I Was There - Depicting History Through Creative Writing

PLEASE BE AWARE: Class time and length will be changing with the beginning of the school year. Starting August 24, the current section will be meeting for 1 hour and 25 minutes each Tuesday at 1 pm MDT.

Each class is its own self-contained lesson that will take students to a different historical event or time period. As such, events will not be presented in chronological order, although the event dates will be presented in each class.
Following the class, individualized feedback will be given to each student to improve their own piece of writing. 

Examples of some of the events that will be covered:
                  
Week of:
August 15: Ancient Greek Olympics
August 22: Plymouth Colony
August 29: Bolshevik Revolution
September 5: Massachusetts Bay Colony        

The class will continue beyond these dates and topics. 

Each week, the class format will be as follows:

- Housekeeping: a brief overview of rules
- Community Building: an icebreaker question
- "Blind" Quiz: to see what the students already know. This will often be in the form of a Kahoot! or Nearpod Time to Climb. Accommodations can easily be made for students who do not have a setup that allows for these activities.
- Mentor Text: I will read a piece of historical fiction to both introduce the topic and to provide a model of what the students will be expected to do at the end of class. 
- Lesson: an interactive lesson centered on the week's historical event (videos, articles, slideshow presentations, primary sources, and discussion).
- "Show, Don't Tell": a short writing lesson/activity
- Writing: students will begin a short story from the perspective of someone (or something) that was either involved or a witness to the week's event. 
- Share: students may share however much of their stories they have completed before I end class. Students are encouraged to share their writing with the class but are not required to do so. 

Students will have one week to complete it. They may share the completed stories in the classroom. Feedback will be given on assignments that are turned in.

PLEASE BE AWARE: Due to the nature of ongoing classes, the writing instruction of this class is mostly given through the feedback that I provide on what the students submit after the class has ended. 

Feedback WILL be provided to each student to help improve their writing. Unfortunately, however, it will not be possible to address all aspects of writing in each session. Therefore, it is best that students are already able to:
• use parts of speech correctly.
• use correct subject/verb and pronoun/antecedent agreement.
• produce complete and coherent sentences and paragraphs.
• have a basic understanding of sequence and the usage of transition words.
• have a basic understanding of how to write a narrative.

Please also note that it is helpful for me to have a visual copy of the students' work as they are working. Google Docs makes it easier for me to provide feedback to multiple students privately and in real-time. Prior to your student's first class, I will send a link to a Google Doc that will be shared between myself and your student (you may use the link as well) where they can complete all of their work for this course. 

In most cases, Google Docs works fine even without a Google account. HOWEVER, I have had situations where this was not the case. If for some reason (whether it be technological or personal), Google Docs is not an option for your student, we will find a workaround.