Producing a Newsletter
Examples
Newsletters are
used by schoolteachers and administrators to inform parents of activities
that have occurred and to notify them of upcoming events. School
newsletters are often produced by the principal or PTA. Classroom
newsletters can be produced by the teacher and/or the students.
Create an
online newsletter for a week in your classroom. Think about all the
activities that have taken place this week and consider the important events
coming up next week. Using Front Page, create an attractive online
newsletter of two pages that you can also send home to the parents of your
students to inform them of these activities and events.
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Create a
table to hold the information. |
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Masthead |
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Volume
Date |
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Text & graphics |
Text & graphics |
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Begin with a
9 cell table in 3 rows. |
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Merge the
cells in top 2 rows to use for the masthead. |
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Make the
borders invisible. |
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Set the width
middle cell of the third row at 2 percent. |
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Place the
text of the newsletter in the columns. |
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Use
appropriate graphics to enhance newsletter |
Hints for
School Newsletters
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Use only two
or three fonts, preferably related. |
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Write brief stories in plain
language. |
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Include student names
(first only online) in stories whenever possible.
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Include parent names to thank
them for contributions of time and/or materials and to recognize their
involvement in school activities. |
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Use photos (if you have parent
permission). |
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Provide a calendar of upcoming
events or important assignments. |
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PROOFREAD!
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SPELL CHECK!
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Use the same color paper (for
hard copy) for each issue so that it is easily recognized and parents
become accustomed to looking for it. |
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Publish or send the newsletter
home on the same day each week. |
For Hard
Copy Newsletters that you send home (not required, this is FYI)
Print Shop,
ClarisWorks, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, and Adobe PageMaker are
some of the many kinds of software that can be used to produce each issue of
the newsletter. Print Shop, PageMaker, and Publisher have ready-made
templates, which you can customize, however you may not always have access
to these tools. Not to worry! Creating a newsletter in Word or ClarisWorks
is not difficult. Just follow these steps and you will have an attractive,
professional newsletter to send home to parents.
I found that Newsletter Wizard is loaded on many of the computers in the
college labs. To use this go to File, click on New, click on Publications,
then on Newsletter Wizard. This will open a template that you can
customize and save as your own document. Just replace each section with
your own material. However, for simple newsletters I prefer to use Word and
the table function.
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Open a new document.
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Create a masthead by
selecting a font size large enough to fill the page with the title of your
newsletter. Center the title. A graphic or logo inserted on one side or
either side of the title is attractive.
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Add a line in 12 or
14-point type under the title to identify the publishing organization,
volume number, and date.
This can be contained in a 1 x 1 cell table.
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Select the Table tool on
the toolbar and choose two (three at most) columns. When your newsletter
is complete, go to TABLE Properties, click on Borders and
Shading and choose NONE or the color white to eliminate the
lines from your document. Type your copy as you want it to appear in
columns. Insert a table and create columns for page 2. You can save
the document as a template to customize for each issue of your
newsletter, which you will save by date.
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To write a headline above each
story increase the font size by one-third. For example, if you are using
a 12-point font, make the headline 16 point. Headlines should be
highlighted with bold type.
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Insert graphics or photos using
the insert button on the toolbar or selecting Insert and then Picture.
Either select a picture from the clipart library or go to file and browse
for the image you want to use.
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It is best if the newsletter is
2 pages printed back to back. The back page of the newsletter will have
the same columns as the front, but no masthead.
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