Last month, I gave my students their first "fun" challenge. On the board I wrote 4 prompts. They ranged from the fantastical to the realistic, first person to third, and silly to serious. I told them nothing about them, simply allowed the kids to come back into the room from recess to see them on the board. Questions started to fly.
I explained a "word war". We already keep track every other week of how well they can read aloud for one minute working on fluency and comprehension. Now they were to get 5 minutes to continue with one of the prompts. It was one of those glorious moments when they were getting out binders and paper before I even had to ask!
At the end of five minutes the war was won by a student with 163 words. A close second, and fourth followed in the 150 range. Every student wrote over 125 words in the five minutes. Of course they wanted to share them. Immediately, I had 9 eager readers with 9 short works that were in high demand.
We've since done several of these and added things like a list of words to try to fit in, or "dare" scenarios. Long before I ever mentioned NaNoWriMo, my students were already starting to ask. "Hey, can we keep writing a whole story?"
Of course I told them, "Sure you can!" ;-)
hey! I may or may not have stalked your blog site off of the nanowrimo sac town page ;)
ReplyDeleteshould be a fun year! It's my second time trying it, and I'm not really a writer, but it's fun to switch from the mindset of a reader to one of an author!!
Yes, it is fun! Please, stalk away. I'm fine with it. Don't worry about being a "writer." Everyone is a writer. Some do it professionally, and the rest of us just do it because we want to. I hope my students come away from the experience feeling much the same way. Writing is fun and sometimes the most interesting story is the one in your own mind. :-)
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