Authors: Lessons Learned from Young Writers – Part 2 of 4

This is an edited version of a post from one year ago.

When last we left our student-authors, they were struggling with the concept of editing versus checking for errors. This is the conclusion of my blog on my experience with 8^th-12^th-grade authors.

As the school year draws to a close, Mrs. Ray and I have made a decision. There will be no book this school year. Our current plan/goal is to get the premier anthology, Sci-Fi High - First Days of School, out before Halloween. This requires more editing by this year’s authors, most of whom will be returning to the project. See below.

In a perfect world, we’ll have Volume 2 ready by April. But, we shall see. The book will not go to print until both Mrs. Ray and I are in agreement on the worthiness of the edited manuscript.

Only one of our authors is a Senior this year. She already knows her schedule for next year at college and will be able to come to some of our sessions as we finish editing go to press. So she will have her story included in Volume 1.

What follows is a series of observations, comments and suggestions gleaned from this experience. They are in no particular order. Feel free to rank them yourself.

The book’s cover. We were fortunate. Mrs. Ray was looking at art pieces at the school's Career Expo.  She thought one artist's work was amazing. When it was time for the book cover, she asked the artist and found out she was interested in our Sci-Fi High project. She created a cover with the promise of it just being an addition to her portfolio.  In the end, she earned 1 credit in the process. Here's what she came up with after a couple of meetings.

It’s not the final draft, but you get the drift. Pretty cool. More on the cover in Part #3.

Things we will change. First, we are establishing non-negotiable deadlines early on in the process. We allowed too much discussion and verbal explanation of the stories to occur between the authors without requiring completion of specific pieces of writing. As a result, many of the stories ended up being hastily completed.

Transitions between plot points were problematic. Our authors were most proficient with essay writing. Many tried to morph that style into an iteration of science fiction writing. Those morphs were not successful. We will do directed study of short stories before writing begins anew in the Fall. We have plans for “hands-on” experiences with marking plot points and identifying necessary edits early on.

TeachersPayTeachers. Mrs. Ray and I are meeting this summer to produce a product for Teachers Pay Teachers, an online “warehouse” for teaching materials. I have 27 products up in my store there. But they are science-oriented, or at least non-English/Language Arts-oriented https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Chuck-Downing.

Teachers look first within their discipline for ancillary materials. Mrs. Ray is an English teacher. She’ll be starting her own store with our Sci-Fi High writing/production process as her first major product. This will maximize our exposure to the target audience.

Grammarly & Hemingway. Students work best when they have exemplars at key points in whatever process they are engaged in. Grammarly is a free web-based program that goes a step beyond MSWord’s grammar check. It’s far from perfect, and it costs money to see the “advanced” errors it discovers. But, it directs any writer to what might be problem areas in their manuscript. We will require students to use this at each stage of the production process.

Hemingway is purchasable editing tool. It points out common issues in manuscripts of any sort. This makes it a great tool for fiction writers. I use it to limit the convolutions that easily arise in my writing. Short sentences with few adverbs and passive voice statements are the goal of the app. They are my goals, too. We will recommend, but not require, our authors to use this tool as well.

There's been an update in Hemingway since this screenshot. It's a much more user-friendly writing tool now.

Life lessons as part of the story development. From the beginning of the project, our authors were instructed to include a life lesson—think moral—in their stories. This was one aspect of the project that was not misunderstood and was refreshingly clear in almost all the stories submitted. This will continue to be a requirement next year.

Think about volunteering your time to work on a project with young writers. You don’t have to find a school to volunteer at to help students with their writing. That might sound like the quickest way of involving yourself, but all schools have some vetting process for volunteers. Be prepared for what might be a plethora of hoops through which to jump if you don’t have a child enrolled at that school. Public libraries have volunteer programs that might qualify. The YMCA, Boy’s Clubs, Girl’s Clubs, and other such entities offer after-school programs for students.

Bottom Lines.

• Every student-author exuded a missionary’s zeal when talking about the book/class/project and their part in it.
• Mrs. Ray was most gracious in allowing me to work with her and her students in this project. Our maiden voyage was exhilarating. It was also frustrating. It was also incomplete.
• We both agree to give it a second shot.
• Word about the class/project spread throughout the school. Close to a score of students filled out applications to join our Author’s Guild—my euphemism for the Creative Writing elective course. Armed with what we know, now fine-tuned by what we learned, we’re forging ahead in September of this year.

Next Author’s Blog: 

Lessons Learned from Young Writers – Part 3

Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRDowningAuthor

My website is: www.crdowning.com

I'd appreciate your feedback as a comment on Blogger!

Authors: Lessons Learned from Young Writers – Part 1 of 4

This is an edited version of a post from one year ago.

In September of 2015, I started working with a group of middle and high school students on a project. The previous school year, I’d done a talk on Science Fiction writing. During the talk, the kids had a chance to write a bit from a prompt.

I got good feedback from the teacher, Debra Ray, about the presentation. Over the summer, one of the students drove over 40 miles to come to one of my books signings.

I had an idea.

Over the course of my teaching career, colleagues have heard the phrase, “I’ve been thinking,” hundreds of times. Some of them learned to excuse themselves from the conversation at that point. Others politely listened and performed the part of “bobble-head doll” with consummate excellence—nodding at appropriate times. But, some were willing, and a few were anxious, to hear my ideas.

I talked with Mrs. Ray about the possibility of meeting with a group, like a club. The club would be for students that were interested in writing short stories for inclusion in a self-published book.

She took the offer and expanded on it. She convinced the site administration to allow her to offer a “half-credit” elective class. When school started, enrollment was 11 students.

Mrs. Ray and I both thought we could have a manuscript ready for CreateSpace and Kindle by April of 2016. That didn’t happen.

We planned on publishing the book in September of 2016.

Here’s what I learned from the young writers that first year.

Happening	Lesson Learned
The kids were excited to share their ideas with one another.	Excitement should be an integral part of any writing process. If what you’re planning and writing don’t excite you, trash it and start over.
The kids were reluctant to make a commitment to a plot.	It’s important to set a course and start sailing. If you find yourself lost in the doldrums of the writing process, look to your plotline. If it’s lacking, fix it!
There was too much talking about the stories and not enough writing of stories early on.	Write. Put words down on paper or in an electronic document. Talking about and thinking about ideas, characters, actions, setting are all good things to do. But, set a deadline for yourself. Begin to write your story sooner rather than later.
Ending their stories proved problematic.	I’ll never forget reading a book by a famous author deep into his career. I'd enjoyed his earlier books. The storyline in my chosen book was good.  Without foreshadowing of any kind, at what I’m convinced was his contracted word count minimum, “they all went into the basement and it blew up.” That was a terrible ending. I’ve not read another of his books since. O’Henry’s “surprise endings” are surprising because of the outcome O'Henry chose to use. The surprise does not result from that ending leaping away from the storyline. The end of all well-written stories is based on what’s been written prior to that ending.
Editing is hard.	Nothing new learned here. What was reinforced was the need to understand what editing entails. Correcting spelling and grammar errors is essential. But, filling holes in plot lines, expanding the depth of characterizations, and transitioning between plot points instead of leaping from plot point to plot point must be addressed early in the editing process.
Editing takes time.	Most of our students had been successful in English classes. They were good at writing essays. But, they were used to editing to a final draft in under an hour. The difference in editing a 500-word essay and a 5000-word story is more than a ten-fold time commitment.

In spite of the steep learning curve for students and teachers, enthusiasm for this elective course is high. We thought that Mrs. Ray might have to limit the number of students enrolled.

That’s another expectation that wasn’t met.

Next Author’s Blog: 

Lessons Learned from Young Writers – Part 2

Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRDowningAuthor

My website is: www.crdowning.com

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Teacher's Almanac: Grading Over The Years – Homework #3

What happens when you teach an advanced course—AP or IB, for example? No matter what “level” your course is, if you include higher level thinking skills in assignments, how do you grade that in class?

There are times when the only appropriate way to grade an assignment is for the teacher—you—to grade the whole kit and caboodle. That doesn’t have to be very often.

I’ll present two examples of how you can use PowerPoint to make your life easier. I have used the first example, scientific graphing, in all my classes from 9^th-12^th grade.

The second example is from AP Biology. It will be part of the next blog on grading.

The good news is this: You don’t have to know much about science to appreciate the explanation of this grading technique. The model works in any content area where you have repeating assignment types—graphing, in example one—or complex assignments with high-level vocabulary—example two.

When you grade an assignment of a type that is frequently assigned, you should teach how to do that assignment early in the year. Teaching the process, allowing students to make a sample, and grading that sample is the best way to ensure consistent grading over time.

The images below are from the PowerPoint used to teach scientific graphing.

During instruction, the top slide in the next set of PowerPoint slides starts with a blank X-Y axis. Labels and other components appear at the proper locations, reinforcing the previous slides’ information.

Using an appropriate scale is emphasized. Pretty much the goal is to fill a piece of graph paper with the graph. Next producing the line that "is" the graph is described.

Most students think their graphs are "done" at this point. They are not!

The title on a scientific graph is very important. It is worth one-third of the points for the graph. For that reason, an explanation of how to name a graph and why is critical, especially since graphs are often graded in class.

I apologize for the overlap of print in some images. That's because various items "appear" with a mouse click at specific times in the presentation.

Look at the image titled “Now put a title on the graph” in the pair above. The first text box to appear after the explanation of what information a title contains is, “The title should explain what you have graphed.”

Students discuss ideas for titles in pairs.

“For example: This title would be…” appears.

Last the actual title “Electronegativity Values of Selected Elements” appears in the proper location and the two previously visible text boxes disappear. This leads to the final slide.

If a graph has multiple lines, a key is needed. 

Students then are given time to make a graph and share it with their partners. They "grade" their graphs as practice.

After the first lab activity, students grade their own graphs.

They use the “grading pens” I mentioned in a previous blog for this grading. No pens or pencils except the grading pens are allowed during the grading.

During the grading time, slides appear in left to right, top row to bottom row.

Grading begins with the title.

The gray box containing the title appears after students have compared what they had on their graphs.

Students ask clarifying questions during the time the left slide in the bottom row is visible.

The last slide comes into view.

• Each “burst” appears in this sequence. Title. Y-axis. X-axis. Curve. Key. Yellow box.
• Students put the points earned in the same place on their graph as the “burst” for that feature appears on the screen.
• Questions are addressed. The teacher is the final arbitrator in any dispute.
• Points are totaled and written under the student's name on the graph.
• On “random” assignments, graphs are exchanged after grading. Scoring in authenticated by the new grader. Differences in scoring are resolved by the teacher before the papers are turned in. Not knowing when this will occur helps ensure honesty in the scoring.
• I check a set of graphs periodically, too. Again, this encourages the students to be honest in their assessments of point values.

This method does “take class time.” However, students learn from their errors while the teacher saves grading time for more complex assignments.

In the next blog in this series, I’ll explain my method for grading assignments with specific details required or that are based on “advanced” material.

Next Almanac blog: Grading Over The Years – Homework #4

Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRDowningAuthor

My website is: www.crdowning.com

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