Well, it’s an imaginary country that is on a parallel plane with the Tercero de la ESO class (Terc-Esia), taught by Spanish teacher Fernando Liroz. The capital of Western Tercesia is Ácix (A109 is our room number: when you put 109 into Roman numerals, it becomes A CIX).

Why did you decide to invent a country?

That’s an easy question to answer. We’re studying descriptive and newspaper writing. The best way to study them is by making them, right? So we decided to make newspapers.

The thing is, we don’t like the news we see on TV (in that way, we’re like Mafalda) and we prefer to invent our own. For this whole project to work, we need to decide on a series of common information, such as the name of our country, a capital, a malevolent king you would find in a fairytale (furthermore, this king is our teacher, which allows us to mess with his head), a flag, a shield, a type of currency (the terco, a stable coin: nobody can convince it to rise or fall)… Furthermore, Fernando (our teacher, not the king), took this chance to explain the differences between a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, an authoritarian state and all that.

How did you organize yourselves?

We formed groups of two to five students and each group was given the liberty to decide how they wanted their newspaper to be, the layout, their ideology, their editor, etc.

How does the teacher grade this project?

He posted a series of conditions on Moodle (or rather, a Royal Decree that he posted on the Official Múdel State Web). They were the following:

a) All newspaper projects must be finished by April 15^th: they must be presented in class. These presentations must include the different sections of your newspaper. However, you are only presenting your blueprints: we will correct them as a class and discuss what they are missing, what can be taken out, and how we can make them better. The final project will be due on Friday the 18^th.

b) A signed text, written by each member of the newspaper.

c) One of each kind of the texts we have studied: a news article, a chronic, a report, an interview, an editorial, an article, a column, and a critic. These will be graded by whether they follow the guidelines of each type of text, rather than by their content.

Each student must write at least one signed text and participate in the work they do as a group. If a person writes more than one individual text, each text will count as extra credit.

Each text written by the group as a whole will receive a grade that will be given out to all the members of the group.

Two ways:

a) Common texts: The newspaper as a whole (including the layout, structure, completion, coherency of the text, etc) and the editorial will receive one grade, which will be given out to all the members of the group.

b) Individual texts: They are graded by the following:

1. The presentation (follows the guidelines for that specific type of text, images, etc.)

2. The quality of the text: comprehension, style.

3. The draft: correct use of morphology and syntax; wide vocabulary and adequate to the content, precision…

4. The grammar.

It is also graded by the members of the other newspapers in your class, whose grading will affect 25% of your final grade. Your auto-evaluation will count for another 25% of your final grade.

Where have you found your ideas for your news articles?

Some of our news articles (the Royal Decree forbidding certain products and the invitation to the Royal Ball) were released by the “King”, and the rest of them were invented by us.

What about the images?

We found the majority of our images on the Internet, but some of them were taken by the cameras on our cell phones. They are good enough to appear in our newspaper.

Including the one taken of the King signing the Royal Decree?

Yes, that one was taken by a cell phone. However, it was edited. It’s possible to see the original shot, as well as the edited one here.

Is there more data about Western Tercesia?

Yes, it can be found in Güiquipedia.