Take a character, add a prop, a place, and a child’s imagination and what do you have? A cool and amazing story! The KidsCom.com “Write Me a Story” project asks young writers to compose unique stories using the elements they provide. KidsCom members (membership is free) become critics by voting on the stories they want to see published on the site. Sign up at KidsCom.
WITS leads weekly workshops at Discovery Green every Saturday from 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM. It is a FREE drop-in program that takes place at Discovery Green in the Houston Public Library Express, located in the Lake House Building.
These workshops will be offered through the summer. There’s no sign up process. Parents who are interested can simply drop off their kids (grades 2-12) at the HPL building by 10:30 AM and pick them up by 11:30 AM. Each Saturday workshop is team-taught by 2 WITS writers. WITS will provide all necessary writing materials. Here’s a link to the Discovery Green website with a list of all their free programs.
At the beginning of the WITS teaching year, I ask my students what they collect. They list items such as teddy bears, stamps, rocks, and snow globes. Next I ask them what they think I collect. They know I’m a writer so they often guess things such as pencils, erasers, or journals. Then, I pull out a box and open the lid. Inside are hundreds and hundreds of words and phrases that I’ve cut out of magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and old books. I tell them that I collect words and that I keep them in boxes and baskets around my house. When I feel stuck or bored with my writing, I often turn to my collection of “found” words for inspiration.
Students respond enthusiastically to the concept of “Found Poetry.” If you’d like to try out a fun newspaper-based lesson with your students, read The Learning Network: Student Challenge | Create a New York Times ‘Found Poem’. Students are asked to choose words and phrases from one Times article and re-combine them into a poem. If the results are fantastic, there is a contest for students ages 13 and up that is sponsored by The New York Times (see above article for rules and submission guidelines). The deadline is Monday, April 19 at 5 p.m. E.S.T.
The planet Mars with a million craters,
and only one patch of grass
sending hope of life.
A single red sack out of many
in one raspberry.
A glistening yellow light sparkling
from a deep, never-ending hole.
A poppy growing through the graves
in Flanders Fields.
A red beach ball
children toss and kick
on the seashore of Florida.
A creamy waterfall with stones
amid the sunset.
The waterfall flows forever.
Red blood spilled during the Civil War.
Spirits fly out of a hole
angered at the blood spilled.
A volcano with ridges,
ready to erupt.
By Pragya, 5th grade
[photo by Valeriy Novikov via flickr]
There’s a cool new writing contest for kids that you might want to know about. The Exquisite Prompt is a monthly writing challenge sponsored by Reading Rockets and AdLit.org. Judges for the contest include famous authors such as Kate DiCamillo and Jon Scieszka. Teachers, the prompts are also designed as classroom activities for grades K-12.
Visit the website to learn more about the prompts and the rules of these fun monthly challenges.
The children in the Creative Writing workshop in Skopje were ready to select their images for the Ekphrasis assignment and one of the masks that the teachers put on the board looked, from far away, like the famous Mask of Agamemnon, so, 
never the one to stand back timidly, I said, “Oh, the mask of Agamemnon.” At that point both my Macedonian teachers (one married to an archeologist), fell upon me and gave me the what-for! “Oh no. Many golden masks have been found in Macedonia.” One, found in 1934, is in the museum in Belgrade with its fellow. Others have been found recently in 17 graves from the 6th. century B.C. in a village near Lake Ohrid. There is much excitement about the discovery of the bronze age graves near Ohrid. But there is also much pride about the beautiful mask that is in Belgrade. I was amazed by its beauty, the face surrounded by the ancient image for enigma and questioning.
Which brings me to the constant questions that the kids in the workshop are asking. “Do you go to NASA often?” How many computer languages do you know?” “Do you know Obama?” “Have you seen AC/DC?” “Do you have a hamster?” What do you do with questions like that asked by students who have learned their English by playing video games or whose goal in the workshop is to write an epic poem?
The answer, of course, is provide them with challenges, and that is exactly what I am best at, so tomorrow they have to perform the play that they are writing today, but only after they create their life clock on a large white paper plate, starting, at 12 o’clock with they day, month, and year that they were born. Did you want a brother? Did you want a baby sister? Did you want to learn computer languages? Did you want a hamster? Did you want to make good grades? Did you want to have a bird? Did you want to fly? Did you want to work with E.A. Blizzard or Krytech? Did you want to meet Miley Cyrus? Did you want to be a teacher? Did you want two new cousins? I know I did. Did you want someone to love you all your life?
I feel like the Art Linklater of Creative Writing Teachers. Kids say the funniest things. They also say the wisest.
posted by Merrilee Cunningham, Writers in the Schools (WITS)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of a bad person
1 bottle of Anti-Truth potion
Something to lie about
Somebody to lie to
A handful of dirty, no-good, lying cockroaches
0/4 of a promise
A pen
A big secret book that hides the truth
500 TONS of locks to keep the book safe
A teaspoon of no conscience
A pinch of a guilt killer and a dash of blinking eyelashes
Directions:
1. Mix the 1/2 cup of a bad person with 1 bottle of Anti-Truth in a bowl until they spit at you.
2. Instead of stomping the cockroaches, eat them, then barf them out into the bowl.
3. If you already have, for example, 2/4 of a promise, grill your promise and that will fix the problem so you will have 0/4 of a promise left.
4. Use your pen to write down the truth in the big book.
5. Wrap up the book with the locks really good.
6. DON’T FORGET TO HIDE THE KEY!
7. Now smash the book into the bowl with a hammer.
8. To make your recipe stable, add a teaspoon of no conscience.
9. Just in case: if the no conscience doesn’t work, add a pinch of guilt-killer to your bowl.
10. To make your recipe work, add a dash of blinking eyelashes.
11. Before you put the bowl in the grinder, dance over the bowl to make your recipe powerful. The more you dance the more powerful it gets.
12. Now put the bowl into the grinder for 20 minutes.
13. Take the bowl out of the grinder and pour the stuff inside it onto a plate.
14. Now you’ve done it. All you have to do is to eat it all in two bites; it will taste horrible, but, after all, it is a recipe for lying.
By Mohammed, 4th grade
J is the jeweled night sky under which I was born;
E is the entirety of the universe which gave me life;
M is the magic which burns in my soul and in my eyes;
M is the moment of stillness in each day when I see the future;
A is the alchemy in my heart
which turns brass experiences
into gold memories.
My name is Jemma.
by Jemma, 6th grade
Today was yet another amazingly beautiful, sunny day in Macedonia’s capital. In fact, I haven ‘t seen a drop of rain since I got here. This is given the fact that the flowers in the flower market are beautiful, the wheat crop is up 40% over last year, and Macedonia is willing to give up its name and turn itself into “New Macedonia” for a chance of getting candidacy in the E.U. Yet if you saw the amazingly beautiful city of Skopje, you would think that this was a paradise with its stone bridge from early Ottoman times, its amazing stone fortifications, its beautiful river Vardar, of which the citizens are so proud.
It is these and more images that the students wrote about in their Ekphrasis assignment. Ekphrasis is writing an extended definition, and it is from the Greek, but it has come, by custom if nothing else, to mean writing about art, and that is what my students did today.
They did an absolutely amazing job given that each and every one had to write a poem using Ekphrasis in a language which is their second, third or fourth language. First I had them read Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn and Auden’s 
Musee de Beaux Arts, and then they began. I will send you the results on Monday. They did a great job.
Tomorrow I have the day off so I am going to walk their stone bridge (the original bridge on the site was Roman) and then I will tell you the difference between seeing image and walking the stones.
In my first lesson with the children, we used brown paper bags. (I have a small suitcase with my clothes in it and a large suitcase with my colored paper, bags, note cards, pencils and other supplies.) My writers (there were about 30) were very happy to be writing, and in this paper bag project, they wrote about something that they would like to get rid of. The youngest of my writers had a list of carrots, pears, bugs, and teachers that he would like gone from his life, at least over the summer.
Yesterday at noon was my scariest audience. I gave an hour lecture to the Faculty of English and Creative Writing at the University of Belgrade. Though I was a little nervous, and had spent the entire night working on my lecture and getting no sleep, they were all very generous about what I said and friendly. They would like to establish a relationship with Writers in the Schools Houston. Afterward, I was invited to lunch with several of their writers and I want to discuss more about that meeting with Serbian authors in the future. I have about 7 novels by Serbian authors and as soon as I have read more than one, I will blog on the state of great modern Serbian authors.
Today the embassy attache is coming to take me in an embassy armored car to the south of Serbia where I will meet with public school teachers and their creative writing students this afternoon and tomorrow. You might be wondering about the armored car. On February 28th or so of this year the American embassy was set afire about recognizing the independence of Kosovo and later Montenegro. Yesterday marked the official independence of that state so things are very tense here concerning both these events and the ambiguity of the recent elections.
Tomorrow evening I hook up with Amy Storrow, and we begin our simulacra of the WITS Summer Writing Camp in Macedonia. Amy has prepared, to say the least, an ambitious schedule, but I have every intention of keeping up with her and it. Once a WITS Writer, always a WITS writer, I say.
I will keep you in the know about what is going on here. Belgrade is fascinating, often beautiful, always interesting, with book stores everywhere. People are very serious about what they are reading. I look forward to my drive south through the green countryside of what was once part of the Byzantine empire. More anon.
Love,
Merrilee, WITS Writer in the Balkans
[photos of Belgrade by Akcjia / Katarina 2553 on flickr]
Writing is often linked with Reading, but Writing and Math? Now that seems like a stretch!
But with persistence, I have found three books that prove once and for all that math and writing don’t need to be taught separately. In fact, they are all the more enjoyable when combined!
Marvelous Math: A Book of Poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Author), Karen Barbour (Illustrator)
Marvelous Math offers a collection of poetry that celebrates the many ways in which math helps us. Math helps us build a house, be on time, and count money.
Math Talk features poems that require two students to perform together, so they’re double the fun to read. Topics include radicals, variables, imaginary numbers, and tessellations.
Mathematickles! by Betsy Franco (Author), Steven Salerno (Illustrator)
This book blends equations with words and entertains readers with these whimsical expressions:
raindrops x leaves = pearls on green plates
crisp air shadows tall + cat’s thick coat = signs of fall
Franco’s mathematical poems relate to the seasons and feature all of the operations in addition to fractions, geometry, and graphs.
posted by Amy Lin, Writers in the Schools
To teach first graders about the simile, I brought in photographs and little figurines of cats. After I explained similes, the class practiced creating similes about cats out loud. I used the students’ verbal practice as a way to check their understanding. Sometimes students will suggest “I like the cat’s pillowy paws.” To that, I counter that we aren’t using the word “like” to describe what we enjoy about the cat. Then we could rearrange the sentence into: the cat’s paws are like small orange pillows. That’s a simile.
Before beginning the solo writing part of the workshop, I give each group of students a picture or figurine to help inspire their similes. I enjoyed the students’ poems, and I think you’ll agree they are the cat’s meow.
My Cat
My cat’s head looks round like a sun.
My cat’s ears look like a witch’s hat.
My cat’s eyes look like a hole.
My cat’s nose looks like an O.
My cat’s mouth looks like a wave.
My cat’s whiskers look like a stick.
My cat’s tail looks like a hook.
My cat’s legs look like an L.
My cat’s body looks like fur.
My cat’s neck looks like a heart.
By Kevin, First Grade
(photo by babykailan via flickr)
posted by Amy Lin, Writers in the Schools
My students have a lot of fun writing concrete poetry instead of writing in lines. There’s something freeing in the prospect that the words can take on any shape on the page.
When teaching concrete poems, the best way I’ve found to kick off the lesson is to bring in a few well-chose examples. It’s effective to make the poems visible to everyone. Depending on the technology available at the school, I make transparencies or scan the pages and use Powerpoint slides.
Lately my elementary school students have expressed excitement over Jack Prelutsky’s “I Am Winding Through a Maze” and “I Am Stuck Inside a Shell.” Secondary school students enjoy Maxine Kumin’s “400-meter Freestyle.” The end products are a delight to both the eyes and the mind.
Pizza
Crispy and yummy,
light and new baked out of the oven
a minute or two
whenever people eat it
it’s like something new
its crunch and crisp
it’s like a bird flew.
By Andy, 2nd grade
posted by Amy Lin, Writers in the Schools
Baseball season is here, and to celebrate the start of America’s favorite pastime, our class wrote poems.
I encouraged my students to think about their favorite sport or activity as the topic for their poem; they did not necessarily have to write about baseball. Before writing, I asked students to brainstorm a list of words and phrases describing what they saw, heard, and touched while they played their sport. They also brainstormed words that described their sense of movement while engaged in the activity.
The students wrote about swimming, gymnastics, and basketball, and the poems were a great way for me to learn more about my students’ interests outside of school.
Baseball
I am sweating, I’m hot, 5th inning
I’m on my first homerun
This time another pitch
I swing, strike one
Another one, strike two
He throws it, I swing
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh
Bam boom
Bam, over the gate
I’m going to 1st, going to 2nd,
I’m going to 3rd, going to Home
And they get the ball from over the gate
Almost home
They throw it to the pitcher
They’re fast for third graders
And the pitcher throws it to home
The umpire says,
Safe, safe, safe!
The game is over
We won The Game.
By Deon, 3d Grade
You can see Deon’s enthusiasm reflected in this poem, and the choice of details takes you right to the ballgame.
posted by Amy Lin, Writers in the Schools
(photo by WisDoc via Flickr)
