PUPILS at an East Ham primary school are training to be news hounds by producing their own newspaper. The second edition of the paper hit the playground of Hartley Primary School packed full of articles about what s going on. The Hartley Chronicle s fron

PUPILS at an East Ham primary school are training to be news hounds by producing their own newspaper.

The second edition of the paper hit the playground of Hartley Primary School packed full of articles about what's going on.

The Hartley Chronicle's front page is devoted to a review of an extraordinary performance about an enormous turnip by the nursery and reception class at the Harvest Assembly.

There was the breaking news that times of school lunches have changed and an in-depth interview with teacher Mr Webster.

The project is part of the school on Hartley Avenue's creative curriculum where children can choose activities ranging from cooking to chess and hockey.

But 18 students chose to join the newspaper group to get their journalistic juices flowing.

Year 5 and 6 pupils work on stories in groups and have learnt how to lay-out a newspaper on a computer.

For each issue they take a vote on who is going to be the editor for that month.

The students have also set up a question box so that other pupils can post their problems or ideas for the newspaper.

Parvithra Sabu, 9, said: "The best thing is working as a team and writing articles."

Ten-year-old Athityan Jeyadevan said that his favourite story was about a trip to the British Library where the class took part in activities to do with words and writing. "We want to meet the people, write and really enjoy it", added ten-year-old Munirba Choudhary.

And when asked how many of the class would like to work on a newspaper when they are older, 18 hands quickly shot up in the air.