Jennifer Tartaglione’s middle school English-language arts classroom has been a little busy lately. That’s because these Herrick students have worked hard brainstorming, collaborating, writing, filming and preparing for the launch of the school’s first-ever student-run online literary journal.
Called “The Chameleon,” the monthly journal recently went live with its first collection of student-produced written, audio, visual and illustrated stories.
The project originated as a class project, and the inaugural issue featured stories submitted by Ms. Tartaglione’s gifted ELA students. However, the student editors have since expanded the journal beyond the classroom and opened it up to all Herrick and O’Neill students. To encourage students to participate, The Chameleon plans to reward each selected student.
“We would like to give prizes to every contest winner, so students in our public relations group have been asking local businesses for gift card donations. So far, we have received gift cards from Chipotle, Aurelio's, Berto’s, and Wells Street Popcorn,” said Ceci, a seventh grader who also serves as the public relations team co-captain.
In addition, The Chameleon produced a promotional commercial and designed a logo and flyer to promote itself. Ceci added that The Chameleon invites all types of creative art submission, including traditional essays, as well as podcasts, videos and artworks. Submission guidelines are posted in the The Chameleon, and entries should be emailed to Ms. Tartaglione at jtartaglione@dg58.org.
“The Chameleon will be posting a variety of content that fits within our new theme each month,” Ceci said. “Not only will students have a chance to publish their writing pieces, but they will also get a chance to publish artwork and other forms of multimedia like podcasts.”
The first issue of The Chameleon features a “revenge” theme, so all stories connect to the idea of revenge in some way. Its second and third issues feature stories on “new beginnings” and “empowerment,” respectively.
Ceci added that students seem excited to contribute to The Chameleon.
“When told about The Chameleon, students were a bit put off by the idea of writing pieces for a literary journal. After elaborating to them about our premise and explaining to them all of the fun this journal has to offer, many were very open and excited to start creating entries for the journal,” she said.
Read The Chameleon at https://dg58students.wixsite.com/thechameleon.