NaNoWriMo Underway

November 2, 2010 by

NaNoWriMo Participant 2010I’m a rebel. I’m doing what I want, and ignoring the rules. Usually I’m the goody-two-shoes perfectionist, but as far as writing a manuscript was going, that wasn’t working for me.

I readily confess that I can’t remember how I ever wrote a book in the first place. Somehow I did, but as I’ve thought about writing a second manuscript, I kept returning to the feeling that it was a fluke. I didn’t feel I’d ever be able to do it again. Even restoring the mysteriously deleted companion website felt beyond me.

Then NaNoWriMo came along. November is National Novel Writing Month. This is the twelfth year of the event that encourages writers of all ages to write a 50,000-word piece of fiction by midnight November 30.

I’ve known about NaNoWriMo for several years, but never considered trying it. Just don’t feel like I have a plot in me, though I’d love to be a novelist or poet. Inspired by the special deal on Scrivener for NaNoWriMo participants though, I looked around a bit more yesterday, and I found that the rules are really a good bit looser. You can be a rebel and write nonfiction if you want. The goal is just 50,000 words of whatever. As the seed post on the Rebel forum explains, “This is a self-challenge. The REAL prize of NaNoWriMo is the accomplishment, and the big new manuscript you have at the end. Everything beyond that is icing on the cake.”

So I decided to set up a profile and try to crank out a book draft. Not sure that I will make 50,000 extra words since I have many other things I need to write this month. Still I can try. After midnight on November 1, I created a working outline, based on revisiting my first book, Designing Writing Assignments. Scrivener made this so easy. I created a bunch of folders and tucked some text inside the jotted out what I was thinking of putting there. Done.

In the wee hours of today, November 2, I collected notes and ideas from a few places to copy & paste some very rough ideas into place. That’s where the cheating part comes in. Technically, people write all new text for NaNoWriMo. For my purposes, that’s a silly restriction. I reread sections of Designing Writing Assignments last night, probably for the first time in more than a year. I realized how much of the book had been culled from things that I’d written elsewhere.

That artificially inflates my word count, I know. The thing is that I know I’ll edit it back down as I make all that pasted stuff fit in properly. Even though I know my draft is nothing but a collection of jottings and pastings, it feels remarkable to have collected 12,263 words of stuff. I can actually believe book in my head.

It’s only been two days, but so far NaNo has helped me remember how to write a longer work. And I’ve been freewriting like a fiend—I have the most typo-filled mess ever, but I typed things down. I gave my permission not to be to clean and neat. I just want to gather a bunch of text. I can edit later. If I do nothing else, I’ve accomplished a great deal.

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Do You Remember Your High School Lit Class?

October 29, 2010 by

On NCTE’s Connected Community, James Wilson responded to the discussion about multicultural literature, lamenting that “the focus on multicultural literature over the last 3 decades has resulted in an inability to teach the classics of the Western tradition. Few of my college freshmen have even heard of Faulkner and Steinbeck, much less read them.”

I understand Wilson’s frustration, but I learned long ago not to believe every word students report about their exposure to authors and literature. Their reports are more likely to be based on what they remember—things that made a strong impression for some reason. Sometimes that’s because they hated every word of text that they had been forced to march through. Sometimes it’s because they loved the text.

Ask me what I read in high school, admittedly a very long time ago—but even fresh after graduation I doubt I’d recall the details. In 12th grade English lit, for instance, I could tell you that I read Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Macbeth, and “On Looking into Chapman.” Why? I remember hating Beowulf as endlessly dry and boring. I had to do a presentation on the “Wife of Bath,” where I was expected to come up with a costume out of no where. I had to use the nurse’s cape from my elementary school Halloween costume. I felt like an idiot. Macbeth I think I recall because my teacher must have liked it. I remember her reading aloud passages with a lot of theatrics, especially regarding bloody hands.

The most random thing on the list is Keats. My teacher also had a thing for precis and summaries, instilling a lifelong hatred of them in me, for what it’s worth. For some inexplicably nerdy reason, I wrote my precis of “On Looking into Chapman” in rhyming couplets. She read it to the class, without my permission, and I was made fun of for the next 2 weeks.

Bottom line: The problem isn’t “classics” versus multicultural literature. It’s that all too often students don’t have memorable experiences with literature. Frequently, that’s because they’re marched through the canon in an attempt at comprehensive coverage. Reading literature should be more than that, but many times, it isn’t.

Memorable experiences with whatever literature they read will create lifelong readers — and that’s how to get students who read widely and deeply. You can never possibly teach every great text, but you can teach in ways that make people want to read more widely.

[ I don’t accept that we have to choose between multicultural and classic literature. Multicultural literature is in most cases also what I’d defend as classic literature, but that’s a different topic.]

Filed under Literature

38 Ways to Write about Writing

October 16, 2010 by

Writing writing writing...The second National Day on Writing is nearly upon us. Wednesday, October 20, is the day established by the National Council of Teachers of English to celebrate the many kinds of writing that people everywhere do.

Chances are that the students you teach are already writing and already talking about writing each and every day. What can you do to make this one day stand out?

NCTE has some celebration ideas, and the National Writing Project has gathered details on how many sites plan to celebrate. Last year, there were school-wide celebrations at places like Eastern Michigan University and Boston University, special acuities in college writing centers and writing program offices such as the University of Minnesota and Arizona State University, and hundreds of people adding submissions to the National Gallery of Writing like these writers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The New York Times Learning Network blog even suggested writing activities for students.

For a classroom-based celebration that can fit in with whatever theme or topic you are teaching, try asking students to write about writing. No matter what they are doing, they can reflect on the writing they are doing, the strategies they use, and the different experiences they have had as writers.

The resources below come from a variety of sources, but all ask students to think about themselves as writers. Though some are framed for specific projects (e.g., writer’s blogs) they can easily be adapted and customized. Just share the question and ask students to discuss it in whatever way you like.

Whatever you choose to do, I’d love to hear about your celebration. Please let me know about your plans in the comments.

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by dbdbrobot]

 

Filed under classroom activities, Teaching Composition Tagged with , , ,

Photo Writing Prompt: A Voice From the Past

October 7, 2010 by

My senior portrait This prompt is inspired by the piece that I wrote about my high school yearbook photo back in August 2009 for Laurie Halse Anderson’s for Write Fifteen Minutes a Day (WFMAD) and that I submitted to Bedford/St. Martin’s Gallery of Writing.

For this project, students choose their own photos, based on the kind of project they are completing. Here are some options students can use:

  • Choose your own school picture or yearbook photos or school pictures, and write an autobiographical memoir.
  • Find a photo of a famous historical figure or contemporary figure, and write your comments after completing some research on the person and the events in his or her life.
  • Use the photo of a family member, and write a biographical reflection, informed by your interactions with that family member.
  • Find a random photo on Flickr, and write a fictional piece about the imagined thoughts of the person in the photo.

A Voice From the Past. What would the person in the photo you have chosen say to you? What would that voice from the past tell you. Your job is to create a text from the perspective of the person in the photo. She will speak to the future, sharing something about things she has learned and what she has done.

Try freewriting on one of these questions to get started:

  • What choices would the person in the picture tell you to make?
  • What would the person regret that was happening when the picture was taken?
  • What would the person look back on with a smile?
  • What would the person wish could be different?
  • What advice or warnings would the person give you?
  • What would the person see now if she (or he) looked back at the photo?
  • What secrets would the person confess now about life then?
  • What does the person in the photo not realize yet?
  • What would the person tell you about goals and dreams?
  • What was important to the person in the photo? Has it changed?

 

Filed under classroom activities, Teaching Composition

50 Teaching Links You May Have Missed

October 6, 2010 by

FerrisWheelI gathered a collection of over 50 links for the ProfHacker Teaching Carnival 4.2. You can find links to teaching in a variety of disciplines at the college and university level, plus links to some humorous articles I found.

There are details at the end of the post on how to suggest your own links (or those of your colleagues) for the November Teaching Carnival, which will be hosted by .

Oh, and the “Right This Way to the Egress” header? Yep, completely inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching.

[Image: FerrisWheel by twoblueday, on Flickr]

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Photo Writing Prompt: A Reflection on Censorship

September 27, 2010 by

September 25–October 2 is Banned Books Week (BBW), so I’ve chosen a photo related to censorship and book banning. This post is the first of what, I hope, will become a regular feature, assuming feedback is positive.

Memorial to Nazi book-burning Reflection. What do you see in the glass? This image (click to see enlarged version) shows the reflection of visitors to a Memorial built in the Bebelplatz, the square where Nazi followers burned about 20,000 books found to be “Un-German” on May 10, 1933.

The memorial itself is a sheet of glass inserted into the cobblestone plaza. Visitors can look through the glass to see a lighted, underground room lined with enough empty bookshelves to hold approximately 20,000 books.

Imagine yourself as one of the visitors to the memorial. Write a diary entry, blog entry, or short personal essay from the perspective of that visitor. Your goal is to capture what one of the people reflected on the glass is thinking.

Try freewriting on one of these questions to get started:

  • What emotions did the empty bookcases stir for you when you looked through the glass? Why?
  • Who else is reflected in the glass? Describe how someone else reacted to the memorial and how their response compared to yours.
  • Why did you come to the memorial? Did it meet your expectations?
  • How does the underground placement of the memorial affect its impact?
  • Describe the conversation you had with someone else reflected in the glass. What did you say to each other?
  • If you could create a memorial that peered through a window to another moment, what moment would you choose and how would you represent it?

 

[Memorial to Nazi book-burning by Lukas, on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed]

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More Banned Books Week Resources

September 24, 2010 by

Muggles for Harry Potter PinOne of my cherished possessions is a Muggles for Harry Potter pin from 1999. Eric Crump gave it to me, having picked it up from the NCTE librarian. I hadn’t read a word of J. K. Rowling’s first book, but I was willing to join the anti-censorship campaign.

I wish all adults understood that while they are responsible for helping their family choose books, they aren’t responsible for telling the rest of us what we can read. Since the world doesn’t seem to work that way, we talk about banned books and the problems of censoring ideas in the classroom.

When I posted a list of Top 10 Things to Do with a Banned Book earlier this week, I was accused on the English Companion Ning of being biased and working to indoctrinate students. Sigh .  .  .

I guess I do have a bias: people should be allowed to choose what they read. I fundamentally believe that students and families should be allowed to reject a text that doesn’t fit with their beliefs and values. But no one should be allowed to make that decision for everyone else.

I advocate choice, and I do so by talking about banned books. I want students to know that books have been banned. I want them to know how and why they get banned so that they understand censorship. And yes, I want them to realize that individuals should be free to read what they want.

Since I posted my Top 10 Things, some additional resources have been released. Some, unfortunately, have been created in response to a sweeping call for censorship by Dr. Wesley Scroggins. If you want to learn more about censorship or to find some additional classroom resources, check out these resources:

Filed under classroom activities, Literature Tagged with ,

Top 10 Things to Do with a Banned Text

September 20, 2010 by

Banned Book Week 2010 Poster from the American Library AssociationHow will you discuss Banned Books Week (BBW) this year? It’s easy to find ideas for displays and activities for libraries. The problem is that most of them are too general or would be difficult to use in the writing classroom.

To solve that problem, I began brainstorming ways that students can think critically about censorship. The result is this collection of projects that focus primarily on argument and persuasion. When possible, I tried to think of options that allow students to speak their own minds, for or against limiting access to a text.

So here are the top ten things to do with a banned book—other than read it, of course!

  1. [Mock Trial] Put the author of the banned book on trial (or a character from the text). Let Gustave Flaubert’s experience with Madame Bovary be your inspiration. You can adapt Mock Trial resources and the ALA’s suggestions for conducting a challenge hearing for the project.
     
  2. [PSA] Make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) that supports the text and the freedom to read (or BBW). You can create a video, audio, or slide show PSA. There are audio examples at the ALA site. Your announcement can focus on BBW as a whole or might be a campaign for the freedom to read a particular text.
     
  3. [Character Diary] Write a diary entry from the perspective of a character from a banned text. The character may be one whose actions are cited when people talk about banning the book or someone else in the text. There’s a List of Ten Character Diary Prompts you can use if you want to extend this activity.
     
    Adapt this writing prompt for students: Someone wrote the story of your life, and the book has been banned from _____ because of _____. Write your reaction as a diary entry—Are you shocked? pleased? upset? Do you think the banning was fair?
     
  4. [Warning] Create a warning label for a banned text. Examine that appearance and wording of warnings that are added to movie and television shows, cigarettes, and prescription drug commercials and ads. Have students then create a label that would be placed on the cover of the text. The label can be realistic or satirical. Here’s an example for Huck Finn and some additional tips on designing warning labels you can use to supplement discussion.
     
    Introduce the Warning Label Generator to add some play to the project. The images may not match properly, but the tool is fun. And if students think no one would ever put a warning on a book, you can share “Ratings, warning labels don’t belong on books.”
     
  5. [Testimonial] Write a testimonial letter or blog entry that explains why you support (or don’t) a banned text. Your goal is to convince readers to read (or not read) the text. Alternately, you can argue that the text be kept (or not kept) in the school or public library or read by students in a particular class.
     
    Your testimonial needs to personal, based on your experiences and beliefs. This is your chance to make a personal statement about why the text should (or shouldn’t) be read.
     
  6. [Language of Persuasion] Choose a statement for or against banned text, and examine how the language contributes to the argument. These questions can guide your analysis:
     

    • How are specific examples from the text used? When and to what effect?
    • What about euphemisms — how do the authors sugarcoat or generalize their messages with their word choice?
    • What about their sense of audience? Do they understand their readers? How can you tell?

    After you’ve examined the language, compose a blog entry, podcast, or video presentation that analyzes the authors’ language, explaining what you can conclude about their goals, their sense of audience, and their ideas on the issues.
     

  7. [A Fable] Have each student brainstorm a list of things that might happen if a text is banned from a library or classroom. You can focus on a specific text or just banned books in general. Next, students share their lists with the class, and identify the items that recur and those that seem particularly significant or surprising. Ask each student to choose an item to focus on, and write a fable that tells the story of the banned text and ends with or discusses the item chosen from the class lists. The moral of the fable will be related to whether books should (or shouldn’t) be banned.
     
  8. [Biggest Myth] What is the biggest myth that you’ve heard in the media about a banned book? Write a letter to the editor, to the television show, or to the general public that explains why you disagree with the coverage they have given to the myth you’ve identified.
     
    In your letter, describe the myth that you’ve heard and read, explain why you believe the assertion is untrue, and suggest reasons that the myth has developed. Identify and share more realistic explanations. Persuade your readers to change the way that they talk about the banned text.
     
  9. [Investigative Report] Describe the book banning in the form of an investigative report—the kind of piece you’d hear on 60 Minutes, Dateline, or 20/20. Start with a question or issue that the banning focuses on, explain all of the facts and details that you uncover in relationship to the issue, and conclude with the insights you gain as a result of your investigation.
     
    Like an investigative report on TV, your report should stir your reader to some kind of implicit action as a part of the conclusion — the point might be to stir the reader’s emotions, to inspire the reader to challenge the banning, or to suggest that the reader take an active role in how books are chosen for the library or classroom.
     
  10. [Censor It] Identify passages from a banned text that have been cited for using inappropriate language. Have students work in small groups to rewrite the sections. Ideally each group should have a different section of text to work with. Collect the two versions of the passages. Share the rewritten version of each passage with the whole class first, and then reveal the original version. Talk about what is lost (or not) in the censored versions.
     
    Use the activity to talk about how rewriting, expurgation, and omission are used as a way to talk about banned texts. Class discussion can include:
     

    • Radio versions of songs that get air play versus original versions with explicit lyrics.
    • Beeping out words in audio and video broadcasts.
    • Blocking images with a black box or blurred area in television broadcasts.
    • Adding a “clean” voiceover for inappropriate words said in a movie played on television (e.g., “shoot” for “shit”).
    • Cutting scenes and events from a movie before playing it on broadcast television.
    • The name of the CBS sitcom referred to as “Stuff My Dad Says” when spoken and often shown in print as $#*! My Dad Says. (The show based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says and the related book Sh*t My Dad Says.)

For some specific lesson plans, see ReadWriteThink’s calendar entry for Banned Books Week. Check out my Bedford Bits post for Persuasion, Argument, and Book Banning in 10 Steps.

 

Filed under Children's/YA Lit, classroom activities, List of Ten, Literature, Teaching Composition Tagged with , , , ,

6 News Stories to Connect to Orwell’s 1984

August 31, 2010 by

Big brother poster by anarchosyn Big brother really is watching you. Today we accept a certain amount of oversight by government and business as a part of daily life.

Students know about all the surveillance cameras that follow them as they move about in the world. They realize the U.S. government tracks details on their income and health. They know that online vendors know what they buy and everything they looked at before they decide. They have all heard stories of someone who gets a ticket because of an act caught by a traffic light and toll booth camera.

Still, they can bring a skepticism to class when they read George Orwell’s 1984. Seriously, we could never be watched that closely, right?

Several recent news stories may make the answer to that question less certain. Have students read and discuss any one of the stories as an introduction or supplement to 1984, or arrange students in small groups, having each read a different article and then present the information and their comment to the class.

  1. Someone’s watching Granny cook her eggs. A new video surveillance system watches over senior citizens, monitoring everything from when they get out of bed to whether their eggs are fully cooked.
     
  2. Aunt Martha’s been in the bathroom for 30 minutes. Motion sensors track senior citizens around their homes, sending text messages to family when a possible problem arises. RFID chips track medicine and the inventory in kitchen cabinets.
     
  3. The scanner says you missed class today. Students must flash an ID card near the university lecture hall entrance to register their class attendance. The resulting information feeds into class participation grades.
     
  4. Alert! Preschooler has left the building! Thanks to a radio frequency tag in special basketball jersey-type shirts preschoolers wear, teachers and administrators can quickly tell when a student wanders off campus. The system tracks students at recess, in the cafeteria, and even in the bathroom.
     
  5. Why is Will still on the school bus? RFID chips and barcodes on student and faculty IDs and various pieces of equipment will allow a high school to track where people and things are at all times if funding is awarded. If someone’s missing or out of place, they can take action immediately.
     
  6. Your recycling bin may tattle on you if you throw away too many plastic bottles or cardboard boxes. In Cleveland, Ohio, RFID chips and barcodes will tell garbage collectors how often you put out the recycling. If it’s not often enough, your trash will be searched and you can be fined $100 if recyclables are found.

 

Student discussion of the articles can be guided with these questions:

  • What freedoms or privacy rights does the system affect?
  • What is the benefit of the system?
  • How would you feel if you were monitored by the system?
  • Would you feel comfortable using the system to monitor someone else?
  • How do the benefits balance with the loss of privacy? Is the loss worth the cost?

If students read and discuss several of the articles, additional questions can ask them to compare and synthesize the pieces:

  • Notice that the targets of these programs are either students or senior citizens. What do you make of the focus of these systems?
  • What other ways are monitoring systems used in America? How do the systems in these articles compare to them?
  • Create a scale that outlines how you feel about tracking and monitoring. What should always be monitored? What should never be monitored? What falls in-between? Explain how you decide where to place things on the scale.

Note that these articles would also make a great supplement to M. T. Anderson’s Feed.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by anarchosyn]

Filed under British Literature, Children's/YA Lit, classroom activities Tagged with , , ,

Community Building Classroom Activities: A Round-Up

August 30, 2010 by

Community managers by luc legayHow do you take a group of individual, unrelated people and connect them in a supportive community quickly?

It’s a question teacher face at the beginning of every term. Here are some answers.

Begin by establishing reasons for students to connect. You can’t wave a magic wand and build community. It takes work. What’s the Trick to Building Community in the Classroom? outlines four lessons that lay the ground work for connections, no matter what class you teach or what other community building activities you use.

In the writing classroom, personal stories can be the best way to build quick connections. The writing task can make the connection, as explained in Building Community in 15 Minutes a Day. As students embark on a writing experience, they can build fast connections by talking about their challenges and successes together.

In a similar way, ask students to talk about their work as writers—their best work, their pet peeves, and their biggest challenges. Five Ways to Learn about Students This Fall outlines specific activities that ask students to share their history as writers in this way. Lesson plans for Weekly Writer’s Blogs, Technology Autobiographies, and Extended Metaphors about Writing encourage students to build a community of writers as they reflect on their own experiences.

Tend the fledgling connections writers make with activities that talk explicitly about community. Whether they look at communities outside the classroom or those at school, such discussions can ensure you students continue to Build Community After the First Day.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by luc legay]

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