Storybird 2017-18

Day 12: Sharing Your Work with the World (PUBLISHING)

Your challenges today are:

• 1. If you are not on track, use today to finish up anything you need in order to complete the requirements listed on the WW Tracking Sheet—Creative Writing. Then, gather all necessary materials and find someone to approve your badge milestone!

  2. If you have already completed the above challenge, then take the feedback you received today in group and make any last-minute changes you deem necessary to make your story ready for publishing.

  3. Once everything is complete, log into Storybird and share your story with a guide, notifying them that it is ready to be ordered!

Day 11: Sharing Your Work with the World (PUBLISHING)

Your challenges today are to:

• 1. Read through your entire story, asking yourself, “Is this my best work?”

  2. Make changes as needed.

  3. Prepare to share your story with the studio next time, ready to receive a critique from the group.

  4. If you’re on track, finish up anything you need in order to complete the requirements listed on the WW Tracking Sheet—Creative Writing. Then, gather all necessary materials, and find someone to approve your badge milestone!

Day 10: Helping Others (EDITING)

Your challenges today are to:

• 1. Finish the Editing Sheet - Creative Writing, which may mean you continue Community of Editors or meeting with a Writing Buddy.

  2. Make changes to your story based on your feedback from Community of Editors and from your Writing Buddy meeting.

  3. If you still have time, find someone to help! Coordinate another Community of Editors, another peer critique, or see who’s not on track and needs a push from a friend!

Day 9: The Clever Comma (EDITING)

Today your challenges are to:

• 1. Take an Editing Sheet - Creative Writing. This will guide you through this step in the process.

  2. Participate in a Community of Editors.

     1. Step 1: Sign up for a Community of Editors on the whiteboard by putting your name next to an editing role in which you feel strong:

        1. outer punctuation (such as periods and question marks),

        2. inner punctuation (such as commas and quotation marks),

        3. capitalization, and

        4. spelling & grammar.

        5. If you feel like you don’t have any experience in any of these areas, you can put your name down for “word choice,” meaning that you’ll edit each piece for our focus trait of the session.

     2. Step 2: Copy and paste the words you’ve written in Storybird to a Google Doc.

     3. Step 3: Title the Google Doc “Storybird 2nd Draft [year].”

     4. Step 4: Print the Google Doc and bring to your Community of Editors. (If you have trouble printing, share your doc with Ms. Janita: jlavani@actonacademy.org.)

     5. Step 5: Everyone passes around his or her piece, and each person, using a different colored pen, makes edits based on his or her editing role—that way it’s clear who made which edits.

  3. Meet with a Writing Buddy. Writing Buddies will be available Thursday 7/5, Tuesday 7/10 and Thursday 7/12.

  4. If you finish your work in Community of Editors and with a Writing Buddy, or are waiting for a Writing Buddy, you can continue working on your grammar workbook. The lessons you need to complete can be found on the WW Tracking Sheet—Creative Writing and on the Editing Sheet - Creative Writing.

Day 8: Peer Critiques and Revising, Day 2!

Your challenges today are:

• 1. Get with your partner from last time and make sure you finished the Revising Sheet - Creative Writing.

  2. If you didn’t finish, do so today. If you did finish, then find another partner and complete a second peer critique. If you have already done two peer critiques, then you may choose to do more to make your writing even better, or to go through your story on your own and see where you can improve your word choice. Ask yourself:

     1. Do my sentences all begin with the same words (for example, “Then [character name] did [action]”)? Am I taking risks with my words, or am I just using predictable ones?

     2. Are my adjectives thoughtful and do they fit with my descriptions?

     3. Do the verbs I use both show and tell my reader information?

     4. Have I used figurative language to make my audience feel a certain way?

  3. If you answered yes to any of the above questions, today is your opportunity to make the necessary changes to your story.

Know that we are moving onto Editing next week!

Day 4: Drafting!

Your challenges today are similar to last time:

• 1. Think about ways you can bring your writing to the same level of quality as the art you chose.

  2. Log in to Storybird and continue drafting your piece!

Day 3: Drafting!

Today is your first day of drafting! Your challenge today is to:

• 1. Log in to Storybird and begin drafting your piece!

  2. Gather your Story Map sheet—you’ll use this as your guide.

Day 2: Freytag's Pyramid

Your challenges today are to:

• 1. Watch this video called “The 5 Elements of Plot Structure (from Finding Nemo)” if you need more help understanding plot structure.

  2. Brainstorm all the elements of your story and what plotline your story will generally follow.

1. Complete the Story Map sheet for your story, which will serve as your prewriting deliverable for this badge milestone!  

Day 1: Choose Your Artwork Collection!

Welcome to Creative Writing! Here are your challenges for the day.

• 1. Log in to Storybird using the username and password on your Google Keep.

  2. Explore the "Create" tab of Storybird.com by looking through all of the art that is available to you. Imagine what you might write about different collections, and then choose the collection that inspires you most. You’ll share your choice with the group at the end of Writers’ Workshop.

  3. Read through the Writers’ Workshop Tracking Sheet for this session so that you know what you need to do for this to count towards a Writing Badge.  

Have fun exploring, authors! We will circle back up at 2:30 pm.