riders’ carafe

First three weeks of writer’s craft have gotten off to a solid, if quiet start.

The students are lovely. Thoughtful. A bit on the quiet side. Very shy. You know. Writers

I’ve been spending this time getting to know them and their attitudes towards writing, introducing them to the major activities of this part of the course, and gently exposing them to other authors, forms, types of writing than they may have seen to this point.

I’m also trying an experiment with the Writer’s Journal. This year, we’re making our own journals. In the past, it’s been so difficult to get them to use an actual journal, not loose pages put in a duotang. When you can get a fairly nice bound one at the dollarama, I don’t see what the problem is.

I was concerned at first about how they might create a journal that had sufficient girth for the length of the course, cause making bigger books takes more skill. And I wanted them to achieve some success with their first creation. And then I decided that we would make a successive number of journals, each one a different style, so that hey could feel the difference that writing in each of them made.

So, our first journals were just simple signature volumes. We took apart the lined pages from cheap-o exercise books to form the text blocks for those who wanted to use lined paper, and made the covers from scrapbooking papers I got from Wallmart and the Dollar Store. Cheap, and easy. And everyone was successful!

So, now we’re ready to write, I think.

And I think I want to start with a week of sound exercises. I just feel more and more convinced that unless they start to become more sensitive to the sounds of words, sentences, and the spaces between them…

And besides, nothing loosens a group of teens up than running around a room makin’ noize