After interviewing Massachusetts author and writing teacher, Lisa Stringfellow, one of the things she said inspired me to take on a series of enrichments at Kalexedy Learning Center. We will take the month of November and facilitate and support the students of Kalexedy Learning Center in their endeavor to plan, write and edit their own book. “When working on creative writing, such as during National Novel Writing Month, I try to write alongside my students and work on building a community of shared support and inspiration,” Lisa Stringfellow explained in her interview for Central Massachusetts Mom. And with that, inspiration was born; I planned a four week series, one lesson a week of a bonafide “Writers’ Workshop” series where we all meet in our collaborative space and discuss everything from the nuts and bolts to the birds-eye view of our upcoming writing projects.
I’ve shared my presentations below in case anyone wanted to do something similar with their students! We ended up having a wonderful group discussion that organically grew into four different book genres, in-depth character development, detailed outlines adhering to the Hero’s Journey and they look forward to our weekly roundtable discussions and planning. We all can’t wait to get started on the first day of November (that's today!), so to prepare I created four detailed slide decks (heavily borrowed from the sources linked below) which became a more accessible way to plan our writing and facilitate group discussions.
Day 1: Brainstorming (Presentation adapted from WritingMastery.com) )
Day 2: How to Outline Your Story (Presentation adapted from Novel-Software.com):
Day 3: Character Development (Presentation adapted from TheNovelry.com)
Day 4: Tropes and Genres (Presentation adapted from Kindlepreneur.com)
And then you just add time! We are shifting our daily schedule for the entire month of November to include an extra 45 minutes of writing time in the place of our afternoon group activity. I hope you’ll join in on the writing adventure as well or use these resources to help support your learners! I, for one, can’t wait to read the stories that the students at Kalexedy write!
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