Writing Workshops for Children

A Workshop in Word Wizardry (short version)

    1 1/2 - 2-hours
   
    For students in grades three through six. A more sophisticated version is also available for middle and high school students.
   
    "We are writers. We work with words in ways most wise, wild, and wonderful. Their sound and their sense seem to sing to us. We mutter and murmur to make meaning matter." In such a way do I introduce this Workshop in Word Wizardry to its participants. After a brief discussion about the alliterative technique of this introduction, I divide the students into three teams and explain the workshop's intent: to play with language through the medium of games.
   
   In this workshop, students learn to pay attention to language by playing several games, each selected to emphasize a different aspect of language: its sound, its meaning, and its ability to communicate complex thought. Students work in teams and compete for prizes. (Students on the winning team get one kind of prize; all other students get "runner-up" prizes.) I hope that students would leave this workshop with a heightened sense of language based on an increased awareness of the sounds of words, a more astute sense of the importance of precise vocabulary, and a growing respect for the creative opportunities of building stories out of words.
   
   At the end of the session, in addition to the prizes, each participant is given a "Certified Word Wizard" badge to indicate successful completion of the workshop.
   

A Workshop in Word Wizardry (extended version)

    A one-week workshop of one-hour classes
   
    For young writers, suitable for elementary or middle school children, adaptable for high school
   
    Description: This is an extended version of the workshop described above. On the first day, students make handbound, blank books and are divided into teams. On ensuing days the teams play various language games (some with cards, some with objects, etc.) focusing on a different aspect of writing each day: the sounds of words, vocabulary choice, rhyme or synonyms, and story. Points are given at the end of each game. Each day students record their writing in their books and have a chance to share what they have written. On the final day, scores from all the games are tallied and prizes are awarded to the members of the winning team and runner-up prizes to all the other students. "Certified Word Wizard" tags are given to every participating student.
   
    Goals:
    (1) To increase language awareness - how it works by sound, by vocabulary, by nuance, and so on.
    (2) To introduce the tools of the writer's craft: metaphor, alliteration, description, rhyme, etc.
    (3) To be able to write focused paragraphs, using the tools of the writer's craft introduced during the course.
    (4) For each to student to have a book of his or her own writing.