For the 2023/2024 school year, numerous initiatives aimed at teachers, students and families have been organised. All conceived by Focus, Focus Scuola, Focus Junior and Focus Wild, the brand leaders in publishing in Italy for the Mondadori Group, which, once again this year, are confirmed as promoters of innovative educational proposals for the school world.

With the start of the school year, the Focus Scuola website will, as always, be available to teachers with news, insights and useful tips to make their lessons more engaging and inclusive.

The Focus Scuola Newsletter, curated by the editorial staff of Focus Junior in collaboration with a team of specialised, professional journalists, is back. The Newsletter, which has more than 20,000 Italian teachers already subscribed to it, is aimed at primary and secondary school teachers. The main goal is to provide ideas and playful and innovative proposals to get the students more involved during lessons. Each week Focus Scuola Newsletter offers topical insights for lectures and group work, ideas for science labs, STEAM worksheets to make science a more exciting subject, in-depth features explained in a simple way to explain complicated topics, and features on innovative teaching methods and classroom management thanks to advice from top experts. In addition to being able to preview all Focus initiatives for the school world, teachers will also have the opportunity to share class projects with the entire registered teacher community.

Here is the link to subscribe to the Newsletter.

Starting in October, the Academies by Focus Junior, Focus and Focus Storia which, every year, involve hundreds of classes and thousands of students, will resume.
Focus Junior’s Journalism Academy, aimed at young people in primary and secondary schools and in which more than 500 classes and over 10,000 students took part last year, includes a three lessons course dedicated to media and environmental education. The first two events explain how to create a magazine, how to write an article, and how to recognise fake news in a simple and fun way, while the third deals with climate change and ecological transition. The goal of the Focus Junior Academy is to encourage critical thinking and inform the youngsters on two topics that are crucial today in order to become informed citizens. The Academy is organised in collaboration with the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (Cicap) and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Cmcc).

“Thanks to the Academies’ initiative the editorial staff of Focus Junior help schools and teachers throughout Italy to explain complex issues through engaging storytelling that captures the attention of the youngest learners,” said Sarah Pozzoli, Director of Focus Junior. “We journalists have the same goal as teachers: to raise future citizens who can think critically and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle”, she concluded.

The Academies of Focus and Focus Storia, aimed at students in secondary schools and in which more than 100 classes and over 2,500 students participated last year, involve a course of four events during which young people step into the shoes of actual editors for each issue, actively participate in source and image research, attend editorial meetings, and are involved in analysing the commissioned work and publishing content on the various social channels, where their proposals and ideas will be added and promoted.

Raffaele Leone, Director of Focus, thus reiterates the importance of establishing synergistic collaboration with schools: “The school world is doubly important to us: on the one hand because we feel that teachers and their educational mission are close to our hearts, and on the other hand because discovering a dialogue with the new generation, who increasingly keep themselves informed through additional tools and channels besides print media, is a strong motivation for us. We’re dealing with a positive two-way exchange: showing how to make a science magazine gets young people involved in the topics covered, in reading, in researching sources. Seeing how they draw on tools other than print prompts us to create formats and languages that are more suited to them. We can say that Focus is one of the most innovative tools on the market in terms of dissemination and multimedia, with its magazines, website, social media platforms, podcasts, Academies and live events that make the annual Focus Live a success,” concluded the Director.

Completing the Focus offer for schools for the 2023/2024 school year is a great new feature: the Focus School Camp, innovative educational projects aimed at all Italian schools on all levels, representing a revolutionary way of thinking about and experiencing educational trips. A comprehensive new proposal that starts with classroom training, moves through practice during camp, and ends with the development of a final digital project that will be presented in class and posted on the Focus School Camp digital bulletin board. The themes of the School Camp by Focus Junior, Focus Wild, Focus and Focus Storia are varied, and designed specifically to meet any educational needs of different school classes and age groups of students.

After the great success of two editions of the Focus Junior Summer Camp, the Focus School Camp is again collaborating with Sunnylife, the market-leading tour operator in the school trip and summer camp sector.

Finally, teachers will also be able to subscribe to the Focus brand magazines this year using their Carta del Docente and, from mid-October, the Bonus Scuola returns, allowing educational institutions to apply for a subsidy for subscriptions and magazines purchased during the school year by making a specific request to: sgc@mondadori.it.