FOR STUDENTS: What if there was a world with clashing rings? Or a dark moon few dare to visit?  We’ll create an unusual world that’s all our own and people it with a made-up societies. What do the people look like in the land you create? Do they have strange features? Will your society be high-tech or low tech? Peaceful or aggressive? 
Is your land full of cities or have strange deserts where monsters roam? 

In addition to creating our own world and writing stories about the people in it, we'll listen to the stories that other learners write, and comment on those stories.

FOR PARENTS: This class meets the Common Core Curriculum Standards for writing narratives in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. (See below.) This is a process based workshop. Each week the clear and simple process is the same. This allows for maximal creative freedom in a familiar and cozy routine for students. At the same time that students are comfortable and creative within the format, the class is teaching excellent writing, listening, and analytical skills. 

In every workshop:
1) Students will be given a writing prompt to help them create a speculative fiction story.  
2) They will read their writing out loud (if they want to).
3) Others in the group will listen and then comment on what they like about the story or recall in terms of details and writing craft.  
4) We'll finish each class by discussing a core curriculum issue such as point of view, transitions, conclusions, shifts in setting or time, etc. 

COMMON CORE CURRICULUM FOR WRITING NARRATIVES: 
This class meets the Common Core Curriculum Standards for writing narratives in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. Students who master this class will also find that they have been practicing and demonstrate the skills needed to execute the standards for Speaking & Listening and Language in the common core curriculum for 5th, 6th, and 7th grade. 

These are the core curriculum standards that this class meets:

Overall goal: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
W.7.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
W.7.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
W.7.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.
W.7.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.
W.7.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.