Focus Junior

Focus Junior, the Mondadori Group brand that is a point of reference for the world of children and kids, is launching Focus Junior Academy: a project for primary and middle schools featuring free teaching laboratories introducing journalism with the aim of bringing pupils closer to the world of publishing and news.

“Following the launch of Focus Scuola, the new practical review for teachers, we are opening the doors of the editorial department of Focus Junior to children and kids during school hours to offer a fun but realistic experience of what they learn in the classroom,” said the editor of Focus Junior Sarah Pozzoli. 

This initiative will further strengthen the role of the Focus Junior brand in the educational area: from collaboration with institutions and companies to didactic programmes aimed at engaging students and parents, schools and teachers, with a wide range of activities and events that speak to the protagonist of the world of education with an innovative and appealing educational vision.

A press, digital and social campaign has been planned to support the launch of Junior Academy.

From February, in line with the brand’s philosophy of “having fun while discovering the world”, Focus Junior Academy will offer every week the opportunity for a class to visit the editorial department of Focus Junior in the Mondadori Building and to meet the editor and journalists to understand how the team works and its internal organisation. The pupils will get a “hands-on” look at the fundamentals of journalism: how to write an article, the selection of photos and images and how to lay out a magazine, the news will then be published on the web site and on social media.

From 5 W to the importance of sources and the issue of fake news, and from the sharing of a post on social media to the selection of images and headlines, the Focus Junior Academy laboratories will offer students an interactive learning experience that will enable them to try out team-working and experience the key moments in a day in the life of an editorial department.

Aspiring journalist will also have the chance to conduct interviews with “subject experts” (science, history, technology, etc.), who will make themselves available in the editorial department of Focus Junior and to meet personally the students and respond to their questions and satisfy their curiosities.

The participants will also be able to take part in the page layout of their “little magazine”, that will also be published on web site focusjunior.it in the section dedicated to schools and re-launched on the social channels of Focus Junior with the hashtag #JuniorReporter.

At the end of the lab, the pupils will receive a “Junior Reporter” certificate, while their teachers will receive a “Become a journalist” kit to continue the work done during the lab also in the classroom.

To book a Focus Junior Academy teaching laboratory, interested teachers should write to the editorial department at focusjunior@focusjunior.it.

Focus Junior –  the Mondadori brand conceived to satisfy the natural curiosity of children and kids will be available, from tomorrow 16 June, to its young readers with a completely new layout for the print, digital and web versions.

The new Focus Junior has been totally redesigned and the changes can be seen starting from the cover of the magazine, with higher impact images and a new logo. On the content side, in addition to the classic topics related to nature, science, animals and history, more space is given to issues of relevance to young people: technology, behaviour, feelings, sport, adventure, mystery.

The key words are curious and fun, thanks to the extra space devoted to games (also in English), jokes and cartoons; multimedia, with extra content (photos and videos) linked to the magazine’s articles; current affairs, with the new section Junior News, dossiers  and background detail to help kids understand the world; innovative, with greater attention to everything connected with new technology.

Another very significant new feature is the Reporter Junior initiative, which enables readers to submit photos, articles, stories, becoming authentic protagonists in the creation of content, both for the magazine and the web.

“The thought that underlies this profound process of renewal,” underlined the editor Sarah Pozzoli, “is that Focus Junior must just be a magazine or a web site, but a brand consisting of a magazine, the web, social network, initiatives and events around the country and cooperation with schools. Consequently, we decided to make a fundamental change in our approach: we have to go where the readers are, rather than waiting for them to come to us. This is why the editorial team is working non-stop to select the best for today’s kids and to intercept their needs. Our aim is to stimulate curiosity and to create engagement: to be a part of the Focus Junior world is to enter a di community that can help you and provide additional tools to become an aware adult.”

With a view to increased synergies and integration between print and the web, also FocusJunior.it has been completely renewed. The site has been updated both in terms of layout, making it more immediate and accessible, and in terms of content, with new areas including schools, animals, as well as scientific and technological background and authentic interactive workshops. The site is also totally responsive to provide a optimal  experience also on mobile devices, increasingly popular among the young, with a strong interactive focus that will enable users to send their contributions directly and have a direct channel to the editorial department of Focus Junior.

The launch of the new Focus Junior will be supported by a media campaign on kids’ TV on both satellite and digital terrestrial channels.

Following the success of previous editions, also this year, the magazine Focus Junior and the Polytechnic University of Milan have joined together for the “Tutti insieme all’università” (“All Together at University”) project which is aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 13: five appointments offering an opportunity to participate, some years in advance, in real university lectures of big scientific topics with some of the best teachers of the Polytechnic University of Milan.

The lessons, that will take place in the months of February and March, have been designed to respond to kids’ curiosity using innovative, amusing and stimulating content that will help them to discover the world in a new and intelligent way that is entirely consistent with the educate-by-entertaining approach that guides all the activities of the Focus Junior brand.

The initiative starts on 27 February with two appointments, at 10.30 and at 12.00: practical experiments in physics will lead the kids through the science fiction and reality of the films of the Star Wars saga, and a look at some of the most recent technological inventions.

The lessons will continue on 5 March, with the excitement of robots, on 2 April with the discovery of the engines of the future, on 9 April with the design techniques for paper jewellery that respects the environment, and concluding with a final lesson on 14 May on how videogames work by deconstructing three of the most popular titles.

While the kids are “studying”, their parents will be given a guided tour of the Polytechnic University of Milan campus.

Participation is free, with a maximum of 400 places for each lesson.

All you have to do is sign up on the Polytechnic University of Milan web site, in the section devoted to events: www.eventi.polimi.it.