After studying a particular topic in history, be it a local study, a national or international scene, it can be beneficial to present the topic as if a newspaper existed at that time and that different aspects of the topic, including background information on the characters and locations, as well as news as it is breaking, is published.

While some teachers might like to be more ambitious and run the newspaper to several pages a more manageable and practical one especially for the first attempt would be a one or two page production. In a class of 30-36 pupils working in pairs can produce enough material to adequately fill the two pages if articles are limited to about 50 words each.

The children might be paired off to address different aspects of the newspaper. The two people in each group might take turns to be reporters and interviewees. The teacher might draw attention to anachronisms as they arise. The idea of a newspaper itself is anachronistic but it is a vehicle in which the budding historian can clarify ideas.

One of the skills that one hopes the children will learn in the history curriculum is that of empathy, the capacity to understand and participate in the feelings and inner self of another person. Human nature differs from person to person in that each one’s experience has been different yet there is commonalty in our nature that allows each of us to empathise with another. When it comes to empathising with someone from another period in history we must be careful not to place that person in our time but to endeavour to relate ourselves to the earlier period. As the children advance through the primary school they should be better able to make sound judgements about the beliefs and motivations of people from the past.

The teacher should ensure that the children get adequate opportunities to make judgements on the fears, opinions, and motives of people in history. This exercise in producing a newspaper set in a period of history is one attempt to help the children to make that kind of judgement.

Steps in preparing a two page newspaper
1.  Brainstorm to compile a list of topics
2.  Match the children to items on the list
3.  Children discuss the topic they have been assigned
4.  They type up the first draft of their articles, including text and heading
5.  These first drafts are shared and edited - care being exercised to ensure uniformity of context
6.  Further editing and discussion might take place - two or three groups working together or as a whole class exercise.
7.  Final drafts are decided upon- spellchecked, checked for syntax , punctuation, etc.
8.  Each of the articles are copied and pasted into a single unit
9.  An agreed title is added to the newsletter. A suitable font to imply a hand-written style or an ancient script is selected
10.  The newsletter is printed. If a copy is being prepared for each member of the class it might be cheaper to use a multiple copier.

Sample topic
If the subject was the attack by the Vikings on a local monastery, for example, the attack of the Monastery of Tallaght in 811 AD, the articles might include the following.

• An account of the attack by a reporter viewing the scene
• a description of the damage and a judgement of cost and time to restore the monastery and its reinstate its activities,
• the monastery as it was before the attack with an account of the different activities carried out by the monks in the monastery,
• interviews with different people in and around the monastery describing the event as perceived by themselves,
• with an injured monk
• with the Abbot
• with monk in charge of the farm
• with a monk from the scriptorium
• with the monk in charge of the guesthouse
• with one of the local people living near the monastery
• with the local Rí about providing protection
• with an injured Viking giving the story from the side of the Vikings
• a short history of the monastery since its foundation to the date of the attack.
• Some artwork to illustrate the stories.