cleaning shopping cart handles but what about every other surface shoppers touch while inside?

“Students will write their papers, I will edit what they write and return it to them. The more that is in the first draft the faster the process will become. To get them on track for the SciJourn articles they are going to write, they will know what I’m looking for,” Marsey said.

He talked to the students about avoiding tangents in their writing, that using attribution, or who said it, is a must in their articles and locating the best sources for stronger arguments.

“Wikipedia is a good start but not a good end,” Marsey told the students.

Other activities include “seed lessons,” five-15-minute lessons to help students learn how to read graphs, paraphrase articles, and analyze what they read.

“We are constantly working on getting articles submitted. If they work with us, we will work with them,” Marsey said of the students. “A small percentage of articles end up in the publication.”

While the program is primarily geared for high school students, it will provide an opportunity to follow students who were involved in the program from middle school through high school, as some middle school students will have high school teachers who trained in SciJourn.

In a previous issue, Hughes and Tonya Barnes, who teaches science at Hazelwood East High School, penned articles. Barnes wrote about why some people choose to get multiple tattoos while Hughes wrote about Microsoft’s Xbox 360® video game consoles and how different versions have overheated and failed.

“We are really happy to collaborate with the Hazelwood School District in this project,” said Dr. Alan Newman, co-principal investigator of the SciJourn Project.

Besides Hughes and Barnes, other HSD staff members who participated in SciJourn training this summer are Jennifer Bolla and Pat Hundelt, science teachers at Hazelwood East High School, journalism teacher Chris Holmes at Hazelwood West High School and Becky Cook, a science teacher at Hazelwood West Middle School.

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