Creative Writing Syllabus
(Majors and Minors)
The creative writing classes build on the writing and language arts skills the students have acquired throughout the primary and middle school grades, while allowing the student an outlet in which to explore his own story related interests and abilities. Elementary creative writing focuses both on the writing process and the elements of the short story. The middle school majors and minors classes build on these concepts, while exploring new venues of reading and writing. All students will be given the opportunity through a variety of types of writing to develop their voice by exploring various genres of writing including short stories, poetry, and journal keeping. Skills in proof reading, peer editing, and revising are stressed. Critical thinking skills will be enhanced through patterns of language usage and reading.
GOAL #1: Students will understand and practice the writing process from pre-writing (stage one) through multiple experiments with language (stage two) to the refining and celebration of a completed writing product (stage three)
Objectives:
Prewriting: The prewriting process utilizes all of the activities which lead to actual writing. Students are placed in a writing environment that is conducive to prewriting, and given a series of stimulating ideas to help them develop their writing including brainstorming, mapping or clustering, example books, stories, poems, etc., listening to music, interviewing others, remembering important events the writer has experienced, and exposure to artistic endeavors of all types.
Writing: The writing stage of the process allows students to get his/her ideas down on paper. The student must understand his purpose for writing, (i.e.: to entertain, or possibly to evoke or inform) but students must feel free to express their ideas and gain fluency and confidence in themselves as writers without being inhibited by fear of mistakes at this point in the process.
Revising/Conferencing: Not only does the individual student revise his/her own writing during the writing process, all writers benefit from response to their writing. Student's are given the opportunity to respond to each other's writing both through response sheets and by working together in small groups. Teacher conferencing also occurs at this point.
Editing: In this part of the process, the writing is refined. The areas of focus in this stage include grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling and paragraphing, diction or word choice, and syntax.
Publishing: The publishing stage is accomplished through sharing the finished writing with peers in class, but also may include submitting work to various contests and publishers.
GOAL #2: Students will understand terms and demonstrate use in writing.
Objectives:
Character: Students will learn to develop characters that come alive. They will understand and utilize protagonist/antagonist and direct/indirect characterization.
Conflict: Students will understand and demonstrate through their writing that conflict provides the tension and drama that stories are built upon, including character against character, character against society, character against nature, and character against self.
Setting: Students will discuss and demonstrate ability to understand how setting affects the story. They will create settings by using realistic details that appeal to the reader's senses creating a vivid atmosphere.
Point of View: Students will understand that point of view is the perspective from which the story is told. They will demonstrate ability to use both omniscient and limited point of view.
Theme: Students will understand, demonstrate and be able to discuss common themes within any piece of writing.
Structure: Structure concerns how the story is told. Students will understand that it is the framework that determines how the story is put together. Through exposition, complication, climax and resolution, they will demonstrate and improve their ability to create strong, entertaining stories.
Suspense: Students will learn to use and recognize foreshadowing and dramatic irony.
Climax and Resolution: Students will understand, demonstrate and be able to discuss the dramatic moment when the tension reaches its peak in a given piece and follow through with understanding of resolution(s) on that conflict.
Dialogue: Students will develop strong characters through powerful dialogue.
Description: Students will practice capturing the essence of character and setting through the use of appropriate description.
Imagery and Symbolism: Students will be able to demonstrate use and recognition of symbolism and imagery within a wide variety of writing/reading experiences.
Tone and Style: Students will develop their voice through use of a wide variety of tones and styles extending from humorous to serious.
GOAL #3: Students will develop critical thinking skills by comparing and contrasting various pieces of literature which provides examples of types of writing/themes/characterization that they are exploring.
Objectives:
Students will:
-interpret symbols, determine theme, note character traits and development, analyze tone, for hypothesis
-note details
-apply context information to a broader context
Activities: Creative writing activities during the course of the school year will include, but not be limited to:
Extensive exploration of various types of writing/reading
Young Authors
Student anthologies
Assessment:
Like editing and publishing, evaluation is only one element of the writing process. Grading is the act of assigning a letter or number to represent the performance of young writers. However, a grade generally tells the student little about the specific strengths and weaknesses of the written work. Correcting involves pointing out student's mistakes. If this is done by the teacher with no further response required of the student, it is a useless activity. There is evidence that students who receive heavily marked up papers bearing nebulous, negative comments themselves become negative about writing. Evaluation by teachers and peers should be used to support not thwart student efforts to master communication skills.
There are several possible types of evaluators for student writing, among them teachers, parents, peers and the writer himself. When the teacher is the exclusive evaluator, young writers receive feedback from only one person, limiting their audience and narrowing the response. Therefore it is imperative that students are given opportunities to avail themselves of other sources of evaluation. Student and parent involvement aids self reliance in writing, gives a greater awareness of audience response, and improves appreciation for individual voice. Involving students and parents in the evaluation process provides a real and reliable road for active participation in the learning process.
While self evaluation and peer/parent/teacher evaluation is all important to effective evaluation of writing, the teacher remains the primary evaluator. In the end, the teacher determines the success or failure of a paper. Three methods of evaluation are used: holistic scoring, primary trait scoring, and analytical scoring.
In holistic scoring, the evaluator reviews the paper for an overall or 'whole' impression. Specific factors such as grammar, usage, style, tone, and vocabulary undoubtedly affect the response, but none of these is directly addressed. Primary trait scoring focuses on characteristics of a given piece of writing which are specific to a particular situation. For example, we may be looking specifically at character or setting development as the primary trait factor in a particular paper. Additional traits such as organization and mechanics that contribute, but are not essential to the success of the primary trait factor of the paper are termed 'secondary' traits and may not be included in an evaluation. Analytical scoring is similar to primary trait scoring in that it isolates one or more characteristics of writing and scores them individually. However, where primary trait scoring focuses on one specific criterion related to the purpose of writing in a specific situation, analytical scoring attempts to isolate characteristics important to any piece of writing in any situation. It deals with the more conventional aspects of writing including punctuation, syntax, usage, creativity, sense of audience and so forth.
It is particularly helpful to know and utilize the KIRIS Writing Portfolio criteria:
Purpose/Audience: The degree to which the writer establishes and maintains a purpose, communicates with the audience, employs a suitable voice and/or tone.
Idea Development/Support: The degree to which the writer provides thoughtful, detailed support to develop main idea(s).
Organization: The degree to which the writer demonstrates logical order, coherence, and transitional and organizational signals.
Sentences: The degree to which the writer includes sentences that are varied in structure and length, constructed effectively and are complete and correct.
Languages: The degree to which the writer exhibits correct, effective, and appropriate word choice and word usage.
Correctness: The degree to which the writer demonstrates correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.
The grading scale, as approved by the Fayette County Board of Education is:
A: 92-100
B: 83-91
C: 74-82
D: 65-73
The creative writing student's grade is broken down into the following areas:
Evidence of understanding/practicing writing
Final product
Evidence of creative writing growth
Note: Creative Writing majors and minors are required to turn in two typed copies of final drafts. One copy will be kept in the student's writing folder. The other will be bound into anthologies to be displayed at various functions during the year. These copies should be printed at home and ready to turn in as soon as the student comes to class on the day the assignment is due. Incases of emergencies, students will be allowed to print stories at school only if they have a note from parents. Majors must also turn in a minimum of two pieces of writing each nine weeks on disk to be put up on the creative writing website.
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