Do you teach creative writing? (s/o NaNoWriMo curriculum thread)

[Kay in Cal]

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) website has a Young Writers Program. Here is a link to their workbooks. There are three levels: elementary, middle school, and high school.

 

My dh has started teaching through the Nanowrimo elementary curriculum as a run up to National Novel Writing Month. My ds6 is so excited about his novel, he can hardly wait to do the exercises. He spends hours thinking about characters and plot and what sort of books he's going to write. Even spelling and grammar have become more popular as the connection to actual story telling is made... and ds4 wants to draw a novel himself.

 

I know that WTM doesn't include or encourage creative writing, but this has been a big transition here after a month of school resistence. Of course, my dh is a writer, I like to write--so maybe that increases dss interest? So I'm letting Aesops go for now until we are done with the Nanowrimo process (including rewrites) in December. I love it when they love it!

 

So do you teach creative writing? Why or why not?

[Carol in Cal.]

...I think all writing should be engaging and interesting, and I think that my daughter has a talent for it.

 

Because of our focus on creative writing I have:

 

Read and studied more poetry with DD than I would otherwise have done, and given her 'writing' credit for writing poetry.

 

Used Writer's Jungle techniques for her longer non-fiction pieces. Used WJ in general because it is the only writing program I know of that encourages children to develop and matinain their own 'writing voice.'

 

Used Writing Strands instead of IEW or CW, because it gives her the space to write creatively within the context of standard writing improvement lessons.

 

Given DD writing credit for writing stories and longish 'books'.

 

Separated out the requirements for learning mechanics of writing from the requirements for her creative and subject area writing, so that she would not get too bogged down to write well. So, since she was terrible at spelling, I didn't make her spell everything correctly in every paper that she wrote about history or science. But I did pursue spelling programs and was viscously insistent on perfect copywork--thus she had to learn the material, but not at the expense of her composition skills.

[VaKim]

Nope. My dd is a natural though, and it comes from all the good books she has read over the years. Even if she wasn't a natural, I would not bother with it simply because I do not feel that everyone has the gift for it and it is just not important to our goals.

[Alana in Canada]

I'm on the fence, actually. I'm quite committed to Aesop--and I don't know if we could ever "go back" to this kind of writing if we broke out and wrote a "novel." They would hate the workbook and the "thinking through." And, I honestly don't think they'd have the dicipline to write about one thing for a whole month.

 

I'm glad it is working for you though--it's great to see kids engaged!

[Cindy in MO]

No creative writing here unless they are interested, and so far they haven't been. I was set free by the WTM; no more struggling with the kids to get them to write a story. Two sons attemped some story writing just for fun. If they ever want to become better creative writers, we will pursue it.

 

Cindy