Ralph Fletcher on Writers’ Notebooks:
What Should I Write About?
I’m not a big believer in “story starters“. I believe that the best ideas are living inside you. Your challenge is to dig them out. Do the writing only you can do. But every writer gets stuck from time to time so I’ve included a few ideas to jump-start your imagination.

You might try to write about:
* Family story
* A particular tradition in your family.
* An artifact (arrowhead, ring, antique, etc.).    Important objects in our lives often provide    excellent material to write about.
* Special place: special room, attic nook, inside of a    tree, scary closet. You might start by quickly    sketching a map of a house full of memories.    Mark those rooms where something important    happened to you.
* Brother, sister, or special relative. Remember:    think small. Focus on one aspect of that person,    or one experience you had with him or her.
* Your place in the family. Are the oldest kid in your    family? The youngest? Are you a middle child? An    only child? Were you adopted?
* Best friend. (Did you ever get in trouble?)
* Moving. Did you leave behind a best friend when    you moved from your old house?
* A disastrous time you had at camp or on a family    vacation.
* Horrible haircut (or other mortifying experience)
* An injury. Did you ever have to go to the hospital?
* Important first: your first day in school, the first    time you rode a two-wheeler, etc.
* Favorite pet, or a pet you once had.
* When your family changed: your brother went off    to college, grandma came to live with you, etc.
* What you are (or used to be) afraid of.
* One thing you never want to do again!

Read moe at http://ralphfletcher.com

51 Wacky We-Search Reports
Face the Facts with Fun
by Barry Lane

Are you sick of writing research papers that put you and your audience asleep?   Do you groan at the thought of a research trip to the library?  Has your internet search engine blown a gasket?  Do you wish there were a cool way to write research papers that both informed and entertained the reader like your favorite non-fiction books do? Are you lonely? Do you need a laugh?  Do you want to learn how to make even your teacher laugh?

You’re in luck, help has arrived.

51 Wacky We-search Reports will teach you how to hunt for the best facts and turn them into cartoons, parody performances, jokes, wacky poetry and much, much more.  And a We-search report is one that you do with friends so you won’t ever feel alone again. Promise.

Here are just a few of the silly reports you will learn how to write.

• World’s Thinnest books (A Guide to Vegetarian Living by T. Rex)
• Wacky Trading Cards ( I’ll trade you a Julius Caesar for an amoeba)
• Crazy Quotes (“One small step for man, oops, I think I just got a wedgie.”
• Wacky Websites (www.holyromanempire.com)
• New Dollar Bills (got any I Have a Dream dollars?)
• Tacky Tabloids (Mama Wolves Barf for Babies))
• The After-Life Institute (take an 8 week mini-course with Alexander the Great)
• The Wacky Board Game (care to play Gandhi-land anyone.)
• Wacky Tests (Is Your Uncle an Inca? Take this simple test)
• The Recipe Poem (Suffragette Soufflé anyone?)

A College Professor uses Wacky We-search with her students:

“I very successfully used 51 Wacky We-Search Reports as one of the texts for my Content Area Reading Class at Western Ct. State University. My graduate students absolutely loved the book and came up with related projects that they immediately used in their classrooms.

They felt that the book not only inspired creativity but also gave them alternative assessment tools that focused on critical thinking and the standards. As a profession we need more books like Wacky We-search that give us permission to be creative and make learning more fun for us and for our students at any grade level.”

So… put some fun back into your research with this great new book!

Hello, my name is Rob Stone, a high school language arts and social studies teacher and the Page Host for this iPod-inspired Writing Across the Curriculum homepage here at Writingfix. And here is what I believe…

If you asked today’s students to rank the things that are most important to them, two things are sure to make nearly every list. As a matter of fact, for them, these two things supersede any mere list and move into an almost spiritual realm that includes things that are vital to their very survival. Those two things, of course, are technology and music.

The reality is that, though classic literature, chapter books and picture books will always maintain their well-deserved importance in growing minds, today’s students find inspiration in places beyond the published works traditionally used in the classroom. If we truly want to reach them and make connections, we have to meet them where they are and “link” our world as teachers to their world as millennial learners.

I passionately believe that one of the places to look for that missing link is where today’s technology meets music: the iPod. Skeptical? Pull out an iPod in class and watch the interest immediately appear on your students’ faces. Put lyrics on the overhead and watch the focus in their eyes. Hit play and they are yours. Implement a well-designed lesson attached to that song and you can do magic…

Writing Marathon

Louisiana site director Richard Louth describes the magic, and anxiety, of leading a writing marathon. While revealing that “things do go wrong,” he admits surprising success and offers tips for conducting a marathon, writing prompts, and excerpts of participants’ writing.

Café du Monde and the click and clanging of the glasses and silverware. One of the few places where they greet you with a glass of water.”
—Trish Benit, 2001

The yak of a saxophone drifts into the Café du Monde, mixing with the beat of ceiling fans and the smell of hot, powdered beignets. Across the street, two children tap-dance for quarters while a third spins a bicycle wheel on his head, the spokes a gray halo in the humid air. A horse-drawn carriage clops by St. Louis Cathedral while a mime dressed as Uncle Sam freezes in midstride outside the café window. Inside, teachers gingerly sip café au lait, knock excess sugar off their beignets, and stare at the world outside. Despite their good spirits, I see anxiety in their expressions. “What are we doing here?” they seem to ask.

Usually by 10 a.m., members of our Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project (SLWP) summer institute are comfortably enclosed in a room on the other side of the swamps. And we have already finished journal writing, someone has shared the log, and one nervous summer fellow is launching into a ninety-minute teaching demonstration.

But today we are embracing the unfamiliar in our surroundings, and ourselves, through a field trip we call the New Orleans Writing Marathon.

In the Beginning: Natalie Goldberg’s Marathon

Related Articles On NWP.org

• Writing Within a Community
• The Parable of the Bridge
• The Reflections of a Nonwriter

Our first writing marathon took place on much more familiar soil in 1992, when one summer institute participant, Melanie Plesh, introduced us to her practice of journaling with students and to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. During her teaching demonstration, the other institute participants sat around one table and wrote for hours in response to Melanie’s prompts, which differ significantly from Goldberg’s (see below). Here is Goldberg’s advice about writing during the marathon:

Everyone in the group agrees to commit himself or herself for the full time. Then we make up a schedule. For example, a ten-minute writing session, another ten-minute session, a fifteen-minute session, two twenty-minute sessions, and then we finish with a half-hour round of writing. So for the first session, we all write for ten minutes and then go around the room and read what we’ve written with no comments by anyone. . . . A pause naturally happens after each reader, but we do not say “That was great” or even “I know what you mean.” There is no good or bad, no praise or criticism. We read what we have written and go on to the next person. . . . What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. (150)

This is the theory behind our marathoning, and the first week of every institute, we still “marathon” this way because we value the intensity of the writing experience and the sense of community it produces. But in 1994, we discovered how the marathon could be transformed into a different dish altogether when we added a cup of Louisiana spices to the roux.

The First New Orleans Marathon

The first New Orleans Writing Marathon was not for an institute but for a conference of about a hundred teacher-consultants from across the state. Asked to lead an afternoon of writing activities for the statewide Louisiana Writing Project’s Festival of Writers, I wanted to do a marathon based on our site’s approach but knew that there were too many people to make it work. I knew also that after a morning of workshops, teachers would rather be on the streets of the French Quarter than writing in a hotel conference room, and that they would crave a chance to chat over an oyster po’boy washed down by a Dixie beer at least as much as the opportunity to write. The solution was to form small writing groups and release them to the streets where Faulkner wrote his first novel, Tennessee Williams set A Streetcar Named Desire, and Andrei Codrescu insists The Muse is Always Half-Dressed.

Immediately, there were practical questions. Who should be in each group? Where should each group go? What would convince them to come back? Also, as both the city and the marathon experience were new to most participants, how could they be prepared for each?

Fearing mass confusion, groups too large, individuals left out, and people getting lost, I had collected the names of all participants beforehand and on file cards created groups with designated itineraries. However, at the last minute, instinct told me to have faith in my audience, to scrap these plans, and to ask everyone to determine their own groups and paths. All they received was a simple handout explaining Goldberg’s advice about responding, a map, and a list of restaurants, coffeehouses, and bars. In addition, I recommended that they limit groups to four or five people so as not to disrupt any establishment they entered, that they try to pick a new spot to write each hour, and that they return by 5 p.m. I concluded with three final pieces of advice that I still give to marathoners:

• If you go into a restaurant or bar, be sure to order something.
• If anyone asks, tell them you are a writer.
• Keep in mind that you are doing this for yourself and for nobody else.

Simple enough, but I worried how many would feel offended that their activity hadn’t been more structured and if groups would visit places where they were uncomfortable. How many would be lost to shopping, muggings, or inebriation? Miraculously, everyone returned, and when they did, they were somehow different. An excitement filled the room, a common bond that came from this strange experience. They wanted to read, even though it was time for dinner, or to tell stories of people they’d seen and places they’d been. Some talked of seeing things they had never seen before, while others talked only about another’s writing. A few even went to their rooms to revise so that they could read more polished pieces at breakfast the next day. This, when the pleasures of New Orleans were on the other side of the hotel door.

Institute Marathons

After two successful festival marathons, taking a summer institute on a New Orleans Writing Marathon seemed natural. Because our institute lives an hour from the city, some adjustments had to be made, but over the last six years, the New Orleans Writing Marathon has become a tradition at our site. We arrange car pools the day before and ask everyone to meet at the Café du Monde, a familiar landmark, by 10 a.m. After we assemble, we usually hear the previous day’s log, and then we split into small, usually unplanned, groups. One of the unexpected thrills of the marathon is ending up in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar partners. At the end of the day, groups convene at a pub to touch base and read before beating the rush hour traffic home. Some years, fellows have stayed overnight, dining at Galatoire’s and dancing to zydeco music at Mid City Rock and Bowl. Fellows are encouraged to bring friends and relatives who want to write, and often we are also joined by former fellows, nearby writing projects, or special guests such as Kim Stafford, director of the Oregon Writing Project at Lewis and Clark College who has a special interest in writing about place. In 2001, writers from the Live Oak Writing Project came from Mississippi to join us for their first marathon.

I Am a Writer

How many of us, as teachers, can live the writer’s life? For me, the writing marathon was my first taste of what it would really feel like to be a writer. It was the very first moment I ever thought, `Damn, I am a writer.’”
—Beth Calloway, 1996

Before we begin a marathon, I ask each participant to turn to another and say, “I am a writer.” If asked to identify themselves that day, I tell them to reply, “I’m a writer.” Why? Because most summer fellows identify themselves as teachers, not writers, and for a marathon to succeed, participants must think of themselves in a new way. The marathon introduces its participants to an unfamiliar world, and the first step is to forget the familiar identities that often get us through the rest of the year. I have discovered that thinking of yourself as a writer not only affects you but also others, and that it can open many doors. During my second festival marathon, my group crossed the Mississippi River on a ferry and looked for a place to write along the levee, but cold February winds forced us to seek shelter. We approached a restaurant perched on a bend in the river only to have a waiter tell us they were closed. However, when he asked us what we were doing there, and we replied, “We are writers looking for a place to write,” his demeanor suddenly changed. “In that case, come in by the fire,” he said. We wrote that afternoon in overstuffed chairs by a cozy window overlooking the river, sipping hot coffee that he brought us.

This kind of thing happens again and again, and not just in New Orleans. Sherry Swain, director of the Mississippi Writing/Thinking Institute, tells the following story about a group doing a marathon on a Mississippi college campus:

The most interesting story for me came from the group that began by asking a construction crew at the stadium (always the stadium is being spiffed up!) whether they might enter to sit on the fifty-yard line.

“No, I don’t have the authority to let you in,” the foreman said.

But then they said, “WE’RE WRITERS!”

And he said, “Well then, come on in. There’s an open gate around the corner.”

Similar stories abound—marathoners admitted to a private garden in Arkansas, a writing group given a free ride in a Florida trolley, etc. It happens, I think, because writers who believe in themselves tap into an unimaginable power; people sense this, and treat them with the kind of reverence often given to priests.

READ THE REST AT http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/nwp_au/184

Poetry Slams in the Writing Workshop make the writing come to life. It is a great way to get people moving and engaged whether they are 10 or 50 years old.

History of Poetry Slams

Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago in November 1984. In July 1986, the slam moved to its permanent Chicago home, the Green Mill Jazz Club.^[1] In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place in Fort Mason, San Francisco, involving a team from Chicago, a team from San Francisco, and an individual poet from New York ^[2]. As of 2008, the National Poetry Slam has grown and currently features approximately 80 certified teams each year, culminating in five days of competition.^[3].

Although American in origin, slams have spread all over the world, with slam scenes in Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Nepal, the Netherlands, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Denmark, South Korea, India and Macedonia.

Format

In a poetry slam, members of the audience are chosen by an M.C. or host to act as judges for the event. After each poet performs, each judge awards a score to that poem. Scores generally range between zero and ten. The highest and lowest score are dropped, giving each performance a rating between zero and thirty points. In the standard slam, there are five judges.

Before the competition begins, the host will often bring up a “sacrificial poet,” which the judges will score in order to calibrate their judging.

A single round at a slam consists of performances by all eligible poets. Most slams last multiple rounds, and many involve the elimination of lower-scoring poets in successive rounds. A standard elimination rubric might run 8-4-2, with eight poets in the first round, four in the second, and two in the last. Some slams do not eliminate poets at all.

Props, costumes, and music are generally forbidden in slams. Additionally, most slams enforce a time limit of three minutes (and a grace period of ten seconds), after which a poet’s score may be docked according to how long the poem exceeded the limit.

Competition types

In an “Open Slam,” the most common slam type, competition is open to all who wish to compete. If there are more slammers than available time slots, competitors will often be chosen at random from the sign-up list.

In an “Invitational Slam,” by contrast, only those invited to do so may compete.

In 1998, slam poet Emanuel Xavierfounded The House of Xavier in New York City and introduced what would become a popular annual event called “The Glam Slam” with the ‘g’ and the ‘l’ presumably for ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’. Much like a gay ballroom event, this was a poetry slam event with several theme categories such as Best Erotic Poem In Sexy Underwear or Lingerie and Best Love Poem in Fire Engine Red. The winners would receive trophies and go on to compete for a Grand Prize. These were stylized slam poetry events featuring celebrity judges, fashion shows, and impromptu voguing. The event was held once a year first at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and later at the Bowery Poetry Clubbefore it was passed on in 2008 to the London stage at the Vauxhall Tavern.

A “Theme Slam” is one in which all performances must conform to a specified theme, genre, or formal constraint. Themes may include Nerd^[4], Erotica, Queer, Improv, or other conceptual limitations. In theme slams, poets can sometimes be allowed to break “traditional” slam rules. For instance, they sometimes allow performance of work by another poet (e.g. the “Dead Poet Slam”, in which all work must be by a deceased poet). They can also allow changes on the restrictions on costumes or props (e.g. the Swedish “Triathlon” slams that allow for a poet, musician, and dancer to all take the stage at the same time), changing the judging structure (e.g. having a specific guest judge at the Manchester Creatures of the Night slam), or changing the time limits (e.g. a “1-2-3″ slam with three rounds of one minute, two minutes, and three minutes, respectively). In an “Island Style” slam (named after Whidbey Island) the poetry is written on the spot. Each participant is given three words to use in a poem and a short amount of time (20-25 minutes) to write it. The poems are performed and judged as in other competitions.

Although theme slams may seem restricting in nature, slam venues frequently use them to advocate participation by particular and perhaps underrepresented demographics. For example High School age poets only, or Women poets only may be allowed to participate in a particular slam, and thus it might encourage poets from those demographics to feel more confident in participating in a poetry slam for the first time.

Poetry Slam, Inc. holds several National and World Poetry Slams, including the Individual World Poetry Slam, The National Poetry Team Slam and The Women of the World Poetry Slam. The current IWPS champion is Amy Everhart. The current National Poetry Slam Team champions are St. Paul, MN. The current Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion is Rachel McKibbens.

It is important when cultivating a language for writing building wide to provide a situation where many (550 kids) the opportunity to read and make comments on writing. We posted over 100 pieces of writing on the walls of our building. Sticky notes and pens were made accessible. When students went to the restroom or were getting ready to go to lunch they would line up near the writing. At this time they would be quietly reading and writing comments to stick on a piece of writing. It is imperative that they be taught in the writing classroom what is an appropriate comment (I like…, I noticed…, I remembered… etc) before they can leave notes. It  is also important that an adult is constantly screening the comments that are left to make sure they are positive. The writers that receive the comments are filled with pride.

Writing teachers would agree that the most difficult population to inspire to write can be the boys that sit in front of you. I believe, in part, that is because so many of them prefer first to work in a non linguistic mode and secondly they enjoy writing and thinking about “boy” topics: hunting, rough play, super heroes…etc. It is my contention we should, within reason invite them to the writing table by inviting their writing topics as well as others. Of course there should be parameters set on just “how much” violence or language will or will not be acceptable in the classroom.

In Ralph Fletchers book, Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices , He writes about writing test scores indicate that boys have fallen far behind girls across the grades. In general, boys don’t enjoy writing as much as girls. What’s wrong? How can we do a better of job of creating boy-friendly classrooms so their voices can be heard? In Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices Ralph Fletcher draws upon his years of experience as staff developer, children’s book author, and father of four boys. He also taps the insights from dozens of writing teachers around the US and abroad.

I have introduced many kinds of writing already this year. It allows the young writers many choices. The kids love to have a say (choice) in what they write. Here is a list of what we do so far as of 10/27/09.

I often talk about writing workshop with schools and how to implement it successfully. This PPT shows some of what I believe are the “essential” elements of a writing class. Without them the wriitng workshop will quickly disengrate and the teacher will be left with a defeated feeling and likely not try to attempt teaching writing in a studio environment again. There are key elements that have to be in place: 1 Donald Graves’ 7 Conditions,  2) Mark Milliken’s Pointing and questioning technique,  3) and a general understanding of the function and framework of the writing workshop itelf.