Table of Contents

How to Use This Book

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Acknowledgments

The Authors

826's History

Our Student Programming

The Contributors

Chapter 1: Tragic Love Tales (by 6-Year-Olds)

Chapter 2: Writing for Pets

Chapter 3: Fort Party!

Chapter 4: Make-Believe Science

Chapter 5: Oh, You Shouldn't Have, Really …: (or, How to Write a Jon Scieszka Picture Book)

Chapter 6: Space Exploration for Beginners

Chapter 7: Magic Realism

Exercise 1: Telling a Legend

Exercise 2: Creating a World

Chapter 8: Recycled Elves

Chapter 9: Creating a Guide to Modern Girlhood

Session 1: Deconstructing Best-Selling Books for Girls

Session 2: Self-Portraits/Doodles/Diagrams

Session 3: One-Minute Autobiography

Session 4: Thumbprint

Session 5: Exploring Shame

Session 6: Hair

Session 7: Character Description

Session 8: Manifestos

Session 9: Princess Lessons

Session 10: Ins and Outs

Session 11: Quick Questionnaires

Session 12: Defining Friendship

Session 13: Bug Off!

Session 14: Today, I Will Not…

Session 15: Two Friends

Session 16: Hyphen Talk

Session 17: Pop Quiz

Session 18: Beauty

Session 19: Fortune Cookies

Session 20: Pink Is …

Chapter 10: How to Write a How-To

Preparation

Chapter 11: Talking Trash!

Part 1. Archaeologists

Part 2. Cavemen

Part 3. Inventors

Part 4. Art Collage

At the End…

Chapter 12: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Lesson Plan?

Chapter 13: Spy School

Chapter 14: Literary Mash-Ups

Chapter 15: Brain Spelunking

Spelunking Trick #1: Augmented Automatic Writing

Spelunking Trick #2: Question Chains

Spelunking Trick #3: Technicolor Rorschach Blots

Spelunking Trick #4: Mystical Image Delving

Chapter 16: PJ Party

Preparation

Procedure

Chapter 17: Any Which Way

Session 1: Introduction to CYOA and Character Development

Session 2: Determining a Setting and Beginning a Plot

Session 3: Brainstorming Plot and Creative Conclusions

Session 4: Creating and Sharing Choose Your Own Adventure Books

Chapter 18: Life-Size Board Game!

Chapter 19: BRAINS! or, Writing with Zombies

Session 1

Session 2

Chapter 20: How to Write a Comic

Session 1: Character

Session 2: Story

Session 3: Composition

Chapter 21: The Meaning of Life (The Short Answer)

Session 1

Session 2

Chapter 22: How to Survive Anything

Introduction and Explanation

Writing and Sharing

Chapter 23: Vindicated Villains

Chapter 24: Ono-mato-WHAT-now?

Chapter 25: All-Star Sports Stories

Chapter 26: I Wrote a Guidebook and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Chapter 27: Cooking for Cryptids

Chapter 28: Science Club: Ice Cream!

Chapter 29: Sticky Words

Session 1

Session 2

Chapter 30: Maddening Mad Libs

Chapter 31: If I Were a King or Queen

Chapter 32: How to Be a Detective

Chapter 33: Harry Potter Spider-Man vs. the Evil Zombie Ninjas

Chapter 34: Out There: Drawing and Writing New Worlds

Start with Art…

… End with Writing

Combine Art and Writing

Chapter 35: Whining Effectively; or, How to Persuade Your Parents

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

A Not-So-Persuasive Essay

A Good Persuasive Essay

Chapter 36: For the Birds!

The (Bird)BrainStorm

The Nests

Hatching Plots

Avian Dramas

Extra Time?

Chapter 37: There's Poetry in an Atom

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Chapter 38: Guerrilla Poetry

Chapter 39: Frankenfilms

Chapter 40: The Rules of Magic

Part One: The Rules

Part Two: The Stories

Chapter 41: And Now I Will Perform an Interpretive Dance

Chapter 42: Note to Self

Session 1: What Is Autobiography?

Session 2: What Do You Love?

Session 3: What Scares You?

Session 4: How Does the World See You?

Session 5: Dream and Imagine

Session 6: Publish and Celebrate

Chapter 43: Smell This Story, Taste This Poem

Session 1: SOUND

Session 2: SIGHT

Session 3: TOUCH

Session 4: TASTE

Session 5: Smell

Chapter 44: Grammarama

Session 1: Instruction

Session 2: Quiz

Session 3: Homonym Stand-Off

How to Play:

Answer Key

Chapter 45: How to Be the Next President of the United States!

Chapter 46: Character Assassination!

Session 1

Session 2

Chapter 47: Sonnets with Superpowers

Session 1: Rhyme and Meter Overview

Session 2: Reading and Writing Sonnets, Questions and Wishes

Chapter 48: Best Imaginary Vacation Ever!

Chapter 49: What's the Scoop? How to Get the REAL Story

Chapter 50: The Illustrated Book Report

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Appendix

Evaluation Rubric

Self-Assessment Checklist

Common Core Curriculum Standards

826 Centers and Staff

How to Use This Book

1. Come on in. Have a look around. Check out the Table of Contents to see if anything catches your eye. Bear in mind that most of the lesson plans can be adapted for other grade levels, so don't feel obligated to stick strictly to yours.

2. All of our workshops are different, so all of our lesson plans are too. Generally, there's an outline of the lesson for you, and sometimes a handout for the students. We've tried to make them as user-friendly as possible.

3. To help you plan your class, we've headed each lesson plan with a time estimate. This is how long the class generally runs. In your classroom it might go slower or faster, but we've tried to ballpark it for you.

4. As much as we've tried to make things fun, we've also tried to keep things simple. A three-ring writing circus with actual trained animals and cotton candy machines would be great fun for your students, but a great big headache for you, so we've tried to keep the supplies and prep to a minimum. We've headed each lesson plan and activity with the list of materials it requires. Most of the time this will consist of things you already have on hand. Fancier fixings are optional.

5. We encourage you to adapt these lessons to suit you and your students. These lessons were taught in an after-school environment, with students who were there by choice, so we expect they'll need some tweaking to work for you. Make them yours.

6. Sometimes you might have extra time and want to do something really, really special. When you do, look for the Superteacher bonus activity icon. It looks like this:

Superteacher Bonus Activities

2.1Superteacher bonus activities are optional additions to the lesson plan that require a little more effort, but are guaranteed to dazzle your students.

7. In the Appendix you'll find some other tools we hope will make your life easier: evaluation rubrics to guide grading, student self-assessment checklists, and charts to show you which Core Curriculum guidelines each lesson plan meets.

8. We'd love to hear how it goes. Any suggestions? Comments? You can contact us at info@826national.org. Send us your own favorite lesson plan, or samples of your students' fabulous work. We'd love to see it.

Copyright © 2011 by 826 National. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Don′t forget to write for the elementary grades : 50 enthralling and eff ective writing lessons (ages 5 to 12) / 826 National. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-118-02431-7 (pbk.)

1. English language - Composition and exercises - Study and teaching (Elementary) - United States.

2. Education, Elementary - Activity programs - United States. I. 826 National (Organization)

LB1576.D6345 2011

372.60973--dc23

2011025956

Foreword

The first indication that this isn't your normal writing center is the storefront you have to pass through to get to the classroom. It might be a pirate shop, featuring a large selection of peg legs and eye patches, or it could be a robot repair lab, presided over by a burping automaton. It might be a time travel mart, offering dodo chow and 50-year calendars; or a superhero supply store with a phone-booth changing room. Past the shelves of student-authored books, zines, and newspapers, students slip through the secret door to the classroom. This doesn't look normal, either. There are plush couches inviting you to curl up and read, big mahogany tables begging you to hunker down and write, and some fixtures that make no sense at all, like portholes, or a fully functional grocer's scale. The teacher appears to be wearing a wig and a Viking helmet. Just what is going on here?

This is how we do things at the 826 National centers. From the time we opened our doors in San Francisco in 2002, our emphasis has been on fun, and there's been plenty of that. But something else happened: we helped students produce some great writing. Then we did it again. Students returned over and over and told their friends. Before long our workshops had long waiting lists.

We'd come up with a formula that worked. Soon we started hearing from people who wanted to bring our methods to their own hometowns. We expanded to eight centers across the country, each offering free after-school tutoring, in-class support for teachers and students, and workshops on topics ranging from spycraft to space exploration to screenwriting.

Word continued to spread. Teachers wrote, called, and came in, asking for ideas for their own classrooms. By 2005 we'd had so many requests we decided it was time to put all our best ideas in one place, so we published Don't Forget to Write, a collection of lesson plans from our best workshops and favorite authors. Six years and several hundred workshops later, it seemed high time to publish a new edition.

We ended up with so many lesson plans, in fact, that we had to publish two volumes, one for elementary grades, and one for middle and high school. In this volume, you'll find lessons on topics that appeal to elementary writers, both to those who like writing and reading (fairy tale do-overs, literary mash-ups, guerilla poetry) and those who don't (mad science, secret codes, Sasquatches, ice cream). There's a particular emphasis on fun, yes, but also on building blocks: the fundamentals of narrative, character development, self-expression. How do you communicate clearly? What makes a good story? What can words do? You'll learn how to interview a zombie; how to cook for Bigfoot; how to break through writer's block; and what onomatopoeia means. And, of course, you'll learn how to bring 826's methods to your own classroom.

What makes 826 workshops different? Well, first of all, they are often completely nuts. We think play is paramount, so we use lots of props, costumes, and drama. Our tutors are invited to teach courses on anything related to writing. Sometimes it's very practical, like a workshop on writing the perfect college application essay. Sometimes it's just silly, like Writing for Pets (though this, too, has a pedagogical rationale: reading to a nonjudgmental listener, like a dog, is a great way to boost students' skills and confidence).

Whatever the topic, it's taught by a specialist in the field, from journalists to sportswriters to musicians. At 826LA, the first workshop was taught by filmmaker Spike Jonze. In San Francisco, when workshop teacher Michael Chabon told his colleague Stephen King that he was using his work in our Horror and Dark Fantasy class, Stephen decided to come to teach the lesson himself.

We would love to be able to dispatch pros like these to your classroom too. Instead, we've done the next best thing: we asked them to write lesson plans for you. A real scientist wrote the Science Club lesson. A professional cartoonist wrote the comic book lesson. An actual anthropologist wrote our lesson on the anthropology of garbage. Other contributors include classroom teachers (the most expert experts of all), college professors, working screenwriters, and even one former 826 student, who's gone on to become a writer himself. Our favorite authors pitched in, too. We think the end result is like having Jon Scieszka stop by to teach a class on fractured fairy tales, or Aimee Bender lead a workshop on magic realism.

The whole enterprise is the classroom equivalent of hiding the good-for-you vegetables under the potato chips in the secretly nutritious casserole. We've based our activities on proven pedagogy. The students think they're having fun, and of course they are, but they're also engaged in very academic endeavors. They are organizing their ideas, crafting arguments, revising their work, stating their point of view, peer-editing a friend's work, and generally learning an awful lot about the hard work and the craft of writing. They're playing, but they're also getting real experience. For two hours they're a food critic, a reporter, a mad scientist, getting an idea of what it's really like to do this for a living.

And they leave with concrete proof. All of our workshops are project-based. Everyone likes to have something to show for their time, so we strive to produce something in every class, be it a chapbook, a play, a newspaper, a short film, or a radio segment. We know that the process of making that product is the important part, but having something to hold on to at the end is the perfect punctuation to work well done. Also, making them is incredibly satisfying and enjoyable.

We hope you'll enjoy the process, too. Supporting teachers is our first priority, and we've tried to create a book that will make your job just a little bit easier and fun. We know that teachers are pressed for time trying to ensure content and skill requirements are met. To this end, we've made sure the lessons in this book meet the Common Core Curriculum standards. We created some charts to show you (see Appendix).

If you're nearby, come pay us a visit (see Appendix for a listing of all our centers). Workshops are only a part of what we do at 826. We also offer free after-school tutoring, free writing field trips, and free in-school support. You can learn more about our programs at www.826national.org. We'd love for you to come see all the excitement for yourself.

We hope you have as much fun as we have.

Jennifer Traig, Gerald Richards, and Dave Eggers

Acknowledgments

Like all 826 National projects, this book was made possible by the contributions of an incredibly creative and generous group of people who were kind enough to share their time and talents. We're especially grateful to 826 National cofounder Nínive Calegari for all her work putting the project together in the first place. Thanks, also, to the executive directors of all the chapters, and to the many staffers who helped and contributed, especially Amy Sumerton, Julius Diaz Panoriñgan, Joan Kim, Kait Steele, Chris Molnar, Ryan Smith, Maya Shugart, Lindsey Plait Jones, Karen Sama, Lauren Hall, and Mariama Lockington. Thanks to the wonderful volunteers who let us offer inventive workshops at all our chapters. Thanks to everyone at Jossey-Bass, especially Kate Gagnon, Tracy Gallagher, and Justin Frahm. Finally, thanks to our brilliant lesson plan contributors, some of them old friends, some of them new. We were blown away by their work and can't thank them enough.

The Authors

826 National is a network of nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping students, ages 6 through 18, with expository and creative writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. 826 chapters are located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. We offer innovative and dynamic project-based learning opportunities that build on students' classroom experience, and strengthen their ability to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in their own voices.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!