若手作家ワークショップ: 作家志望者のための上級作文講座

During this interactive writing class, students will start with a quick greeting and students will share their current writing project that they are working on and where they are at in the writing process for this class period. Then, we will quickly move into either a grammar or writing craft lesson of the day. We will practice this skill through a quick activity or game that will help us incorporate this lesson into our writing piece. Students should have a basic understanding of grammar upon entering the class, as we will be working on including complex sentence structures and analyzing how this element can enhance our writing piece. 
Students will be given the opportunity to participate in a community of learners that support each other as they grow in their writing abilities. Each student will have the opportunity to share an excerpt from their writing for positive or constructive feedback from the group, but no one is forced to share their work. Students will work through different parts of the writing process: brainstorming, planning, drafting, editing, revising, and publishing through a variety of writing genres with alternating themes. Students will be given feedback on their writing and independent learning goals by the teacher if they submit their work by the Friday after the class in the classroom. 
Students will learn grammar or writing craft lessons through songs, chants, games, and color-coding parts of speech through an interactive whole-group mini-lesson. 
Next, our class will then switch into our writing time wherein we will as a group begin the writing process and students will begin brainstorming, planning, drafting, editing, revising, and/or publishing our work depending on where each student is in their current writing piece. Students will have the opportunity to share their writing and learn how to support others by listening to their work with helpful or congratulatory comments.  

Weekly Schedule of Lesson Focus:
March Focus: Informational Writing: Essays & Reports
Week of March 3rd: Informational Writing: Planning and Organizing Reports
Use a graphic organizer to help you plan, research, and organize information to help you write a report.
Week of March 10th: Informational Writing: Parts of a Paragraph and Sentence Structure
Focus on utilizing different sentence structures to help you express your ideas with a variety of sentence structures that make your writing more interesting and informative.
Week of March 17th: Informational Writing: Citing Your Sources
How to write in-text citations and create a reference page to show where you found your information when writing a report. 
Week of March 24th: Informational Writing: Finding the Right Format
Learn about different ways to format or publish your report, including slide shows, presentations, essays, or brochures.
Week of March 31st: Informational Writing: The Importance of Word Choice and Defining Lingo
How to make sure that you are using a variety of words to keep your writing interesting and how to define lingo or specific names/ titles associated with your topic.
April Focus: Poetry
Week of April 7th: Patterns of Language
Identify the patterns within different types of poetry to choose one to try yourself.
Week of April 14th: No Classes/ Spring Break
Week of April 21st: Poetry: Incorporating Imagery
Utilize different literary devices to help you describe a specific topic in a way that expresses your feelings or opinions.
Week of April 28th: Poetry: Riddle Writing
How to use descriptive writing without saying the name of what you are writing about while incorporating literary devices without making it too easy!
May Focus: Narrative Writing:
Week of May 5th: Expanding the Exposition
Focus on establishing a great story by incorporating important details. Introducing the characters and setting in a way that helps the reader engage in the story from the start!
Week of May 12th: Building Suspense to Climb to the Climax
Focusing on the rising action and including events that help build up to the climax of the story and include an exciting climactic event.
Week of May 19th: Falling Action and Resolution
Focus on wrapping up the key parts of your story to show character and plot development by incorporating summarization or an epilogue.
Week of May 26th: Playing with the Plot Timeline 
Include different techniques to play with time through backstories, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and foreshadowing.