Focus Junior, the Mondadori Group brand that is a point of reference for the world of children and kids, is launching Focus Junior Academy: a project for primary and middle schools featuring free teaching laboratories introducing journalism with the aim of bringing pupils closer to the world of publishing and news.

“Following the launch of Focus Scuola, the new practical review for teachers, we are opening the doors of the editorial department of Focus Junior to children and kids during school hours to offer a fun but realistic experience of what they learn in the classroom,” said the editor of Focus Junior Sarah Pozzoli. 

This initiative will further strengthen the role of the Focus Junior brand in the educational area: from collaboration with institutions and companies to didactic programmes aimed at engaging students and parents, schools and teachers, with a wide range of activities and events that speak to the protagonist of the world of education with an innovative and appealing educational vision.

A press, digital and social campaign has been planned to support the launch of Junior Academy.

From February, in line with the brand’s philosophy of “having fun while discovering the world”, Focus Junior Academy will offer every week the opportunity for a class to visit the editorial department of Focus Junior in the Mondadori Building and to meet the editor and journalists to understand how the team works and its internal organisation. The pupils will get a “hands-on” look at the fundamentals of journalism: how to write an article, the selection of photos and images and how to lay out a magazine, the news will then be published on the web site and on social media.

From 5 W to the importance of sources and the issue of fake news, and from the sharing of a post on social media to the selection of images and headlines, the Focus Junior Academy laboratories will offer students an interactive learning experience that will enable them to try out team-working and experience the key moments in a day in the life of an editorial department.

Aspiring journalist will also have the chance to conduct interviews with “subject experts” (science, history, technology, etc.), who will make themselves available in the editorial department of Focus Junior and to meet personally the students and respond to their questions and satisfy their curiosities.

The participants will also be able to take part in the page layout of their “little magazine”, that will also be published on web site focusjunior.it in the section dedicated to schools and re-launched on the social channels of Focus Junior with the hashtag #JuniorReporter.

At the end of the lab, the pupils will receive a “Junior Reporter” certificate, while their teachers will receive a “Become a journalist” kit to continue the work done during the lab also in the classroom.

To book a Focus Junior Academy teaching laboratory, interested teachers should write to the editorial department at focusjunior@focusjunior.it.