Creative Writing: Let's Write a Dystopian Story! (FLEX)

Do you have dreams of writing a story where your main character faces an oppressive government determined to control its citizens? Or are they dealing with the aftermath of an environmental disaster? If so, this is the class for you!

In this class, I help students take the ideas in their heads and develop them into a 1,000-3,000 word story (which is equivalent to 2-4 pages, single-spaced). Each week, we will build up to the actual writing of the story, will write the story, revise it, and then share it with the class during our final class meeting.

Here is the breakdown of each week's topic:
Week 1 - Understanding the Genre of Dystopian Fiction
Week 2 - Planning & Outlining the Story
Week 3 - Time to Write (write the 1st draft of your story)
Week 4 - Writing Workshop & Revisions (revise your 1st draft to create your final draft)
Week 5 - Share Your Story (record a video of you reading your story on FlipGrid in order to share it with the class)
*I will post videos for each week's lesson on Monday. All assignments must be turned in by Sunday at 11:59pm each week.

Week 1 will be the most teacher-directed learning session as I will post a video that spends time discussing what makes up the genre of dystopian fiction. Students will be expected to brainstorm their stories and share them with the class via FlipGrid this week. During Week 2, I will post a video with a little lesson on outlining and planning for a story, but then students will have time to begin planning and outlining their stories. I will also post short videos at the beginning of Weeks 3 and 4, but overall, these weeks will be completely student-led as students will be using that time to write and revise their work. As always, I will post a short video at the beginning of Week 5, our final week of class, but it will also be completely student-led as students will be reading and sharing their stories with the class via FlipGrid.

In order for us to have high interactivity and engagement throughout this class, students will respond to a given prompt on FlipGrid each week (Week 1 = share story idea, Weeks 2-4 = reflection of the week's assignment) by posting short videos of their thoughts. In addition to this, they will be expected to respond to each other via video on at least one of their peer's video posts. I will also respond to student videos. This whole process is designed to help students become more comfortable with using FlipGrid because during Week 5, they will use it to read and share their stories with the class. Students will also be expected to give feedback on each other's outlines during Week 2 and rough drafts during Week 4 (I will assign partners for this). I will give feedback on each assignment as well.