Fall is my FAVORITE season of all time! I love the colors, the smells, and snuggling up with loved ones on cool autumn nights. However this fall I have a whole new reason to be excited... NaNoWriMo (aka - National Novel Writing Month)!!
I stumbled across this over the summer as I embarked on my own writing adventure. Essentially it is the idea that if you write 1,666 words per day for the month of November you will have a 50,000 word novel at the end of the month. Sounds like a neat idea, but requires a whole lot of commitment and self-discipline!
My 6th grade Language Arts class got excited about a journal prompt one day and asked if they could turn it into a longer writing piece (most asked to write novels!) So I went to the NaNoWriMo site and found that they have a whole Young Writers Program!
They have a whole curriculum with lesson plans and FREE workbooks for all grade levels (elementary, middle, and high school). I printed them out and bound them for my class and they were super excited. Here's the final product:
The best part, the whole workbook is written in language a middle schooler would use! My reluctant-to-do-anything 6th graders devoured this and actually read ahead!!
I also scored a NaNoWriMo classroom kit! It included a poster for tracking progress, stickers, buttons, and a deck of writers block cards:
I am so excited to begin writing with them tomorrow!! We've been working on the prep activities in the workbook and they have some pretty creative and unique story ideas. I've reserved the laptop cart for the whole month so we can write every day! My plan is to try a flipped classroom strategy where students watch video lessons at home for homework and then complete the actual work in class. Nothing but writing for our whole 45 minute block!!
If this sounds like something your students might be interested in, head on over to NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program.
Don't forget to head back to Farley's page for more great Currently posts!
