Win a Skype Author Visit with this Back-to-School Writing Activity

Whether your school year started weeks ago or only yesterday (as in the Chicago Public School system), we thought this would be a good time to kick off a series of posts featuring back-to-school getting-to-know-you writing activities especially for teachers, librarians, and homeschooling parents. And, as an added incentive to try our Writing Workouts with your students, we're offering a special giveaway contest exclusively for teachers, librarians, and homeschooling groups.  (If you're not qualified to enter yourself, please tell all the teachers, librarians, and homeschoolers you know about this great opportunity!)

The prize? Your choice of:

A) a 30-minute Skype author visit from one of the TeachingAuthors  OR
B) a prize package containing six autographed TeachingAuthor books.

Not sure you want to host a Skype author visit for your book club or classroom? Then read teacher and author Kate Messner's blog post,  Virtual Author Visits: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, & the Awesome or check out Skype an Author Network.
 
What do you have to do to win? Below, you'll find a Writing Workout on using six-word memoirs as a getting-to-know-you activity. To enter our contest, you need to try the Workout with your students some time in the next few weeks. Then come back and post a comment to this blog entry by 11 pm (CST) Monday, Oct. 4, 2010.  We've extended the deadline 24 hours! You now have until 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010. Be sure to also read through to the end of this post for complete entry rules and instructions on how to qualify for a second, bonus entry. (If you've never posted a comment to a blog before and need some help, you can email me via my website.) 

About the activity: I first wrote about using six-word memoirs in the classroom a year ago. It's an activity students enjoy that can be adapted for all ages. I tried it over the summer with my writing camp students, and they had so much fun, they didn't want to stop--they wrote one memoir after another!  I hope you'll give the following lesson a try and then enter our contest. And if you're not a teacher or librarian, why not write some six-word memoirs for yourself? You can visit the Six-Word Memoirs website for inspiration. The site even provides a box where you can type in your memoir and the computer automatically counts your words!

Writing Workout
Getting to Know Me Back-to-School Activity:
Writing Six-Word Memoirs 

Objective: To engage students in thinking about their lives and to show them how to write concisely. Secondary objective: as a beginning-of-the-school-year activity, sharing these memoirs can serve as a way for students to get to know one another, and for the teacher to get to know the students. This is also a fun activity for a librarian to do with a student book club.

Lesson: Begin by talking about the word "memoir," and how it has the same root as the word "memory." Then share examples of six-word memoirs. Note: I'd planned to post examples written by my summer camp students, but now I can't find them. Argghh! So here's my six-word memoir for today:

Although organized, I still lose things.

Anyway, here's a link to some six-word memoirs written by eight- and nine-year-olds, and another to a blog post listing some by fourth-graders. One third-grade class even created their own six-word storybook. You can see it here. And if you're working with older students, be sure to read this post about a teacher who had her ninth-graders not only write six-word memoirs but also publish them with visual pieces on their own blog. 

Lesson Instructions: Have students make lists of facts about themselves. For example: Where do they live? How many siblings do they have? What are their favorite things to do, favorite foods, etc.? Depending on the students' ages, you may want to let them work on this with a partner.

Then have the students choose six words to summarize some aspect of who they are or what they like. Encourage them to use mainly nouns and verbs.

When the students have finished their memoirs, they can read them aloud to the class. Or if they have worked with partners, one partner may introduce the other to the class via the six-word memoir. You may also have the students post the memoirs on a bulletin board or create a class book like the third-grade project mentioned above.

Now, for the contest details:
The winner will receive his or her choice of:
A) a 30-minute SKYPE author visit from one of three TeachingAuthors:

April Halprin Wayland, Esther Hershenhorn, OR JoAnn Early Macken

OR 

B) a prize package containing the following TeachingAuthor books:

• Girl Coming in for a Landing by April Halprin Wayland
• S is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet by Esther Hershenhorn
• Mind Games by Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford
• Waiting out the Storm by JoAnn Early Macken
• A Tree for Emmy by Mary Ann Rodman
• I Fooled You: Ten Stories of Tricks, Jokes, and Switcheroos, edited by Johanna Hurwitz and featuring a story by Carmela Martino (with a printout of the corresponding Teacher's Guide)

 Contest Entry Requirements:

1. After you've completed the Writing Workout with your students, you must post a comment below telling us how the lesson went. (Clarification added 9/12/10: Your comment needn't be long, just a few words saying whether the activity was a success or not.) If it was a success, we encourage you to include one or more of your students' six-word memoirs in your comment.
2. You can receive a bonus entry by helping to spread the word about this giveaway via a blog post, Tweet, or Facebook link. As proof, you must post a second comment containing a link to your blog post, Twitter address, or Facebook wall. [You can post this comment before you actually try the Writing Workout, but the entry won't be valid unless you also tell us about your experience with the exercise.]
3. You must include contact information in your comment. If you are not a blogger, or your email address is not accessible from your online profile, you must provide a valid email address in your comment. Entries without contact information will be disqualified. Note: the TeachingAuthors  cannot prevent spammers from accessing email addresses posted within comments, so feel free to disguise your address by spelling out portions, such as the [at] and [dot]. (We will NOT add your email address to any mailing lists.)
4.  You must post your comment by 11 pm (CST) Monday, Oct. 4, 2010. We've extended the deadline 24 hours! You now have until 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010! The winner will be chosen at random from valid entries and announced on Wednesday, Oct. 6.
5. You must have a mailing address in the United States.
6. If you win, you automatically grant us permission to identify you as a winner on our TeachingAuthors website. 

I think that's it, but if I've left something out, feel free to post your questions in the comments.
Good luck, and happy writing!
Carmela

Taking our Writing Workouts on the Road & Sharing the "Writer's Rap"

Today I'm braving the snow to travel to DePaul University in Chicago. There, I'll meet with my fellow blogger Esther Hershenhorn and education professors Roxanne Owens and Marie Donovan to discuss our upcoming presentation at the Illinois Reading Council Conference, which will be held in Springfield, Illinois next month. On Thursday, March 18, the two DePaul professors and five of the Teaching Authors (including me) will present "Flabby to Fab-y: Writing Workouts to Shape Up Your Curriculum." If you're attending the conference, I hope you'll join us. We will begin our presentation by discussing the "Top Ten Challenges" for those who teaching writing to children and teens, based on the experience of Professors Owens and Donovan, and on the input our readers provided as part of the contest we offered in January. Here is a summary of the challenges our readers shared:

• Lack of sufficient time to teach writing
• Difficulty teaching to differences between second-graders and sixth-graders participating in the same writing workshop
• Keeping students on task
• Teaching students how to give constructive feedback
• Challenges helping students, especially non-native speakers, expand their vocabulary
• When to emphasize grammar versus focusing on content
• Helping students understand that a first draft is just the beginning of the process
• Knowing when to begin the critique process
• Finding ways to make learning grammar fun
• How to eliminate fear of writing, fear of "getting it wrong"
• How to balance teaching of different genres
• Looking for helpful mini-lessons to teach 1st/2nd graders fiction writing
• Having students use their own ideas instead of taking ideas from examples
• Helping students with good ideas develop the skills to translate them onto the page

If you didn't get a chance to share last month, it's not too late--we'd still love to know about your greatest challenges when teaching writing to grades 1-12. Please post your comments below.

Don't forget--there's still time to enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Davy Crockett Gets Hitched by Bobbi Miller. See JoAnn's Guest Teaching Author Interview with Bobbi for details.

If you're looking to win books for a slightly older audience, check out the love-themed giveaway at the Classof2K10 blog. Their entry deadline is midnight on Valentine's Day.

Finally, here's an early Valentine's Day gift for aspiring writers (and those who teach them), courtesy of author Erin Dealey. Her "Writer's Rap" will have you moving to the beat. (Thank you, Alice Pope, for posting the clip on your CWIM blog.) When you're done watching, go out and "hook 'em big"!
(If you're an email subscriber and the clip doesn't come through, you can watch it on YouTube here.)



Happy Writing!
Carmela

Latest Contest Winner and New Contest for Teachers and Homeschoolers

Congratulations to our New Year Resolution Contest Winner: 

Irene Latham

Irene's 6-word resolution was:

Celebrate. Create. Inspire. Plot. Enjoy. Finish.

From reading Irene's blog, I see she has much to celebrate this year. Her first children's novel, Leaving Gee's Bend, has just been released by G.P.Putnam. Hurray for you, Irene!

And a big thank you to everyone who posted a resolution. I hope we ALL succeed in following through on them.

Our next contest will be especially for Teachers and Homeschoolers. (If you're not a teacher or homeschooler, please spread the word to someone you know who is.) We'd like you to answer the following question: What is one of the biggest challenges, problems, or questions you have when teaching writing to students in grades 1-12?
If we can, we'd like to suggest solutions to some of those problems on this blog later in the year.

The contest will run in conjunction with a new series of posts on the topic of IDEAS, the first of the Six Traits of Writing. (If you aren't familiar with the Six-Traits approach, you can read more about it here.) As part of our discussion of IDEAS, each TeachingAuthor will talk about the idea that inspired one of her published books. Our contest winner will then be given his or her choice of one of those six books as a prize. (See the addendum below for a list of the six books.)

So here are the contest details:

1. To enter, you must be a teacher or homeschooler of students in grades 1-12.
2. You must post a comment answering the following question: What is one of the biggest challenges, problems, or questions you have when teaching writing to your students?
3. You must specify the grade level of your students and whether you teach in a school or at home.
4. You must provide your email address or a link to your own blog so that we can contact you. (U.S. residents only, please.)
   
5. Entries must be posted by 11 p.m. (Central Standard Time) Friday, January 29, 2010 Saturday, January 30, 2010.
   
6. The winner will be announced on Monday, February 1, 2010.
   

A detailed explanation of our general giveaway guidelines are posted here.

If you have any questions about the contest, you can post them as a comment. Good luck!
Carmela
Addendum (1/22/10): our contest winner will receive her or his choice of one of the following TeachingAuthor books: 

• Mind Games by Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford
  
• The Confe$$ions and $ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut by Esther Hershenhorn 
• Sing-Along Song written by JoAnn Early Macken, illustrated by Leuyen Pham
  
• A Tree for Emmy written by Mary Ann Rodman, illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss
  
• Rosa, Sola by Carmela Martino
  
• Girl Coming in for a Landing by April Halprin Wayland 

You can read the posts about the ideas behind these books here. The last will be posted on January 29.