Now comes the fun part. You and your fellow writers need to find stories to fill those pages! You can write about everything from a teacher's recent marriage and the choir going to state competition to new music coming out and the latest movie. You definitely want to focus on your school, but everything you write doesn't need to be exclusively about your school. To write stories about your school, you need to do interviews. If you're doing a feature on a teacher, you should ask them if you can do an interview. It might also be good to talk to people close to them. Make sure you take good notes. You may even want to record your interviews.  You can even use your smartphone to record interviews. Just remember to always get consent from the person before you record them. If you're writing an article about the school, get other students' opinions. Talk to as many people as you can to get quotes. Try asking around at lunch or after school. Even if you've interviewed people, you might still need to do some digging. For instance, you may want to know when a particular tournament was first held. You might need to dig through school records to find out more. Research takes time and effort, but it makes for better stories. Start by figuring out what's most important in your story. Look at who, what, when, where, why, and how, and decide which of those should come first. You'll need to cover all of these bases in your article, but certain parts should be given preference, depending on what's most important to the story.  Your first paragraph is called the lead. It should give readers the basic information, including what you decided was most important. Once you've established the major facts, you can provide supporting details in the following paragraphs. Active voice is when the subject of the sentence is doing the action. Active verbs are also important. Active verbs are ones that actually show action, such as "jump," "shout," and "cried," as opposed to being verbs, such as "are" and "is." For instance, "There are many reasons that she ate pie," is in passive voice. To switch to active voice, find the subject who's doing the action, "she" in this case, and switch the sentence around: "She ate pie for many reasons." Also, the main verb in the sentence is now an action verb instead of a being verb. Your major stories will have more impact if you can get a relevant photo. You can use either candid or staged shots. Pick whatever works best for the article, though candid shots can show more action. Don't forget to add captions for each photo, so the reader knows what it's about. The front page is what grabs people's attention. You want to have something relevant there. Pick something that's important to put there. You can also add stories that focus on recent or upcoming events, which most people are interested in. Once your stories are written up, they need to be edited. When editing, you want to look for things like grammar mistakes, of course. However, you also want to check that the story has good flow, the writing isn't too flowery or long (shorter sentences are usually better in journalism), and that the content makes sense.  Look for a good lead upfront that lets the reader know what's going on. Also, make sure the writer follows up with clear details.  Try letting a student edit them first, and then run them by your faculty sponsor. Don't forget to add a snazzy headline. Next, the newspaper needs to be laid out, meaning it needs to be put together into a cohesive whole. It can be a bit like a puzzle, making sure everything fits right. Sometimes you have to "jump" stories, meaning you need to continue them on another page. Also, don't forget to label the major sections, number the pages, add captions to photos, and put in headlines for articles. Once everything is edited and laid out, it's time to sent it to print. If you're distributing it electronically, that may just mean changing it to a better file format, such as converting it to a blog post for Blogger or even just a PDF. If you're printing it, print it out on your school's copy machine, and fold it up. Alternatively, send the file to the local printer. Once it's done, distribute it around the school. For print editions, you may want to have stacks of newspapers all around the school that kids can pick up.
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One-sentence summary -- Hunt down stories. Talk to people. Do some digging. Write your stories. Use active voice and active verbs. Get photos with captions. Focus on the front page. Edit your stories. Hand the articles to layout. Print and distribute the paper.


Decrease the amount of sugar concentration in the food after a couple of weeks. Doing this will increase the activity at your feeder. One part sugar to five parts water or one part sugar to four parts water will dilute the mixture. When the mixture is more diluted, the hummingbirds have to come back more often.    Do not make the mixture any weaker than 1 part sugar to 5 parts water. If the food has less sugar than this, the hummingbirds will expend more energy flying to and from the feeder than they will be able to replenish by eating the food. You want to make the food strong enough that you do not constantly have to fill the feeders, but not so strong that the birds visit infrequently and you don't get to see them. Making food that is incredibly high in sugar will give the hummingbirds a high amount of energy, allowing them to go longer before eating again (so they won't be visiting your feeder as much.) If you have tried different mixtures but there are still no hummingbirds using your feeder, plant flowers that will attract hummingbirds. Here are plants that hummingbirds like: Bee Balm, Phlox, Lupine, Hollyhock, Red-Hot Poker, Columbine, Coral Bells, Foxglove, Cardinal Flower, Lantana, Salvia, Butterfly Bush, Rose of Sharon, Trumpet Vine, Trumpet Honeysuckle, Crossvine, Carolina Jessamine, Indian Pink (Spigelia).
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One-sentence summary --
Decide on the potency of the food. Plant flowers that hummingbirds like.