Writer's Craft Class

Esta clase é impartida polo profesor Mr. Jim Risk a un grupo duns 15 estudantes de Grade 12 que corresponde ao noso 2º de BAC.

Trátase dun curso de escritura creativa moi dinámico e motivador no que os alumnos estudan textos de distintos xéneros e logo escriben empregando técnicas similares. As actividades mestúranse facendo así unha clase moi dinámica e creativa.

Estas son algunhas das actividades que levaron a cabo e que poden dar ideas para as nosas propias clases. En tódolos casos foros explicadas e contextualizadas minuciosamente.

-          Write about your first lie and how you felt at the time.

-          Write a description of a picture. Then another students draws a picture following this description. Both pictures are compared and a reflection on what was helpful and what was “not clear” follows.

-          Following the description by Bonnie Burnard in A Good House, students have to go to the library and describe their way back to the classroom. They cannot use the words ‘left, right, north, south, east, west’ or shared associations and they must pay attention to the sense of directions as well as to the atmosphere.

-          “Front Porch” description. After reading “This is where my world began” by Margaret Laurence they must write about their own experience.

-          ‘Problem page’. They must write about a problem on a sheet of paper and then they have to answer to another person’s problem. They are funny or sarcastic problems/advice.

-          Landscape picture: the students are given a picture of a landscape and they must write a descriptions in terms of visual. Then they pass the picture and the writing to another colleague who has to add a description of the same photo in terms of sound. They pass it again and the next person writes a description in terms of scent. Then they write a description in terms of taste and finally one in terms of touch. The person who started the description gets it back.

-          Summaries. Summarize a text to the maximum. To practise that, they have to rewrite a descriptive paragaph by taking out all that isn’t necessary. The teacher highlights some of the words that must disappear and they sometimes must add some word or change verb tenses.

-          Landscape picture: this time they must isolate something that is moving or refers to movement in the picture and they must describe it. The base is a paragraph in Cormac McCarthey, All the Pretty Horses.

-          Write about the moment you felt you abandoned the world of children. Read “Janet Waking” which is related to the topic and work with some more aspects of the poem like title, connotation, attitude and theme.

A revisión dos ensaios ou traballos que levaron a cabo faise dunha forma cooperativa. Son revisados polos compañeiros que explican os puntos que eles consideran mellorables. Moitas veces isto leva a unha reescritura do texto. Ao mesmo tempo, teñen que entregar outras tarefas relacionadas co tipo de texto que están a traballar para ser avaliados.