Photo by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash
January feels like the longest month in a teacher’s calendar, and yet I don’t know where the days have gone. I’ve been meaning to post this newsletter for weeks and haven’t found the time to do it. But I’m finally getting back in the swing of things. Success!
When we returned from winter break, I launched a couple of community building activities to remind students again that they are part of a collaborative, not a competitive classroom.
As I’ve said before in this newsletter, I cannot express how important building community with students is in a writing classroom. It’s important in every classroom, of course, but one where students must be vulnerable and willing to share with each other, it’s primary to everything else. Sometimes administrators don’t understand this. They understand you should be building relationships with students, but don’t always understand the enormous dividend that students building productive relationships with one another will pay throughout the year.
So what follows looks like a bunch of goofiness, but it’s really a practice that accelerates and reinforces the work of literacy that builds stronger, more effective writers.
Collaborative Activity 1: Weaving Two Threads
First I randomly pass out one number to each student. If I have 30 kids, I will make two groups of numbers 1-15, so that each number will be given to two students.
Instructions
In your writing notebook, write a 5-7 sentence paragraph starting with the lines: “One day ____________ and _______________ got into a ___________ and went to the _____________.”
Someone in the room has the same number as you. Once you find this person, read your paragraphs to each other. Designate your stories as Story A and Story B.
Working together, write a third story (Story C) that weaves together Story A and Story B. For example, Story A could be a man and a woman driving in a car–where are they going? what happens along the way? what are they discussing? Story B could be about two boys in a canoe–do they get along? what is the relationship between them? What happens to cause tension between them? Switch back and forth between each thread, spinning each of the stories.
Then, (this is the fun part!) find a way to slowly weave the stories together: Do the two sets of characters cross paths? Are they somehow related? Is one story something that happened in the past of a character from the other story?
Collaborative Activity 2: Creating Characters and Conflict
Choose a partner. Each of you write a paragraph describing any kind of imaginary character. After writing your paragraph, share with your partner. With your partner, decide on conflict between these two characters. The more at stake, the better.
On your own, write a monologue in your character’s voice. Let your character speak freely, without restraint, expressing why she feels as strongly as she does about the conflict. Your partner will do the same.
Read your monologues aloud to each other. Then, putting the monologues aside, but letting them inform your understanding of the characters, each of you should write a scene in which the two characters talk to each other.
Give them something to do together—decorating a Christmas tree, playing Monopoly, getting ready for a garage sale- that has nothing to do with what they are in conflict over. They might argue with each other directly, or perhaps the disagreement just colors the way they relate to each other.
Read each other’s scenes and compare how each of you used the same material in different ways.