Extra! Extra!
Altamont elementary launches the Free Read

GUILDERLAND — Maddie Kuon is an always-stirring girl of action.

When she watches TV, she jumps rope at the same time.
"She’s the fastest kid in her grade," says her mother, Terri Standish-Kuon. When her school, Altamont Elementary, has its annual fun run, said her mother, "The boys compete to see who can beat her."

No one has.
"It’s a gift," said her mother. "Maddie floats."
She also writes. "I write in a journal at night," said 9-year-old Maddie, a fourth-grader. But she never had a chance to write for a newspaper, until this year.

Audrey Pafunda, an enrichment teaching assistant at Altamont Elementary, started a school newspaper, The Altamont Free Read. The 16-page January issue was put out by a dozen fourth- and fifth-graders.
Maddie wrote an editorial for the paper that begins, "I’m writing this column because I think girls and boys should play on the same teams, especially when they’re playing on the school playground. I propose that we have mixed teams. This would encourage all kids to work together and not worry about what other people think."
"I’m an athlete," Maddie said when asked what inspired her to write the editorial. "I love to run and play games outside...I play soccer and softball, and I dance. I hope, when I’m older, to do track and field."
But something bothered Maddie in her years, since first grade, at Altamont Elementary School. On the playground, she writes, "boys and girls team up against each other too much. They’re rarely on the same teams."
She also writes, "Girls are awesome athletes!" and goes on to state some girls are as strong or stronger than boys, and some are as fast or faster than boys. "Finally, girls are smart, so they can help with the logic involved in games," writes Maddie.
She concludes, "Next time, when you’re out on the playground, think about who you’re playing with and how you can make a difference. If a girl asks to play on your team, and it’s an all-boy team, give her a chance. Let her play! It could make a big difference for everyone."

Maddie said this week that her editorial made some boys she knew realize what was happening. Since there’s snow on the ground and no playground sessions, she said, it’s too early to tell if her words will make a difference.
But, she noted, "In my classroom, it’s been working well." Boys and girls are playing a domino-stacking game together, she said.

Maddie has already thought up an editorial idea for the next issue of The Altamont Free Read. She’s going to advise kids in the lunch room to stop teasing each other and eat their lunches instead.
She’d like to be a teacher when she grows up. "I love hanging out with kids," said Maddie.

"Learn by doing"

The January issue of The Free Read is packed with news of school events, including interviews with students and descriptions of class activities. One class, for example, is learning to sing the preamble to the Constitution.

The paper also features a book review, math problems and puzzles, and news of a student basketball team and a Brownie party at the Altamont Free Library.
It also has two advice columns: "Just ask JAC!" by Jo Ann Mulligan, Abby Foreman, and Carrie Rose Mulligan, and "A Guy’s Mind" by Mike Malone and Nick Hilt.

Pafunda said the first issue was so popular that more and younger kids are requesting her help to get involved.
Pafunda had taught English to seventh-graders at Voorheesville for eight years, starting a seventh-graders’ newspaper there, so she knows that it is not only "good practice for writing" but, she said, "It brings the kids together as a community."
She left teaching because her daughter, Danielle, was ill and needed her care. Her daughter and her son, Nathan, are now grown; Nathan is an evaluator for the Department of Welfare in Pittsburgh and Danielle is a published poet who has studied and done translations "all over the world," her mother said.
"I always wanted to work with elementary-school children," said Pafunda. She began at Guilderland as an enrichment teaching assistant at Westmere Elementary, where she also started a school paper, and then moved to Altamont.
The first Altamont paper was put out by a dozen students, working largely after school. "I told them, ‘Guilderland High School has an award-winning paper. This is where you start,’" said Pafunda.

She teaches her students how to find a timely story of general interest and how to write a news lede.
"We go over the stories line by line...I ask, ‘Can you think of another word" We’ve used this word three times,’" said Pafunda. "It’s a long process."

Pafunda assembled the stories herself, adding computer graphics, running off extra issues on the school’s copying machine.
"Teachers and parents loved it. The kids are really excited about it — all buzzing," said Pafunda of the PTA-sponsored project. "I didn’t know it would be that big a thing."
She went on, "I want it to be for all the kids, not just the few who write really well."
The next edition will come out in February or March. "I’m so excited about the lead story," said Pafunda. Third-graders interviewed the school’s principal, Peter Brabant. "The kids had a good interview with him — so funny and interesting. They wrote a three-page story. It’s awesome."
Pafunda enjoys seeing the reaction to printed words. After Maddie Kuon’s editorial ran, Pafunda said, "Kids came over and talked to her. I said, ‘That’s what we’re supposed to be doing — making people think and changing their ways of doing things.’
"She was on fire with that," Pafunda recalled of Kuon writing the editorial. "She sat with me for an hour one afternoon and hammered it out."
Pafunda concluded of teaching students through news writing, "You learn by doing, not by people talking about it."