Student Writing

This summer students at East Village Youth Program in Chicago took part in a group creative writing project. Their task was to create a TV series that takes place in a run-down apartment building. In the first class they described the filthy restaurant on the ground floor. In the next class they selected a character and described that person's room. In the following weeks they shaped their character. Here are a few of these people.

      Artistic acrobat
      Bored brain surgeon
      Devious dentist
      Egomaniacal electrician
      Kinetic kindergarten teacher
      Manly mortician
      Nerdy nurse
      Sloppy Spy


In upcoming weeks they will write episodes involving several of the characters. We will keep you posted.

Since this is devoted to teacher writing, we will include some poetry by a teacher from DeVry -- Bob Lawrence.

Rock'N Roll Dreams...and other poems

Web sites with student writing examples, rubrics, models:
Lee's Summit
Writing Fun
National Scholastic Press Association

In a few weeks we should have some student-written historical fiction. In the mean time, enjoy these poems from YCA graduates.
Care Bears vs. Sesame Street
First Time
I Remember
Poor Man's Memory

These two stories started with prompts from MOE'S CAFE. Following the stories are a few helpful (we hope) comments.
Luck at the Beach/A Stranger's Request
The Final Shot/Electricity

Here are some EVYP student writing samples from the job/trait paper: Angry Attorney and Idealistic Interior.

Here are some excerpts from The Spiral Eye, a publication from Young Chicago Authors. Click here to read them.

Check out the student writing samples at this website, which organizes papers by grade and paper type (personal narrative, research, poetry etc.). www.thewritesource.com/studentmodels.

Here are some selections from "...illustrations of nature's magnitude within hands reach..." This is a poetic forms book edited by YCA teachers Tara Betts and Jenn Morea. "The poems in this collection communicate across time and place, and have in them the dynamics of discovery."

A ghazal is a short, lyric poem written in couplets using a single rhyme. The ghazal is an important lyric form in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu poetry, often providing the basis for popular love songs. Here is Rebecca Liu's.

A haibun is a combination of brief prose and haiku often autobiographical or written in the form of a travelogue. Haibun's first became prominent in seventeenth-century Japan. Here is James Dillingham's.

A pantoum is a dreamy verse form composed of quatrains in which the second and fourth lines are repeated as the first and third lines of the following quatrain. The pantoum originated in France, based on a form from Malaya. Here are Barbara Pacheco's and Jannine Ochoa's.

A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem. Sonnets originated in thirteenth-century Italy. The relative brevity and rigidity of the sonnet form challenges the poet's concentration of thought, exactness of expression, and skill in working with a rigid rhyme scheme. Here is Emily Cotterman's.

Here is a short story by Jennifer Gerena, a student in my fall Walter Payton High seminar program. I know the student would appreciate your comments. Click here to read it.

This month I ran a creative writing workshop at the East Village Youth Program in Chicago. I used one of my old favorite prompts: "The Final Shot." In this the students describe supercharged moment in a high school basketball game

Prompt: You find yourself inside a gym packed with noisy fans watching a high school basketball play-off game. Three seconds are left and the Heyworth Hornet star Jamie Scheets has an open shot from the corner. If he makes it, the home team wins. If he misses, the visiting Pekin Dragons win and eliminate the Hornets from the state tournament. You are sitting in the middle of a section of screaming Hornet fans with a great view of the action.

Here are a few samples.