What’s Up is Singapore’s monthly newspaper for students, designed as a resource for the teaching and learning of English and other subjects. Our values commitment means that What’s Up doubles-up as a resource for Character & Citizenship Education. Launched in 2003, What’s Up is used in more than 50 primary and secondary schools.
Most children’s publications talk down to kids, assuming that they are not ready to learn about adult matters. On the other hand, grown-up mass media routinely undermine the efforts of teachers and parents at inculcating positive values.
What’s Up appeals to children without being childish, and introduces them to important issues without either turning them off or compromising their moral development.
How can What’s Up be used in the classroom?
Teachers have found many creative ways to use What’s Up, for subjects ranging from English to Character & Citizenship Education. To make it as convenient as possible to tap What’s Up, every issue comes with IDEAS, our online resource containing detailed activity extensions. This includes ready-to-print activity sheets, formated in A4 size.
IDEAS is categorised by subject and level, and aligned with MOE curricula. For a head start in preparing their lessons, teachers can join the IDEAS mailing list to receive a Teachers’ Guide to IDEAS days before the newspapers arrive in their schools. The Guide gives the synopses of key stories and lists the activities that will be posted on the IDEAS website.
IDEAS is not intended as the final word on how to use What’s Up, but more as a catalyst for teachers’ own thinking. For example, at the Education Ministry’s ExCEL Fest 2006, one school showcased how it used What’s Up in an innovative programme to boost even oral communication skills.
For what levels is What’s Up written?
What’s Up is written mainly for the 9-14 age range. Upper primary and lower secondary students make up the bulk of its readers. However, What’s Up avoids pitching itself too obviously at any one age group. Some schools find What’s Up suitable for their upper secondary students in academically weaker classes.
Is What’s Up too meaty for kids?
What’s Up editors believe that even primary pupils do not want stories that are childish or that talk down to them. Therefore, some stories in each issue grapple with serious, grown-up issues. (For this reason, What’s Up is used as a social studies resource, and not just for English.) However, when dealing with complicated issues, What’s Up stories are written as simply as possible.
These meaty topics in What’s Up are balanced with lighter subjects that are more popular with children and teens, such as pop stars, sports and animals. When dealing with these more appealing topics, What’s Up uses more challenging vocabulary and styles, exposing readers to more creative uses of language. Stories on these popular topics are also deliberately longer. Unlike other children’s publications, What’s Up believes that it is a mistake to pander to the TV/computer generation by limiting children to short, bite-sized stories, which do little to promote the patience and discipline required for the reading habit to take root.
How does What’s Up support CCE and NE?
Every issue contains articles that can be used as resources for CCE and NE. These include articles on government, the environment and other topics designed to awaken readers’ minds to the idea that they are stakeholders in their society and the world. Moral development and social and emotional learning are among our key goals.
Indeed, What’s Up editors’ core mission is “values-driven journalism”. For a start, this means that What’s Up will “do no harm”. We are extremely mindful of the fact that grown-up mass media often undermine the efforts of teachers and parents at inculcating positive values. What’s Up does not believe in completely insulating children from the grown-up world, but insists on the right of children to find out about adult things in ways that are psychologically healthy. Therefore, no What’s Up stories, pictures or advertisements are developmentally inappropriate for minors.
Values-driven journalism also translates into a positive mission to promote students’ social and emotional learning. What’s Up regards the news as an endless source of interesting stories that can be used to communicate positive values, subtly and creatively. Past examples include using footballer Wayne Rooney’s escapades as an opportunity to discuss anger management, pop singer Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer as a way to talk about resilience, and the response to terrorist attacks on Mumbai and London as examples of community bonding. Indeed, every major story in What’s Up is there to further some aspect of our values statement (see “Our Values“).
