Six Word Memoirs @ Highland

No One Said it'd Be Easy

     I began teaching the Six Word Memoir as a mini-unit last spring in Creative Writing. As a part of the unit, students read published examples from the SMITH magazine website and then wrote a few of their own based off of provided themes. 

     For their unit project, asked my students to create an 8-part memoir anthology. They could work off of the themes previously assigned or create their own. To display their work, I gave them the option to use Slides, Docs, or Prezi. 

     I'm not sure if I have just been able to find better ways to explain the six word memoir -- I'd love to take all of the credit. However, my students did a great job of generating awesome memoirs. 

     This has always been one of my favorite units. I was ecstatic that my students seemed to be having as much fun as I was generating them. I think I will continue using them throughout the semester. I also let the students vote on their favorites to go on the bulletin board outside my room.

 Some favorites shared were:

  "I am the best at everything"

        "Creations aren't judged by past failures."

     "Swords win wars; pens end them."

         "Whispers do more damage than speeches."

  "He found soulmate, but she didn't"

     "Country Life beats city lights."

"Love is comfortable; not always butterflies."

             " Only blood could make us closer."

Creative Writing PLC

This afternoon, I got to meet with two other creative writing teachers--Ms. Genny Price from Bessemer City High School and Ms. Lia Smith from Highland School of Technology. It was delightful to talk with other professionals who are excited about engaging students in the writing process. I also feel like I learned a lot just from talking with them and sharing ideas. From Ms. Price, I feel like I learned how important it is to look at examples of good writing. I already knew (thanks to common sense, my teachers, and Stephen King) that good writers start by being good readers, but it's a practice I haven't always applied consistently, and it is one that I need to try to do more. From Ms. Smith, I learned how students can take a prompt in unexpected and wonderful directions.

We discussed a lot of ideas, starting with the practical, everyday running of our classrooms. We have similar formats (starting with writing prompts or journals such as those found here and ending with our meatier, more important writing assignments). Although we do different assignments, it sounds like most of us cover a variety of types of writing, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We think it would be a great idea to create an online space for us to share resources and assignments. Celeste already has a website for GCS Secondary ELA, and we think that if we could send her resources that we use, she could create a subpage to house these items for sharing.

Even more important, we talked about ideas that we have for collaboration. We all agreed that we would like to see the talents of our students highlighted at the county level. We talked about the possibility of doing a Poetry Cafe or other similar event in which students could read/perform their works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. (Anyone else interested? We think March would be the perfect time.) We also briefly discussed the idea of doing a countywide literary magazine or similar publication, either in print or digital format. We think that students are more motivated when they know that they have a real audience.

Finally, we talked about meeting again to continue our discussion. I hope we all can get together for a meeting soon (perhaps December). I'll let Celeste the date for the next one, as we feel it's important that she can be there to help guide us in the right direction for successful collaboration. In the meantime, I hope to see posts from you all about the amazing and exciting things you are doing in your classrooms!

What you are doing matters. Now go change lives. And WRITE SOMETHING AMAZING.

Adventures in Writing

Four weeks into the school year and I feel like I'm racing down a tunnel, miles from the entrance and even farther from the exit. At least the scenery is interesting, what I notice of it anyway.

This has been a year filled with excitement and accomplishment for my students. After our successes with National Novel Writing Month in 2013, several of my students went on to receive accolades. Imani was selected as an alternate to compete on BreatheInk's slam poetry team at the national level. Allison was accepted to the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institute for Creative Writing. While she was there, she received the news that the North Carolina English Teacher's Association had awarded her 4th place in the Amy Charles Short Prose Contest and named her winner of the Poet Laureate contest.

I have a great group of students in Creative Writing this semester. My Creative Writing I students are among the most talented groups I have worked with yet, and my three Creative Writing II students are passionate and inspired.  I have two students in Creative Writing III this semester. Mikaela continues to pursue fiction, writing short stories and making plans for this year's NaNoWriMo and for publication. Robyn is working on her poetry, as well as a guidebook for young people. Please check out their blog to see what they're working on!

Looking forward to working with you this year!

Welcome to the GCS Creative Writing Blog!

Here are the 2014-2015 GCS Creative Writing PLC members:

Ashbrook- Jesse Birnstihl
Bessemer City- Genny Price
Cherryville- Melanie Hawkins
Stuart Cramer- James Brown
East Gaston- Hannah McGee and Jeffrey Beech
Forestview- Sally Griffin
Highland- Lia Smith
Hunter Huss- Amelia Bolick
North Gaston- Shanna Moore
South Point- Jason Webb
Warlick- Tiffany Solod

This is our blog. Feel free to post anytime :-)

Creative Writing III Honors

I'll be teaching a section of Creative Writing III Honors next year for the first time. While I am very excited about it, I'm also a little nervous about what to use for a curriculum. I want to challenge my students, but I also want the class to focus on their personal interests and writing styles.

What kinds of assignments do you do with your CW III classes? And how do you ensure you are giving them Honors level work?

Writers' Workshop--Successes and Questions

I think writers' workshop is almost an essential component to a Creative Writing class, but I've struggled with effective implementation. I've found that using Google Docs comments and chat function has been useful, especially when paired with badges for commenters, which I created on Schoology (Edmodo has a similar function, and there a few more options I think, like openbadges.org, that allow you to make and assign badges too).

Here's a little reflection on what I did with technology to make things go at least a little smoother:

Sra. Spanglish Rides Again: Rowdy Writers' Workshop (Now with Badges!): Writers' Workshop has gone through several incarnations this semester of Creative Writing alone. We started off in a circle with ha...

I really wish workshop could be something we did with the whole class regularly, but I need some tips on how to effectively manage it. The norms and protocols that we established as a class did help, but they did not keep a group of freshmen on task. I have some thoughts on what might help, and I'd like some input from more experienced Creative Writing profesores.

• Should I have daily workshops instead of limiting them to Mondays and Fridays?
• Should I limit the workshopped pieces to one per session rather than 2 or 3 in a row?
• Should I put a page limit on how long a workshopped piece can be?
• Should I have designated roles for each person in the class?
• Should I restructure as a fish bowl exercise with half of the class observing while half interact?
• Should there be some kind of assignment or form for commenters attached to the workshop session?
• Should I cut back the number of workshops each author gets to 1 per grading period or even 2 per semester, rather than 2 per grading period?

Any other suggestions you have for how to run a successful writers' workshop would be much appreciated!

NaNo Winners!

I am so proud of my students, my club members, my colleague, and myself. November is over; we have written a grand total of 328,624 words! Six of our thirteen aspiring novelists won by completing their personal word count goals. The next step is to work on revision and editing so we can get our free copies of our novels printed and then possibly look into publication!

I hope some of you will consider doing NaNoWriMo with your creative writing students in the future. It has been an incredible adventure and I am already looking forward to next year!

Jesse Birnstihl
Ashbrook High School