SearchSure, Kid Scoop is fun. We, the Kid Scoop team, know that. We believe learning needs to be fun in order to be retained and used in real life.
But to be sure of its educational value, in 2018 and 2019 we asked teachers and their students to tell us about the Kid Scoop pages.
First, here’s how teachers and young students receive Kid Scoop content:
The weekly Kid Scoop page is published in more than 300 local community newspapers around the United States, reaching 7.5 million children ages 7-12. These community newspapers have attracted local businesses to sponsor the page as educational “partners.” Their logos are published at the bottom of each Kid Scoop page.
Kid Scoop content also appears in the monthly Kid Scoop News, a magazine published on newsprint. Kid Scoop News is underwritten by foundations focused on education. The bundles of magazines are delivered to schools in selected geographical areas often populated with low-income families in “print deserts.”
TEACHERS Talk about the Educational Value of Kid Scoop
“It motivates them to read. It provides interesting information. Students enjoy completing the activities and working together to do them.”
– Second-grade teacher T. Q., Hesperian Elementary School, San Lorenzo, California
“This is engaging, high-interest text that most students are able to read on their own. Those who struggle to read it still try because they are motivated to do so.”
– Third-grade teacher A. P., Searles Elementary, Union City, California
“Most of our children do not have magazines or high-interest books at home. Kid Scoop News provides our students with fresh content they can mark up along with activities that are engaging. My third graders love taking it in their backpacks as a source of reading material, a paper source, [as] many of our families have very limited technology or internet access at home.”
– Third/Fourth-grade teacher E.L., Albert Biella Elementary, Santa Rosa, California
“My fourth-grade students have learned from the non-fiction articles and commented that it is a great way to learn about current events and cultural celebrations different than what their families do.”
– C.D., Franklin Elementary School, Oakland, California
“I think it’s important students have experience with print media, specifically the newspaper format. I want my students to be able to make well-informed decisions and form opinions as adults based on facts. Being able to experience reading a newspaper that is at their level is an essential step towards that goal.”
– Fourth-grade teacher K.S., Hillside Elementary School, San Leandro, California
“My students LOVE Kid Scoop! Their conversations about articles promote good language practice and thoughtful comments. What’s great also is that there is something for every student to read, work on, and enjoy!”
– Fourth-grade teacher D.K., Bahia Vista Elementary, San Rafael, California
Take a close look at how a Kid Scoop page is constructed for educational value. (We’ll bet you do the Word Search, too!)
The Kid Scoop pages are created by Vicki Whiting. Years ago, she began teaching third-grade in Sonoma, California. As a young teacher, Vicki discovered that standard reading materials weren’t helping her struggling readers. So, she created fun puzzles with “secret codes” that that helped them decode words. She turned dry textbook information into a game, a word search, fun facts, mazes or a puzzle, and the children began to love reading.
The key moment that led to professional publishing happened when she was teaching the required unit on “Community.” Vicki found the required textbook boring and generic. She asked her students, “How can we learn about our community?” The kids responded: our community newspaper! So, one day after school, she sat down at her kitchen table and created a newspaper-size page of puzzles and games on the theme of “our community.” She took her prototype to her local newspaper, the Sonoma Index-Tribune in California. She explained to the editor that her school children were part of the Sonoma community, and a page in the weekly would help them find out about it.
The newspaper editor loved the idea of children reading the weekly newspaper for their page titled “Kid Scoop.” The initial weekly page featured puzzles, games, plus reading and writing activities on the “community” theme and a scavenger hunt guide the young readers ages 7-12 to other parts of their hometown newspaper.
Vicki “tested” the first page on “community” with her own two growing boys who noticed it on the kitchen counter and pronounced it “Cool!”
Each week, the Kid Scoop newspaper page tackles something children hear floating around them but don’t understand—for example this kid’s question: “Why do we get a shot when we aren’t sick?” The topic for that Kid Scoop page: vaccinations. In this year of COVID-19, Whiting created Coronavirus pages and a Kid Scoop Coronavirus Activity and Coloring Book.
Her materials for children are informed by educational standards for each subject area, including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), fact and opinion, history, and geography activities. She mentions that her mother was also a teacher, and her late father was chief scientist at NASA early on. Her passion for learning all subjects infuses each page of her work.
“My greatest joy is writing,” Vicki says. “I love it when adults tell me they learned some ‘factoid’ from the page, and when teachers tell me ‘this was written by a teacher’—because I always imbed ‘teachable moments’ in the fun activities.”
