'˜I should read The Star more'

Pupils at Hallam School are taking part in the reader passport. Picture: Andrew Roe

In total, 180 pupils at Hallam Primary School, Hallam Grange Crescent, Lodge Moor have been taking part in our Reader Passport challenge over the last few weeks.

We spoke to three of them – and they told us what they like about the paper the most.

Matteo Aldag Caparrelli, aged 10, said: “I wasn’t reading the newspaper before, but since it’s been delivered here I’ve thought that I should be reading it every morning because it delivers interesting facts that you didn’t know before.

“I just looked at the photos before, but now I understand how important the text is. If you just look at the pictures though you don’t really understand what it’s about, but if you read the story you find it’s interesting.”

Ella Fletcher, 11, spoke about some of the different tasks which she has been asked to complete as part of the challenge, along with her classmates, including one task which required them to think about which of our headlines are the most important and why.

She said: “I think the most important news headline is the front page one because the most important story is on the front page.

“We’ve also been writing down what new information we have found in the paper that we couldn’t have found out anywhere else. We have liked reading about things that we will think about on an everyday basis, or things that happen at the other side of Sheffield because otherwise we wouldn’t know anything about it.”

The youngsters have also been using The Star in their English lessons.

Henry Goodacre, 10, said: “We’ve looked at different articles and how they are used differently. We looked at a sports article and how that is different to the letters page.

“So they are put in different columns and styles. It’s helped us because we’ve gathered up a lot of language which we can use in future writing.

“I did read The Star before this challenge because my dad reads it.

“I think The Star is interesting. We looked at lots of different articles and they were clear to understand.”

Saying that she would now read the Star more regularly, Ella added: “ I like it. I like that they get all the information they can and they don’t write what they think about things, they leave you to decide what you think.

“It’s fun to see how people are doing things that get them in to the newspaper.