Let the Writing Camps Begin
By the time I made it to Austin last Friday evening (driving from Houston), I'd decided I hated absolutely everything about the Writing Camp presentations I'd prepared for the students of Round Rock. So I spent a large chunk of the weekend -- when I wasn't Texas Book Festivaling and Halloweening -- rewriting, revising and redoing what I had planned. And those 3 Rs ended up becoming the theme of the new and much-improved version.
With 4th graders (and many graders), there is a lack of understanding of just how much revising a "real" author has to do. That became the focus of the first segment of the presentation. I go through what they go through. It put us all on the same page.
Then we talked about Sluggers before transitioning into the next segment. Specifically, we discussed the amazing drop cap alphabet Loren has created for the series. We talked about "See The Things That Others Don't" and how illustrators --like authors -- also revise and redo.
We shifted gears into "Show, Don't Tell." Here, we did a couple exercises (slo-motion visuals) and brainstorming activities, and then we got down to some writing. All the kids had their writer's notebooks with them, so the work we did went right in there. We did three examples, sharing our work after each one. We took "Seed Ideas" and "Exploded the Moments."
Next, it was a time for a little acting! The kids had to act out -- show -- a few scenes. Then their classmates got to describe what they saw -- exploding the moment. We focused on using action verbs, dialogue and our five senses. It was a great interactive exercise.
Of course, we always had time for silly-faced pictures!
With 4th graders (and many graders), there is a lack of understanding of just how much revising a "real" author has to do. That became the focus of the first segment of the presentation. I go through what they go through. It put us all on the same page.
Then we talked about Sluggers before transitioning into the next segment. Specifically, we discussed the amazing drop cap alphabet Loren has created for the series. We talked about "See The Things That Others Don't" and how illustrators --like authors -- also revise and redo.
We shifted gears into "Show, Don't Tell." Here, we did a couple exercises (slo-motion visuals) and brainstorming activities, and then we got down to some writing. All the kids had their writer's notebooks with them, so the work we did went right in there. We did three examples, sharing our work after each one. We took "Seed Ideas" and "Exploded the Moments."
Next, it was a time for a little acting! The kids had to act out -- show -- a few scenes. Then their classmates got to describe what they saw -- exploding the moment. We focused on using action verbs, dialogue and our five senses. It was a great interactive exercise.
Of course, we always had time for silly-faced pictures!