The News Session in Infants and Primary School Classrooms

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of the social organisation of news sessions in infants and primary classrooms. We argue that these events are essentially occasions for the initiation of pupils into aspects of school knowledge and culture, although they are ostensibly spaces in the school day where children may introduce their own topics and interests. We show, through a detailed conversational analysis of varieties of morning news events, how these activities are stage‐managed, what the nature of the children's contributions are, and how these are organised to legitimise school knowledge and to define pupil‐teacher relationships, especially the teacher as primary receiver and announcer of news. The transformation of children into pupils is seen to occur in news sessions as much as in any other classroom activity. The distinctive feature of news sessions in the first years of schooling is that these are early instruction in how the private/personal realm can be fitted to the contours of the public/official curriculum, how everyday life interests are subordinated to and appropriated by the culture of the school.