This was a good bit of fun. The school got a grant a few years ago to develop a reading program, I am told, and as a result their reading scores have shot up dramatically, and—surprise!—The reading shows up improving the writing. I was impressed by much of what I saw. The kids were wonderful to work with, as were the four teachers. Everybody was flexible and upbeat. On Thursday, they started making noises about having me back next year. I certainly hope that works out.
Tuesday they called school off because of the snow storm. Bummer. Then, double bummer, we had a two-hour late start on Wednesday. Okay, I said we were all flexible. This is when we bent. Wednesday we only had to double up one class, meaning we had two sections in one room for one of my contact hours. I taught on Wednesday what I would have done on Tuesday, Story Bones/Dramatic Structure. Oh, and I handed back the stories they had started on Monday with my comments in speech bubbles coming out of the mouths of my hand-drawn cartoon characters. This always pumps kids up. They fell right into the program and went on with those stories. Many of the kids took their stories home to work on over night. (One little girl stayed up until 2 working on hers.)
Thursday all four contact hours were double sections, meaning I saw all the kids twice that day. The morning's lesson was the Character on the Board exercise, where I lead the group through the creation of a character and get them started writing a second story. I encouraged them to change the character as much as they wanted, to think of what we did on the board as a starting off point. In the afternoon I introduced the idea of antagonists--troublemakers I call them--to rock the story along. Again, many kids took their stories home to work on. Friday was a normal day. The kids read stories and asked me questions. I gave them my usual parting sermon about how they can now continue growing as writers.
As always, the magic is in the stories I tell to illustrate the concepts I introduce.
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