Sunday, October 30, 2011

NaNoWriMo

I really wish they'd come up with a better name for this event!

I wanted to clarify what our writing program will be for the month of November.

We will not be blogging this month. We will resume weekly blogging in December.

Instead, our sole writing focus will be on writing a novel. Having said that, each student is setting his/her own writing goal for this novel. The NaNoWriMo website has laid out the following guidelines for length: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/wordcount

I've encouraged each student to both challenge herself and to be realistic in setting her goal. Prolific writers can exceed the upper end of the range for their grade, while struggling writers will want to stick with the lower end of the range.

One fun thing is that a fellow teacher at Alexander Robinson Elementary is doing the NaNoWriMo challenge with her class, so we will be having some friendly competition. It will be fun to check in with them and see how they're coming along with their writing goals!

Our class has three computer blocks per week. Lately we seem to be spending a lot of that time just logging in and troubleshooting. However, once the students get used to logging in, they should have about two hours in the lab per week to devote on the writing. I do not anticipate they will need to do any writing at home this month at all. However, about mid-month, I will have a look at where each student is and I may recommend some students spend some time at home working on their stories, too.

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