San Diego Area Writing Project

Young Writers Camp NewsletterJuly 28, 2014

Stella Erkam, Jamie Jackson, Amelia Kaufman, and Amy Sweeney

Our eager 3rd and 4th grade campers participated in many community building activities last week. Ms. Stella and Ms. Ja-mie led a variety of lessons that required self-reflection, collaboration, and writ-ing. Using the book Maxs Words by Kate Banks, campers searched through maga-zines to find words to create an artistic cover for their binders. Students thought-fully put together words and phrases that define and embody who they are as students, as children, and as writers.

We also got creative while making multi-media self-portraits. Students used paint, photography, and poetry to create images of themselves featuring their I Am poems. Lastly, we read the book The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald as a way to build our writing community. Campers then wrote their own Best Part of Me poems and shared them with our group. Weve formed small writing response groups that work together to revise and edit our writing.

Ours is a very diverse, unique, and spe-cial group of writers who have enjoyed sensory writing snd color writing using the book Yesterday I Had the Blues by Je-ron Ashford Frame. In addition, campers anticipate the unstructured, free writing time provided each morning.

We look forward to our upcoming field trips, guest speakers, and all the various writing activities to come!

YWC campers enjoyed an enriching first week filled with a variety of engaging writing experiences. We know that you have already heard about many of the activities in your own childs classroom. We thought that you might also enjoy reading about the events happening throughout camp. This newsletter is filled with a few highlights from each group.

You are invited to our sharing celebra-tion open microphone reading at Barnes and Noble in Mira Mesa on July 31st at 6:00 p.m. Dont forget that you are also invited to final day classroom festivities on Friday, August 1st from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Camp will conclude immediately following classroom visits at 10:30 a.m. that morning.

Emily Vizzo, Miriam Sikking,Aditi Munshi, and Mara Cook

It has been wonderful to bond as a community of writers. Students have gained confidence in creating and shar-ing their ideas with others. They have viewed the world around them in new ways in order to write creatively.

We began by getting to know one another through games as we explored our names and what they tell about us. To brainstorm ideas, students listed places they would like to go with their feetfavorite places to walk, skip or jump to and favorite people to go with. This list is used for daily writing ideas.

We took a trip to the UCSD Bookstore in order to create found poetry from book titles. Back in the classroom, students learned about revision by us-ing Play-Doh to add, modify and delete parts of their creations. Through this art experience, students learned strate-gies that they can apply to their writing.

We continued our focus on revision by reading Owl Moon, and then added sensory details to our own writing. With our new sensory skills, we toured cam-pus and wrote about the experience.

We have also focused on perspec-tive. While exploring the Snake Path, students wrote at ground level and eye level before getting a birds eye view from the fourth floor of the Geisel Library. SDAWPs resident poet Frank Barone shared his poetry and led us as we wrote our own poems. In addtion, we delved into persuasive writing by creating product ads for UCSD stu-dents, and our TA, Mara taught a lesson on pourquoi tales.

This week, we will be busy with a tour of the Geisel Library and a visit to the Fallen Star. Class lessons will include dialogue, character sketches, and zooming in on writing. Our TA, Aditi will teach a lesson on puns. We look forward to continuing to strengthen our community of writers over the next week!

Laura Smart, Cindy Jenson-Elliott,Mikaela Renshaw, and

Michelle Nguyen

Slithering. Poisoning. Rattling. Hiss-ing. Students in fourth and fifth grade use active language to write about their experiences out and about on the UC San Diego campus. With pencils and notebooks in hand, our campers have explored the Trees, the fountain, and Snake Path, writing as they go. Last week, after an inside lesson on cinquain and concrete poetry by TA Miss Michelle, students went to the Snake Path behind the Giesel Library to write cinquain poetry in the concrete form of a snake. Then they gathered into small groups to share and discuss their work, sitting outside in the morn-ing breeze to offer each other apprecia-tion and suggestions.

Meeting in small groupswriting response groups or WRGsallows our campers to grow as writers by giving and receiving authentic, supportive responses to their work. And writing outside helps children understand that writing is everywhere and that the world welcomes their beautiful words.

Rob Meza-Ehlert, Divona Roy,

Cinnamon Roy, and Jared Guarano

The amazing group of high school writers at YWC spent the first week engaged in finding and developing their voices through a variety of writing ex-periences. We accomplished one of our primary goals, which was to create a caring and comfortable writing commu-nity where every student grows.

Each morning starts with free writing in our comfy library space, followed by a more focused lesson. So far weve learned how to Shout Out from poet Sekou Sundiata; we spun a poem into a circle of meaning; we explored the theme of change through writing, and we created our own menagerie of fan-tastic mythical beasts.

After the break each day, weve ven-tured out onto the remarkable UCSD campus to explore important themes through writing.

The Green Table gave us a chance to voice our opinions in response to a variety of challenging quotes, the Fallen Star opened a door (literally!) to consider the importance of home in our lives, and we sharpened our senses by silently observing our surroundings throughout the campus.

The UCSD Bookstore provided a chance to gather words and phrases that we wove into meaningful found poetry. Never heard of a found poem? You can try it yourselfas you read through this newsletter, gather words and phrases that stand out to you, play with ways to organize the words so they express your voice, and write it down to share with others. Instant poetry!

We look forward to another fantastic week exploring, writing, sharing, and refining together as our writing com-munity helps all students develop their

April Dorman, Lauren Wilensky, Lauren Cook, and Sidney Brown

Our eager group of writers meet each morning in Warren Lecture Hall. When students arrive, they open to fresh pages in their writers notebooks. Every day offers a new beginning for generat-ing exciting ideas that may turn into pieces for the YWC publication. We began our time together by focus-ing on developing voice as writers. We also learned that ideas can come from anywhereeven a leaf or a stick can be worth writing about!

Our group has gone on several out-ings. We visited the UCSD Bookstore where we borrowed words from books to use for found poems. We have also taken field trips to the stone Bear and the Snake Path, and we are planning trips to the Fallen Star and Sun God. When we had the opportunity to hear SDAWPs resident poet Frank Barone speak about his work, we were inspired to write poems that we were excited to share with others. We are enjoying our time working with our writing response groups, which meet based on interest: poetry, fan-tasy, character development, and short story. At first, campers were a bit shy, but now they cant wait to share their writing with their peers. Everyone is eager to give and receive constructive criticism and compliments.

This week we will be writing our an-thology pieces, taking more field trips, and spending a lot of time revising and editing our work.

Upcoming YWC Activities

July 29- Anthology cover contest sub-missions due by 9:00 a.m.

July 30 - Anthology pieces due by 9:00 a.m.

July 31 - Writing About Writing contest entries due by 12:00 p.m.

July 31 - Sharing celebration (open microphone) and fundraiser event at Barnes and Noble in Mira Mesa at 6:00 p.m.

August 1 - Families are invited to classroom celebrations from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Camp ends at 10:30 a.m. on the final day.

Dave Mattas, Breanne Lagomarsino, James Drevno, and Julia Erickson

It was clear from the start that our mid-dle school campers are experienced writers. They already have knowledge and ability, and they have developed specific goals for their writing.

We started our first week with a discus-sion of story: What makes a good one? How can we learn to be better story writers? After being given a character, setting, object, and conflict, our writers had to create stories of their own.

We then focused on beginnings. How do we get things started? We looked at the beginnings of famous novels and talked about why and how they worked before trying out some of the strategies. We left the classroom to write sur-rounded by the beautiful environment at UC San Diego campus. We also met in response groups for the first time, giving us a chance to hear and reflect on some of the imaginative writing already happening.

As we turned our attention to charac-terization, the room buzzed with the names of well-known characters as we talked about what made them memo-rable. We stepped out of our normal frame of reference to create our own new characters and ventured outside again to write in the shade of the stone Bear sculpture.

A lesson on satire gave our campers the chance to test their talents at humor writing. Parodied news stories about coffee addiction, technology, and the weather brought laughter to our morn-ing. We ventured out again to explore UCSDs Geisel Library and the current displays related to Dr. Seuss, historical hats, and tiny pianos (and also masks!).

It was a busy week filled with creativ-ity and imagination. We have already generated a great deal of good writing, and campers are starting to craft and revise their pieces for publication!