Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Looking for Lesson Plans? Online Resources for Teaching Young Authors

As Mary Ann mentioned on Monday, today we're sharing part 2 of our answer to an Ask the TeachingAuthors question posted by Sandra Stiles regarding resources for teaching young writers. But first, I'd like to congratulate all the writers who tackled NaNoWriMo in November. Whether or not you managed to produce 50,000 words, I commend you for attempting the Herculean feat. I'm still in the midst of the pseudo-NaNoWriMo project that I blogged about last month. So far, I've added about 23,000 words to my work-in-progress. That's 3,000 words short of where I'd hoped to be by now, but I still have a couple of weeks until my December 15 deadline. Wish me luck!

Now, back to answering Sandra Stiles's Ask the TeachingAuthors question. She asked for help in planning her after-school writing class. On Monday, Mary Ann mentioned some books with activities to inspire young writers. Today I'd like to share websites with lesson plans and other resources. Here are six, in no particular order:
Many children's book publishers also provide teacher resources and lesson plans on their sites, including:
Candlewick Press, Scholastic, and Sleeping Bear Press.

In particular, I'd like to recommend Sleeping Bear Press's 25-page Teacher's Guide to our own Esther Hershenhorn's S is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet. Esther's book is a wonderful teaching resource for writers of all ages, and you don't have to take my word for it: Among its other accolades, S is for Story was recently named a 2011 Annual Teachers' Choice Awards Children's Book Winner.
Congratulations, Esther!

Finally, if you're working with young writers who are looking for places to publish their work, see the "For Writers" page of my website.

And if you know of other sites featuring lesson plans to use with young writers, please share them in the comments.

Happy writing!
Carmela

2 comments:

Esther Hershenhorn said...

Thanks for mentioning S is for Story, Marti, and for sharing news about the Teacher Guidelines Sleeping Bear Press provided.
(Obviously, we Teaching Authors need to talk to each other more often and inbetween our posts!) :)
I also offer Young Writer Extras for S is for Story on my website - www.estherhershenhorn.com/write.

Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford said...

Thanks so much for these tremendously helpful links.

I've found Annenberg Media to have some wonderful (and free) materials, too.
http://www.learner.org/