Read and hear the work of our young writers!
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summer camp East Bay
Every Tuesday we bring you a TED Talk on education we find especially thought-provoking. How do we learn best? Where does creativity come from? How can we become a more educated world?
In this talk, child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.
Every week, in "You Read it Here First!" we feature writing from students in "Take My Word For It's!" creative writing classes.
When these young authors become well known writers, you can say you read them here first!
During our Stamps & Letters themed week of camp this summer, we asked the students to write letters to some of their favorite companies. One of our girls chose to write to OPI nail polish...
Creative writing from one of our campers
Our creative writing challenge to you is to look at the image we post below and see where it may take you and your pen.
Let your imagination wander freely! Please feel free to share the stories, poems, and musings that were spurred on by this week's photo in the Comment section below!
This week's pic comes from an art project one of our campers, Esme made! Happy writing!
On Thursday at "The Word Party!" we started out with a free write based on this prompt:
List 6 uses for tissue paper. Then write a story based on one of your ideas.
Here's what Naomi came up with:
"One day a boy was walking down a busy street. Then all of the sudden a bull started charging him. Then he remembered he had some red tissue paper in his pocket. Then he hung the tissue paper on a pole and the bull charged it and got his horns stuck long enough to let the boy run away."
For the rest of the day we worked on writing within certain restrictions -- according to very specific rhyme structures, rhythm, etc. First I challenged the kids to write a lipogram -- which is a piece of writing in which a specific letter is left out. It was pretty tricky to write a paragraph without using an "a"!
Then we tackled 6-word memoirs and wishes. I asked the students to each capture a wish or a memory by using just six words. Two fun examples:
Ella: "I cut my hair and screamed."
Naomi: "I wish to go to Greece."
Next up was Haiku, a form of poetry that follows a pattern of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the last line. Many of us had to rework our original thoughts to fit this specific scheme. Here's a haiku from Kian:
"A bear climbed a tree
And he fell all the way down
Fell in the water."
Finally, we had some fun writing limericks, which have a tricky pattern and rhyme scheme. Noreen agreed to share her limerick on the blog today:
"There once was a little ducky
Who wasn't very lucky.
He tried to find a 4-leaf clover
He jumped over a dog named Rover
And he fell into mud that was mucky."
Here are more photos from yesterday's Found Poetry project!
Kian
Noreen
Ella
Max
Today we had a lot of fun creating Found Poetry. Found Poems take existing words and phrases and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. Found Poetry is like making a collage with words.
To collect the words we'd use for our poems, we went on a Word Expedition. First, I asked the students to collect words that were already lurking inside our classroom, using the following guidelines:
- 10 words from those written on the bulletin boards, signs, white boards, etc.
- 10 words chosen from three specific pages in the Algebra books
- One "Y", one "Q", and 3 "B" words from the dictionary
After the students had found the words they liked from these sources and written them in their journals, we pored through magazines and cut out words that jumped out at us. I reminded the kids to look for nouns, adjectives and verbs so they could build a strong poem.
After taking a break for snack, we continued our expedition outside. We discovered words on street signs, cars, and bulletins posted at the rec center.
When we went back inside, the challenge really began. Using the words we found from all the different sources, we created poems on construction paper. It was fun to move words around and see what kind of combinations we could come up with. You can see some of the results below!
Alan
Helena
