Tips for writing an article for your school magazine

Wether you’re a young aspiring journalist or you simply want to have a little bit of fun and occupy yourself with a writing task, you might want to join your school’s editorial staff and start producing your own articles for the school magazine. We compiled a list of useful tips for your purpose, so keep scrolling to find out about what it takes to write good, high quality stuff.

A school magazine is a nice outlet for kids who are interested in writing and want to prove themselves in this area. There are lots of subjects that you, as a student, can write about: reviews of new, kid-friendly movies, shows, books, games or theatre plays come to mind, but you could also talk about initiatives in your school or town – conferences, exhibitions – that could be interesting to kids, or maybe talk about school activities, like clubs and sports.

Assuming that you already made the choice of getting involved in your school magazine, if the quality of your articles is on point and you get recognition for it, you could even consider becoming a full-fledged journalist in the future.

Passion for writing is obviously an important facet of well-made articles, because who would want to put any effort in something they don’t enjoy? A good predisposition is not always enough, though, so, if you’re struggling, our goal is to make your talent in writing flourish by helping you produce informative, top tier, valuable articles.

1) Choose an interesting topic for kids your age

First of all, the theme of your article has to appeal to school students, people of your age, so select a topic that you deem fit for your target audience. If you want to know what would attract your peers, you could talk to your friends and classmates and ask them what they’re into at the moment, or maybe look into your own hobbies and evaluate if they could be of any interest for other kids as well.

2) Pick a flashy title

The title is an incredibly important part for an article, because it’s the first thing that catches your eye when you open a magazine to search for a nice read. Using a gripping, fascinating title will make your audience engaged right from the start and more willing to continue reading.

3) Do enough research

The content of your article has to be accurate and the information correct, so before grabbing the pen – or keyboard – you’ll have to dedicate some time to investigate about the topic.

4) Give a good structure to the article

The outline of an article is very simple: there’s the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. You probably already know that dividing written texts into these three sections is the norm, but let’s see what their function is anyway, for good measure:

• Introduction: here you introduce the main topic of the article. For example, if you’re writing about a new movie that just came out, first you’ll talk about the genre of the movie, the company that made it, the film director, and talk a little bit about the cast/voice actors
• Body: in the body you develop the topic by talking about it extensively. Let’s go back to the movie example: in this section of the article you’re going to narrate the plot of the movie
• Conclusion: finally, the conclusion of the article consists in your final thoughts about the subject. In the case of the movie, make some considerations, say if you would recommend it or not.

5) Be linear and use simple language

The majority of school kids doesn’t appreciate complicated, convoluted readings stuffed with incomprehensible terms, but you probably already know that. Young people, unsurprisingly, prefer simple, straight-forward texts, so stick to everyday language and develop your ideas in an orderly, linear fashion – which means one at a time.