Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Writing Wednesday - Looking Ahead to NaNoWriMo


Back to posting about writing and it feels so good. My own revisions are going slowly. Very slowly. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea if this is the “right” way to revise. And yet, I continue. My hope is that through perseverance, I will get where I need to be. 

Time will tell.

And yet, I’m super excited about writing. I love the stories I have written, but know they can be better. I love the stories I still have in my head, characters that keep talking to me, waiting for their turn. And I love talking to my students about writing.

This year all of the language arts teachers at my middle school will be participating in NaNoWriMo. I am SO EXCITED about this. I’ve done NaNoWriMo with my classes before when I taught fifth grade, but never in seventh. And I’ve never done it where an entire building is writing together for the month. I have to believe that magic will happen. 

For those of you just thinking about joining in your first year, I suggest heading over to their website HERE. This book also looks super helpful. Some tips from my experiences before:

→ Begin talking to your students about this in October. The website has guided lessons for the week or so before you begin, but it’s important that they hit November ready to write. 

→ Think ahead, will you be grading this? I looked more at productivity and had them select a page of their writing to critique at the end, but mainly this was a project my students did for themselves. 

→ How can you make this special? I’m going to be holding writing lunches for anyone who wants to come in and write while they eat. Our local bookstore will be hosting some writing nights too. 

→ Something I’m trying this year is having my students create a Google Sheet for pre-planning of their story. I wrote about this HERE

For those of you that have tried this before, what tips do you have? As for me, I’m diving in with my students. Whether my revisions of book one and two are done or not, I’m pledging to try to get 50,000 words into book three this November. YIKES! We shall see.