Teen Writers Circle Class Summary 9/16/13

I had a great morning with your young writers this morning and wanted to recap what we did.

We discussed the class structure:

• We’ll begin by critiquing writing done at home every week. We may not get to everyone’s work each week, but I’ll keep track so that they each get equal time over the course of the session.

• We’ll spend between 10-20 minutes writing in class from a weekly prompt

• We’ll share what we’ve written and make suggestions for improvement
  

We talked about the weekly homework assignment. Students are required to write a new writing piece a week. The piece can be:

• One complete story (length is less of a concern than the story having a beginning, middle, and end)
• Three poems
• One creative non-fiction piece
• One chapter from a novel
  

The inspirations for these pieces will generally originate from one of three sources:

• A piece started in class and subsequently polished, based on comments in class
• A new piece, inspired by work done in class (I’ll often suggest a new assignment)
• An entirely student-inspired piece, taken from their own imagination
  

I explained that when we write in class, the writers shouldn’t be too worried about spelling or grammar. However, they should consider these aspects after they complete their work, before submitting it for class critique. We talked about using a spell checker and I told them that it is perfectly fine for them to ask someone (you, perhaps) to review their work and help them catch errors they may not be seeing. (Writers do this for one another all the time.)

We also talked about how to critique one another’s work in class. Ask them to explain the sandwich method of critique to you and to show you the critique guidelines they received. 

This week’s prompt was an introductory one. Each writer wrote down two truths and a lie. We then voted on which one they should evolve into a story. If the one we picked was true, they were given freedom to expand upon actual events fictionally. After a period of writing, they shared their work and we made some suggestions. Homework for this week is to:

• Refine (and complete) the story started in class OR
• Write another story based on an unused truth/lie (this is particularly if they were disappointed in what the class selected) OR
• Write an original story
  

I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll bring in next week!

If you have any questions, I can best be reached via email: [email protected]. 

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