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Emerging Novelists: In Defense of NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program in the Secondary ClassroomThe Prologue: Tap. Tap. Tap. The soft clicks of the white blocks danced with my fingertips, echoing off the MacBook’s plastic stage. My fingers and thoughts synched together, the letters bolted forward on the once-blank Word document. I glanced at the clock in the corner of screen. With twenty minutes remaining until the end of the class period, I reminded myself of my personal writing goal: finish the scene of my protagonist arriving to her new town. In the background of my thoughts, the sound of 30 working students --the tap-tap-clack of keystrokes --filled room 202. My fingers stopped mid-stroke. It occurred to me that I, entrenched in my own writing, had not looked up from my computer in a while. I was in the writing zone, making strides on my novel. All the while, my students wielded their own plotlines –the imaginative quests of John Truesteele, the murder of Ann and Jerry Reynolds, and the inescapable nightmares of Rylie Christiansen. Heads buried in their work, my students crafted novels. I first looked to Ellen. Her long curls, fashionably messy, hid her profile as she bent over her laptop, her fingers jiving with the keyboard – a cool, yet impassioned writing jive. A member of The Wind-up, our school’s award-winning newspaper and literary magazine, Ellen would reach her writing goals. For this class, she is one of my pillars of excellence. My eyes drifted, landing on Paul. He leaned into his Hp notebook, his fingers frozen momentarily in thought. Earlier that year, Paul, a Marine in-training, had made it no secret that he was not a fan of English; even his mom chimed in at parent-teacher conferences, disclosing his past three years of English frustration. Yet Paul was in the writing zone, deep in thought, carefully crafting three-dimensional characters for his mystery murder plot. According to him, he produced more writing in two weeks than he ever had in his entire English career, blowing past the 10,000 word mark in a mere eight days. He was focused in a way I never had seen before. He was doing the unthinkable: writing a novel. For three years now, I have invited my seniors to stretch their minds and challenge their writing stamina by participating in the National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program (ywp.). Each year we participate, our experiences pen a new story of classroom authors. Yet the recurrent theme, one that surfaces every year, is that all students —high to low, engaged and not-- can and will write when given the right opportunities. And one right opportunity we can give our students is to join 50,000 others from across the country in the National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writer’s Program (NaNoWriMo’s YWP). Together, my senior English students and I spend the entire month of November in the chair of novelist. While to some a novel-writing unit in Common Core English curriculum may appear a distraction from close reading and argumentation, I will argue the opposite. Indeed, this writing unit engages students in a meaningful, complex task. The kind of writing my students engage in during our November workshop—fluent, prolific, and creative—is the kind of writing practice my students need to re-shape their self-conceptions as effective writers, able to transfer their skills in and among many genres of writing. Through the story of my noveling-students, I hope to highlight some of the unique features of the novel assignment and prompt others to experiment with National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program. NaNoWriMo’s The Young Writers ProgramI stumbled upon NaNoWriMo’s YWP in the summer of 2011 at Western Michigan University’s Third Coast Writing Project. An eighth grade English teacher, who had implemented the novel-writing project in her classroom, presented to our small group of English educators by posing a question: what would happen if you let your students write for an hour every day for 30 days? What would happen? I contemplated this question the rest of the summer, finally concluding one of two things would happen: 1. My students would write a novel, and we would all concur it was a raging success, invaluable to our writing careers or 2. My students would write a lot of words, and it would be a flop, nothing gained, a waste of time—a whole month of fluffy fiction writing. Regardless of what could happen, I recognized both scenarios had one thing in common: my students would write (and they would write a lot). Regardless the outcome, they would spend thirty days, from November 1st to November 30th, entrenched in the writing process. They would –more than likely-- produce ten times more writing than they would otherwise. So, three years ago in late August, while preparing for the new school year, I found myself registering as an educator on National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writer’s Program website (ywp.). We were going to do it. My students and I were going to write novels. According the Young Writers Program, the novel writing month boasts as “a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing event where the [student’s] challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days” (NaNoWriMo’s YWP ). The National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Program (or the more commonly known acronym: NaNoWriMo YWP) offers a virtual vestibule for aspiring novelists, a place where thousands come together online in the month of November and attempt to tackle an enormously fun—yet daunting—task of novel writing. Unlike the adult version of NaNoWriMo, which asks its participants to yield 50,000 words throughout the month of November, the Young Writers program provides an open-ended invitation for students to set their own manageable goals. The online site provides my students—and myself-- guidance and support, and an on-line space for a writing community to collaborate, encourage, and express creativity. Even though my students and I spend the months prior to NaNoWriMo learning about blogging, examining literature through writing, and daily spurts of journaling, it is not until November and the novel writing project that we come together as a true community of writers. After students create their YWP accounts and I add them to our online classroom, they can manage their own “My NaNoWriMo” interface: update writing goals; validate word counts; manage a personal profile; edit novel information; send NaNo mail to friends and me, the teacher, and request writing buddies in and out of the classroom. What is more, the homepage serves as a writing coach, extrapolating students from the pits of writers block with their quirky “dare machine,” – a virtual idea generator that dares the writers to write bold-- and a “YWP Pep Talk” blog with daily entries from authors like Walter Dean Myers and Lois Lowry. One YWP resource I clung to in my first year was the high school edition of The Young Novelists Workbook, which suggests a wide-range of lessons for novel writing. (The site offers a free downloadable PDF version.) While I did not follow every lesson exactly, I used many of the YWP’s suggested lessons as springboards for my own, and--as all teachers do--adapted them to my classroom. Certainly my implementation of the YWP in my senior English classroom is not the one and only way to teach novel writing. Several of my teaching colleagues in other districts have taken the challenge along with their students and all of us have tried different models and strategies to foster the novel-writing process. Through educational collaboration and synergy, though, each of us fine-tunes from year to year. Introducing the NovelWhen I first introduce the novel project in early September, fishing for premature excitement, I mostly observe students’ moans and crumpled brows, signs of confusion and fear of a seemingly daunting task. Ten thousand words? Thirty days of writing? No way. No how. Not happening, Mrs. Becker. Even at back-to-school night the first year I launched the project, one parent scoffed at the idea, muttering to me as she walked out of the room, “Good luck getting my son to do that. You’ll be lucky if he turns in a 3-page paper this year.” That same year, I had another parent email me in the midst of our writing project complaining, “it [was] just too much for [her daughter]. Your expectations are unreasonable.” Of course, I had doubts and fears myself: Is it too much? Are my lofty goals unrealistic? Should I be allowing my students to write whatever they desire for entire 30 days? But that first year I kept on and discovered that most students, my colleagues, and even my administrators ended up strongly supporting this new writing project. After three years of working alongside YWP, I have learned to gracefully accept the cynicism—because I know that it will change my students as writers and learners. I understand the hesitation from both students and parents; my students have never been asked to approach such a large, multi-faceted writing project. English writing assignments typically don’t reach beyond five to ten pages, and I was asking a lot from them: they had to write a novel. Sure, we ask them to read novels, but to write one? CrazyYet, when I teach students to set, maintain, and achieve goals, this complex task evolves into a learning task. Although the Young Writers Program invites an open-ended goal, I set a preliminary target of 10,000 words, an average of 333 words per day, for my students—a steady and attainable pace. According to Robert Marzano, a leading researcher in education, teachers must “establish and communicate learning goals” in an effort to raise academic standards (9). Thus, it is crucial to have an end-goal for all students to meet. Without this goal, many will not push themselves throughout the month. Most students, however, reach for a more impressive goal than my required 10,000 words. My first year with NaNoWriMo, two students wrote over 30,000 words. The following two years, several students reached 50,000 words –and beyond. Currently, I have two students writing sequels to their first November novels, each having wrote over 80,000 words this academic year. Most assignments we present to students are conceptualized as a task with a starting point and an end point, where the focus centers on the “big grade” at the end. The central feature of the novel project, however, is not the end product—a final draft, polished and ready for the copy-editors at Doubleday Press--, but, instead, the target length and the process. And throughout this month-long project, the assessments and learning opportunities are integrated into the writing process. Although students like Ellen-- list-makers, all my pens in a row, anything lower than an A is subpar - struggle with investing so much time on a piece that most likely will not reach a publishing house desk. At the end of the month, Ellen said of her novel, “It doesn’t flow; my plot is weak; I didn’t even get to the resolution yet!” How does she know her writing doesn’t flow yet? Because she learned in the process what effective, fluid writing looks like. How does she know her plot is weak? Because she learned in the process about plotlines built with motivation, reaction, and tension. Why did she not finish her novel? Because she spent her month trying to develop dynamic characters and interesting sub plots, not just plowing through her writing just to finish it. Perhaps one day she will return to the piece. Or maybe feel energized to begin a new one. And now she has some understanding of the tenacity required by a truly challenging project. Eric, though, understands that the process made him a more confident writer as he reflects, “To become a good writer, I have to keep writing.” He compares his writing experience to Finding Nemo’s Dory and her theme song: “’Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.’ Like Dory, I keep writing, writing, writing!” Setting up Shop in November Three years ago, I was hesitant to allow students the in-class time to write all hour, every day about anything they wanted. Do I really give my students four full weeks of writing time? Will students grow as writers by simply opening a laptop and typing fast and furiously for the hour? Although I couldn’t answer those questions immediately, I knew that current research assured me that my students should be writing more. The National Writing Commission asserts, “the amount of time students spend writing… should be at least doubled” (Newkirk 9). By offering my students time in-class to write their novel, they spend over fifteen hours in class writing –-in one month. Most students go on to spend double –if not triple—that time outside of class writing to meet their individual goals. This kind of prolific writing does not happen with traditional English assignments. For example, when I polled a group of 28 juniors, asking them how long they spent on their four-page opinion essays, the majority claimed to spend fewer than five hours outside of class time writing and revising. When I remove myself from the “direct-instruction” podium at the front of the classroom and allow my students the time to write they improve. Although it takes place at different rates, my observation is that all of my students advance in both skill and craft. At the same time, ninety-five percent of my seniors this year assessed their own writing and affirmed they had improved in one or more areas. One student applauds her writing: “…it is now more fluent and coherent. I’ve always had issues getting thoughts on paper, but now I am much better at it.” So I have learned that the 45 minutes I set aside for us to write is vital. For some students, this length of work-time is too long. It’s important for students to learn how to work steadily and independently for a length of time. At the beginning of the year, I dedicate some of every hour to independent work time—whether reading or writing. For students to learn how to work, we, as teachers, must model for them. My students and I draft during the dedicated work time. In doing so, I have become a student of novel-writing as well. Because I’ve never written and published a novel, I have to immerse myself in the process—write, read, research, and interview as many other writers-- to learn the craft of novel writing. After three years of writing with NaNoWriMo, I proudly can say that I have three un-finished novels tucked in an electronic folder on my desktop. Perhaps one day I will complete, revise, and –maybe even—publish a novel like Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus, did after participating with NaNoWriMo. Even if publishing a New York Times Best-Seller is not likely on my horizon, each year I approach the task with more ease and confidence. Writing along with my students models positive writing habits. In Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing through Modeling and Mentor Texts, Kelly Gallagher emphasizes the point that “in [his] twenty-five years of teaching, no strategy improves [his] students’ writing more than having [his] students watch and listen to [him] as he write[s] and think[s] aloud” (15). Most days, I plug my computer to the smart board to project my most recent work, and type away, allowing students to observe my writing and thinking. By modeling, students view me as teacher-learner, chugging along with them in the process. Further, students and I engage in authentic conversations about our struggles and celebrations. Often times, these conversations lead to inquires about the writing process and help me design short lessons on writing craft. In fact, I dedicate the first fifteen minutes of class to mini-lessons. My lessons are meant as a short burst of instruction so that we have the rest of the hour to apply the instruction to the writing process. NaNoWriMo YWP’s The Young Novelists Workbook offers many lessons that can be adapted into short instruction. For instance, I use the “Details, Details, Details” lesson, instruction on concrete and specific imagery, for a three-part mini-lesson on painting images for the reader. The workbook explains to the reader the importance of painting images of a scene with the five senses and then offers several opportunities for students to practice. For one mini-lesson, we’ll read an excerpt from a Young Adult novel (this year I used John Green’s The Fault in our Stars) as a model text and ask students to notice where the author appeals to the five senses. The next day, I’ll pop up an image of an interesting scene—a bustling city street, a teenager’s room, a tropical island-- on the smart board and ask students to craft a short scene-sketch, imitating the kind of writing we looked at the previous day; we then spend 10 minutes writing to the same piece and share for the remaining five minutes, now noticing where we use it in our writing. On the third day, students choose a scene they have not yet written—but know is coming—and write with the specific intention of painting images for the reader. I leave each mini-lesson open-ended, offering writing strategies and tips students can apply to their writing. For example, Nick wrote this scene after one of the three mini-lessons and decided it would open his novel: Hunter shuffled down Borden Street to the sound of his wet footsteps, heavy with frustration against the slippery Seattle pavement. Raining again he thought. It does that a lot here. He finally dug into his backpack for his umbrella, giving up on trying to show himself that he could make the walk from school all the way home without needing it. Beads of water, dripping from his wet brows, formed on his face like acne. He clenched his lips together resisting the cold. Not every student chooses to begin his or her writing with my suggestions; however, for those students in need of ideas and progress, this invites them into the process. After each mini-lesson, the students and I have approximately 45 minutes to draft, explode word-counts, and practice craft. More Mini-Lessons: In early November, we focus on creating characters –and character problems. As Walter Dean Myer told my students in a NaNoWriMo pep talk blog, “There are only two important elements to a great novel”: interesting characters and interesting problems (Myers). Before students begin to think about the plot of their story, they must first think about the main character and his or her problem; from here, they develop a plot, which develops organically through the character’s problem. Developing a character gives students a sense of power and autonomy, something they often lack in other writing assignments. Before I begin my lesson, I pace the front of the room, stroking my chin with one hand, while the other rests on my hip –for mere dramatic effect – and emphasize this one point: “Today, you are the all-powerful creator.” I turn and point to Anthony, his pencil tapping atop the desk, impatiently waiting to create. “You, and only you, have the power to make your characters act, say, look, and think any way you please.” An air of authority, one I very rarely see in other writing exercises, rises from them. They respond with a jolt of enthusiasm, embracing a position of authorial power. Students begin developing a character questionnaire, provided by YWP’s workbook, determining who and what their character is about. They dig deep into their imagination and develop a character with political beliefs, temperament, favorite foods, speaking styles, and unique physical attributes. Once they have a basic understanding of their evolving character, I take my students into Pinterest--a photo-sharing website which allows members to pin onto digital theme-based boards (). After students create accounts, I model creating theme boards for their protagonist (and other characters if they so choose). Using their questionnaire, they create one board fore each character attribute. My five boards, for example, were used for pinning outfits, food, entertainment, hobbies, and life philosophies, where I modeled how to search and pin images that suit character attributes. Students follow my lead and spend the last week in October pinning pictures representative their characters that drive the plotline. They come back to these boards when writing character sketches and scenes, pulling from visual images, prompting more imagistic writing. Once students begin to shape their characters through Pinterest, I define for my students what a character sketch is—to introduce the reader to a character by giving them a strong image of the protagonist, indirectly characterizing them through speech, thoughts, effects on others, looks, action. I then read a few sample character sketches, inviting students to read like writers and notice how authors mold characters through images. After my mini-lesson, they dig into writing their own character sketches of their protagonist—or any other character. Ellen writes about one of her characters, a Jewish girl prepping in front of a mirror for a bar mitzvah, whereby with cheap make-up reveals a deflated self-esteem:I looked up into the soap-smudged mirror to gather any confidence I could. I smiled, revealing a crooked front tooth, smudged with Cherry Berry Lip Smackers. My lips, still chapped despite cheap waxy balm, cracked every time I grinned, my smile lines peeking through my caked-on foundation. Quickly, I made the decision that smiling would not be part of my routine. By generating boards with visual images of an imaginary character, I find students are more likely to write using specific and concrete language. When they can see what their character likes, eats, wears, and thinks, that instinctively infiltrates their writing. Another mini-lesson I use is teaching scene development with a goal-conflict-disaster approach. The YWP workbook has a lesson on developing the novel plot with the metaphorical “plot rollercoaster.” I take this one step further and ask students to look more specifically at small scenes that make up the track of the roller coaster. I use an online web resource by Randy Ingermanson (). His website, Advanced Fiction Writing, offers a more prescriptive approach for novel writing. My students and I read, annotate, and study his article “Writing the Perfect Scene.” Randy Ingermanson suggests that the perfect large-scale scene has a “three-part pattern”: Goal, Conflict and Disaster. To prove his theory on building a scene, we watch the first ten minutes in the animated film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. (But really, most any film follows this pattern.) Students watch and take notes on how the main character, Flint, begins with a goal of showcasing his newly designed spray-on shoes, but then realizes the conflict that they won’t come off, and, finally, ends in complete disaster with the school children laughing him out of the classroom. The study of film to novel allows students to visually experience how writers construct interesting scenes –and then plotlines—by using this prescriptive formula. Preston notes that he is “soaking all this information in like a sponge and ringing it out all over [his] novel.” Kayla comments that she “liked how [I] taught [them] how to write scenes; it really helped [her] a lot!”Other mini-lessons I use throughout the month of November are those on point-of-view, setting, dominant impression, dialogue, and subplots. The goal of each lesson should spark another 45-minutes of writing, while equipping them with the tools necessary to feel successful throughout the month. Assessment When I told my colleagues that my seniors were working on a novel, some gaped and gagged at the thought of my sitting down with a cup of coffee, pink pen in hand, ready to read fifty 10,000-word novels. I realized early on that I just wouldn’t have time to read and assess the novels in their entirety. Besides, that would defeat the purpose of the project: I wanted students to write freely, explore their creativity, and be prolific in their writing. If students knew I was going to read every word that they wrote, this might have caused anxiety and hesitation during such a long writing process. I tried to create assessments that were non-threatening and allowed students to attempt a challenge, not worrying over error (Perry 299). In order to assess the writing project, I divide the assessments of the novel into three categories: participation, process, and production.. Participation: To assess students on their participation means that both student and teacher will evaluate work habits and efforts for the day. With a standards-based grading movement, some might argue that students should not be “graded” on their work efforts and instead on the skills acquired and performed. However, I view my classroom as a workplace, similar to a “real-world” scenario, where my students “get paid” to stay productive and on-task. These point values on a daily basis extrinsically motivate students. Indeed, I evaluate students’ proficiency, knowledge, and skill during and after the unit and give them a mark that aligns with their learning and skill. In my classroom, students are rewarded for work, too. So, I asked students to envision what a productive work environment looks like. My second-hour class decided that I would observe the following: 1. Student is either drafting, researching, or conferring 2. Student exhibits a positive attitude – no whining allowed! 3. Student completes the daily exit ticket. That’s it. If I observed students doing these three things, the student received an “A” for the day. On each daily exit ticket (which I have created electronically on and also on ) I ask students to assess their work contribution for the day and consider the following: 1. I was engaged and attentive during the mini-lesson 2. I was focused and productive during writing time3. I asked questions or conferred with another writer when necessary4. My writing goal challenged me todayOn a word-based Likert scale– “not so much,” “somewhat,” “most of the time,” and “without a doubt, yes!”– students evaluate their progress and active learning in class. This assessment is not factored into their final “grade,” but my objective is to spur their thinking about who they are as a learner—and worker. Do they actively engage themselves? Do they spend their time wisely in class when given freedom and responsibility? Very few students rated themselves on the low-end of the scale as “not so much,” but most of the time, students are honest with me and will even explain their work ethic for the day. One student explains that she just wasn’t able to focus and do the work.” Overall, most students rated themselves fairly, directly correlating with my observations. Too, this solidifies for the students how we, as teachers, assess them; it gives them a greater understanding of the process of evaluation. Process: Because I don’t read every novel in its entirety, I have student submit four one-page excerpts of their novel—once a week--, along with a micro process-essay, which details specific writing strategies. At the end of each week, students fan their mini-lessons out in front of them, reacquainting themselves with the material learned during the week. From there, they choose a page from their novel that they’ve already written that showcases something new they learned that week: characterization, dialogue, plot development, scene structure…etc. Once students find an excerpt to submit, I require that they go back through the one-page and polish it, paying attention to the six traits of writing: ideas and content, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, conventions (Culham 11-12). Even though our big goal is to release our “inner editor” (NaNoWriMo’s YWP) and write in large—sometimes messy --quantities, I want students to take pride in a few pages of clean writing. Next, students annotate their writing, showing me exactly where they applied new writing strategies; students then reference their annotations and their own writing process in a micro—essay attached to the excerpt. Taylor commented on one of her excerpts in her process essay to show how she effectively employed blocking in her dialogue, which helped her “eliminate repetitive tags like ‘says’ and ‘replied’; now I know how to break up dialogue by giving the characters action”: “Do you remember the night that I kissed you?” Warren asks quietly as he positions himself onto the ground.“Yeah.” I sit next to him, embracing the memory. But, then another comes flooding in, and I hate him all over again. “Do you remember the night I caught you with Ebony?”“Yeah.” He puts his right hand on the back of his neck. “Sorry about that.”“No, you’re not.” I look at him and watch him pick up a strand of grass with his left hand and twirl it around his finger. Product: Finally, a third of students’ grade is determined by goal acquisition- did they meet the target of 10,000 words? Any student who reached the 10,000-word mark receives an automatic “A”. If students do not meet the goal by the end of the month, they write me an argumentative letter, evaluating their work, and suggest the grade they deserve. . The first year with NaNoWriMo, eighty five percent of my seniors reached the 10,000-word mark. This year, ninety percent of my seniors wrote 10,000 words or more. Those who don’t reach it are usually close and, more importantly, are enthused nonetheless. Logan, who wrote 4,000 words, still argued for an “A”: “For me, this assignment was like embarking on a long quest in which I had no idea where it would begin and where it would end. It was rocky. It was treacherous. I have had no past experience in this kind of writing, but I was determined to do my best. The work I’ve done is exceptional, and I deserve an A. This is one of the best things I’ve ever accomplished.” He went on to admit that his “inner editor” got the best of him, hindering his output. But he learned a valuable lesson, which he effectively narrated in his argument. At times, this project is about output, fluency, and learning writer’s craft; however, it’s more about the self-efficacy of my writers. I want them leaving my classroom believing in their writing-self, knowing that they can face any challenge and tackle it proudly. In Defense of NaNoWriMo I am fully aware that the majority of my students will not earn their living by writing novels. But I know all of them need to know how to write. The skills students practice and hone in the process of novel writing are vital to the skills they will need to produce effective writing in any genre for any purpose: fluency, craft, creativity, and self-efficacy as a writer. English teachers bear the weight of on-demand types of writing, having to adhere to the Common Core Curriculum Standards; and consequently, we focus much of our efforts with expository –and some narrative—writing. Many will argue, too, that students will never be asked to write fiction –or a novel for that matter-- on the job or on any standardized test, so why, then, do students need to hone the craft of fiction writing to be competitive in the work place? A novel-writing project offers enough depth and breadth to encompass many Core State Standards. In fact, NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program aligns each lesson in the workbook to specific Common Core Standards— referencing seven power standards (“NaNoWriMo YWP: High School…”). Most lessons foster the writing of “narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3). Because my students read excerpts from other authors, they also “apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.11-12.3). Other kinds of writing imbedded in this project, such as the process essay and the argumentative letter, will include the standard that specifically mentions argumentation (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.1) And, yes, some of my students engage in independent research when they intertwine real places, people, and historical events in the their writing (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.8). More importantly, the CCSS asks our students to “write routinely over an extended period of time…for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.10 ) After November, when we move into the workshop phase and polish a 3-4 page excerpt worthy of publication in our classroom anthology, students engage in revision through reading and responding to peers’ writing. Jim Burke, English educator and author, answers why students might engage in a novel-writing task, when he asserts that students will need to be proficient with a “textual intelligence.” When students write fiction—or narrative—they practice and refine their “textual intelligence:” [Students] make textual intelligence decisions as they choose the point of view, tense of the story, the use of foreshadowing or flashbacks, the organizational structure. All these choices come from, in part, the writer’s understanding of how texts and language work. Therefore, the more a student understands these structures, the more options he or she has when they write.” (Burke 279) If a student can acquire the skill to manipulate language-- structure, plotline, characters, tone, mood, and dialogue--then, certainly, a student will better be able to slip in and out of genres and types of writing expected of them in the future. The Resolution Don’t be fooled. Just like any good story, the characters – my students – face their share of conflict, hesitation, and moments of teenage tantrums. But in the end, they typically move beyond initial frustration to feelings of accomplishment and a different view of their writing selves. They have yet to become the likes of J.K. Rowling, but they have faced an enormous—yet cool—task, giving them permission to strut around school, chests puffed up, boasting of their novel. Even Paul, who blasted my 10,000-word goal in just two weeks, ranks himself as a “novelist” and comments, “Let’s do it again!” Ellen, my high-achiever, breathed life into a character who grappled with her Jewish identity,. Although she remained perfectly critical of her work until the end, she wrapped up her reflection on a positive note: “I really enjoyed the fact that I get to put my name on my very own story.”Yes. All of my students put their names on a story that exceeds any standard, any test, and any preconceived expectation. This is what writing should be. Works Cited Burke, Jim. “Writing 2.0: Developing Students’ Textual Intelligence.” Teaching the Neglected "r": Rethinking Writing Instruction in Secondary Classrooms.Ed. Thomas Newkirk and Rich Kent. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. 278-280. Print. Culham, Ruth. 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide. New York: Scholastic Professional Books, 2003. Print.Marzano, Robert J. The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2007. Print.Myers, Walter D. "Pep Talk from Walter Dean Myers." Pep Talks. Ed. Chris Angotti. Nanowrimo's Young Writers Program, 26 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2013.NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. Ed. Chris Angotti. National Novel Writing Month, 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2013."NaNoWriMo YWP: High School (9-12) Curriculum ." Lesson Plans . Ed. Angotti Chris. NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program, 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.Newkirk, Thomas, and Richard Kent. Preface. Teaching the Neglected "r": Rethinking Writing Instruction in Secondary Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. Print. Perry, Nancy?and?Lynn Drummond.?"Helping young students become self-regulated researchers and writers.?"?The Reading Teacher? 56.3?(2002):?298-310.?Research Library,?ProQuest. Web.? 2 Dec. 2010. ................
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