This one-week summer camp is for middle school students who love to write and are looking for opportunities to practice their writing in a fun environment, learn about a new genre, and make their writing more interesting and descriptive.

The camp will be held for five consecutive days, for one hour each day.

Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses many strategies from fictional storytelling (such as developing a plot with a conflict, climax, and resolution) but is based on a real life experience of the author.

In this camp, students will be guided through the process of choosing a story from their own lives, drafting a short (1-2 page) account of it, and then revising it several times to improve its descriptive detail. They will leave with a polished story in hand that they can be proud of!

Students will be taught several literary devices for improving descriptive detail, such as appealing to the five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) and using analogies (metaphor and simile).

In addition to improving their writing, students will enjoy the benefits of being in community with a group of writers, sharing ideas and questions, and demonstrating curiosity and excitement about each other's work.

Each day of camp will be organized around the following general structure:

- A fun greeting and warm-up writing activity
- A short lesson with examples
- Time to practice writing based on the lesson
- Optional sharing and discussion of the writing started

Students will be encouraged to continue working on their writing project outside of camp hours. Depending on their writing interest and abilities, the amount of time they spend will likely vary from student to student. Planning for about 20-30 minutes of outside writing time per day would be a beneficial goal in order to begin to practice the tools we talk about in camp. Students are certainly welcome and encouraged to spend more time than this if their schedules allow.

Students will receive informal verbal feedback on aspects of their work in progress from me and other campers if they choose to share it during the optional time in the last part of the hour. (Students will not be required to share their work.) Students who would like more comprehensive feedback on their final drafts can request a written evaluation that will be provided within one week of the completion of camp.

Some middle schoolers may worry that they don’t have enough interesting experiences to find something to write about. Rest assured, they do! HOW you tell a story is just as important as WHAT that story is. A reader will be much more entertained by a funny retelling of running late for school one morning than a boring summary of winning the olympics! This camp is all about teaching students HOW to write creatively and descriptively.