“Write a WHAT, Mrs. Bradley?”
“How long does it have to be?”
“Can we write ANY story? Like, ANYTHING we want?!?”
“Wait, what’s a novel?”
It was early October, my students were well into our school routine, when I took a sharp detour, ditched my current lesson plans, and challenged my 8th graders to write a novel in a month. At that point I hadn’t done a lot of planning for NaNoWriMo, but I hoped my students would be as excited about the project as I was.
After responding to their barrage of questions (some with, “Um… let me get back to you on that…”), they did get excited about their stories. But eventually that excitement turned to frustration, boredom, and maybe a little resentment. And since I hadn’t taken the time to thoroughly plan our novel-writing unit, I had to scramble to figure out how to get them back on track.
Like every teacher ever, I took that painful lesson into my work the following year and made sure to plan, plan, and plan some more for NaNoWriMo. If you’ve decided to bring the Young Novelist Challenge to your students, now’s the time to plan ahead so that you (and they) will be ready to dive into writing and sustain that energy throughout the month.
In this post, I’ll focus on prepping teachers for the challenge. I’ll be back in August to share my favorite tips on getting students primed for the project.
Administration and Parents
Take your students on a novel-writing adventure and they’ll gain more real-world writing skills than any packaged curriculum can offer. But will your school administration approve? Will your students’ parents appreciate the novelty of the project? Convincing them might be first on your back-to-school to-do list.
Fortunately we have resources to help you bring everyone on board. If meeting grade level standards is a concern, check out the many ways that the Young Novelist Challenge lines up with Common Core Standards. While the bulk of your classroom time will be spent writing, you can also address specific skills with targeted mini-lessons and assessments.
Testimonials from students can also be pretty convincing. My 8th graders (and some of their parents) had some insightful things to say about their novel-writing experiences.
Curriculum Planning
How could I possibly teach my students to write a novel when I’ve never written one myself? Fortunately, the Young Novelist Challenge resources include day-by-day lesson plans for teachers as well as workbooks for students. Dive into these free resources now and you’ll find more lessons than you can possibly use. I found it best to launch our novel prep lessons as early as I could in the school year so that my students would be chomping at the bit to start writing in November.
Paper or Digital?
Will your students write their novels on paper? Or will they use a digital document? The medium can impact your students’ writing fluency, so it’s important to prepare them to write confidently. We used Google Docs, and loved the comment feature for giving feedback during the writing process instead of waiting for students to turn in their drafts. But if a digital document is new for your students, give them plenty of practice time so that its novelty doesn’t get in the way of their writing. If they’ll write by hand, where will they do that? Shiny new notebooks dedicated to novel planning and writing, along with a smorgasbord of pens and pencils, can be a great inspiration.
Assessment
In a perfect world, there would be time in the school year for students to revise and edit their entire novel drafts. Within a more typical school calendar, it is a valuable experience for students to choose a couple excerpts from their novel and focus on thorough revision, proofreading, and publication. Plan now for how and when you will assess their writing, and take advantage of these rubrics to simplify the process for you and your young writers.
Check back in August for the next post, where we’ll help you get your students excited and organized for writing their first novels!