Consistently produce a high-quality class newspaper or maintain a class website to provide students with a place to showcase their creative writing, drawing, and technological super skills. A newspaper can easily be written and formatted using your classroom computers, and sent for printing to the school's best laser printer (pages to be hand stapled later). To generate articles, students can be assigned to interview each other in pairs, then write about each other's academic or personal achievements. Moreover, a class newspaper is an excellent forum for your students to express their viewpoints on local, state, national, and even global issues.

However, be aware of the legal limitations courts have imposed on what you and your students may say in your newspaper or website. The United States Supreme Court, in the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines,ruled that students' First Amendment free-speech rights are constitutionally guaranteed, but if the speech causes disruption, administrators and teachers can regulate or proscribe it. So, if your students encourage their peers to jeer the principal at the upcoming school assembly for failing to build a skate park at your school, that kind of speech probably won't be legally protected. It's always prudent to let your principal sneak a peek at any material that's going into a newspaper or onto a website.