[LIT] Summer Camp/School Classes

[Mary Dovey]

I taught an unusual creative writing class all year to grades 5,6,7and 8 all year that met one day a week. Because of that I focused on giving them "writing exercises" that were ungraded and meant to give them practice and be enjoyable. Unfortunately my complete syllabus and papers, etc.are at school, but I can list some favorites. These might work in a summer school environment better than multi-day units perhaps:
1. Music makes the story: free write to clips of various types of instrumental music. Using just short clips from Gladiator, Blade Runner, Robin Hood, Chocolate, etc., the kids came up with interesting sentences and most importantlygreat ideas that the music helped them visualize.
2. They al loved "percent poetry" , an idea from Sara Holbrook's book, Practical Poetry, where they write about things they like and assign these a number with the list equaling 100. I.e. I'm 10 percent funny, 5 percent sad..... etc.
3. Up, down and around. If you can, gather some cameras and go for a walk. Kids must take pictures at different eye levels than normal. This was always a HUGE hit. One kid got s pictue of s red lollipop that he later turned into s story about a spaceship (the lollipop) landing in giant land. Very creative, very funny.
4. Metaphor maker: This was a super huge hit aaa kids were blown away by the comparisons this generated. It really made them understand the power of metaphor. This idea came from a great book called, I think, the Poet's Pen. On a piece of paper, make these columns: color, abstract noun, concrete noun. Fill in the columns without thinking-just whatever comes to mind, although you might enourage them to think of the big crayola box descriptions for color. Randomly connect items in columns and write it a a metaphor: 
     Jealousy is a black car
     That drag races with love.   (second line should start with that or which)
     But never wins.  (third line starts with and or but)

The 6th through 8th graders nailed this;harder for the younger ones but sooo worth doing.

5. Word tickets. Susan Goldsmith Wooldbridge has a great book called Poemcrazy with a lot of activities using rolls of tickets. One that my kids really liked was to create new names for common objects and labels these things with the tickets. After all, who said that a desk was a desk? Maybe it could be a gazoot! The idea he is that tickets are a way in in to things.....
6. Found poetry: using sons on a theme (maybe summertime?) give kids the words, have them circle of copy strong nouns and verbs, then cut them out or recy them onto tickets, and rearrange these into new poems of their own.very fun, very messy, but again, worth it.

7. If you have access to computers and/or Smartboards, there area million mor of these things and some cool smart notebook lessons I made that I'll share when I get to a computer (on an iPad now with no flash drive support. Let me know If they would be helpful. Good luck!
Mary


Sent from my iPad

On Jul 2, 2010, at 12:33 PM, Nancy Carroll <creativteach at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> Hi Everyone, 
> 
> 
> I'm teaching 2 summer camp/school classes:
> 1. Creative Writing- including poetry
> 2. Academic Writing
> for ages 10-13. The sessions are 2 weeks long, and classes are 90 minutes each.
> 
> Any suggestions? Ideas? Mini-units? Readings to go along with it? Graphic novels?
> 
> The camp's theme is mythology. 
> 
> Thank you, 
> 
> Nancy Carroll, MIT
> 
> If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
> 
> 
> 
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