Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) Young Writers Camp 2012

Michelle working with a young writer

Sharing your writing with a peer

            

 
                 Author's Chair

Information about the BAWP Young Writers camp can be found here. Early bird registration ends on 15 October.

After the success of the first BAWP Young Writers’ Camp in 2011, I am thrilled to welcome back Michelle Hackel and Marna Blanchard to conduct our second BAWP camp from November 28- Dec 1^st.  As usual, I will be there to work with the students as will the trainers from the Adam Khoo Learning Centre, who will be hosting this event at RELC.

Writing is something that I am growing more and more passionate about and it all began with helping teachers to teach writing.  I did of course do a lot of academic writing in my past life but that was a different type of writing. Then I started writing my newsletter and later my blog and this made writing somewhat of a routine for me.  But still, I won’t say I write regularly until my experience working with Michelle and Marna at the BAWP camp last year.

At our camp, every student has to do free writing for 10 minutes every day and as a rule, all the instructors wrote with the students. I also wrote when a writing task was set and all that intensive writing made me want to write more long after the camp was over.  So I continued writing on my own and took to keeping a writing journal in addition to keeping up with writing my blog.

A few months ago, I began a small writing group with some friends and we get together once a fortnight or so to write and to share our writing.  I finally was able to get started on writing all the childhood stories that I wanted to share with the younger members of my family.

I find that writing on a regular basis gives me more insight into the act of composing and it helps me be a better teacher of writing too. But this post is not about my own writing. It’s more about those students who came to our camp and what they wrote. After the camp, I wrote about some of the camp experiences, our teaching techniques, and you can read about them here.

But I did not get around to sharing some of the writing with you. Some of the pieces of fiction that the students wrote were very long but they also wrote poetry. In fact, it’s the poetry that really impressed me.

The students were given a copy of Where I’m from by George Ella Lyon as a mentor text and they were then told to wrote a parallel poem. Here are some samples of their writing. In all cases, students were given some help initially with brainstorming ideas but they wrote the entire poem by themselves. The instructors helped with some editing.

Read these poems and remember that these are all primary school students, not quite 12 years old, and marvel at their insight into their own lives and their beautiful choice of words and images. Good writing can be taught; good writers can be nurtured.

 I Am From                 

By Angela

I am from Nancy Drew book number two,

Hardy Boys,

Serious of Unfortunate Events.

I am from the diary in my room,

From smooth edges,

Thin pages,

A purple “This is MY diary NOT yours” cover.

I am from the fresh water and saltwater fish tanks in the living room.

From one puffer fish,

Two pregnant fish,

Three clownfish!

I am from Belinda,

Taking care of three babies each day,

From Joyce, Joshua, and Joel.

I’m from Geok Choo,

Telling me every day,

“A home is where your family must take you in.”

I’m from Fried Kway Teow,

Fishcakes,

Red, small shrimp.

I’m from abalone,

Yellow noodles,

Cai sim.

I’m from the secret room I found,

No one knows where it is

Neither do you.

It’s small,

Only a dwarf could fit inside.

I keep my Angry Bird toys,

Photos of my past,

Books I like to read inside.

From the attic,

The basement,

Where boxes hold the

Faces of whom

I dream.

I am from a map

To show you where you are,

So you will never be lost in your family tree.

I am from Poem

By Haqmal

I am from a Coke Can,
from bottles and slippers
scattered on the ground.
I am from the fridge in the kitchen with
frozen hot dogs and chocolate cakes inside it.
I’m from chicken rice every week and
chili crab sometimes.
I’m from a half-eaten apple and a single long sock,
from Ben who always use the computer and a kitchen table.

I’m from a fresh orange juice and a laced sneakers,
from a bed and a soft pillow.
I am from do not play football in the house and
sometimes a MacBook,
from a Imac computer and a nice photo Album.

I am from Dahlinar who feeds her baby daughter baby food
and Widad who often washes glass and plastic plates.
I’m from a bookshelf full of nice
old books and A Diary Of A Wimpy Kid sometimes.
I am from a family who likes to spend time together and
a sweet popcorn,
from a movie and a large cinema.

I am from

By Naveen

I am from an old grandfather clock

From chicken curry has thick gravy

I am from the air hockey table (so shiny and

Smooth I scored twenty two ) I am from Annand,

my cousin who loves shooting games

He could not contain his excitement

When he held his first gun

In the army.

I am from whipped cream

From Palm trees

I am from New York winter

From the indoor soccer field the cage

I am from hand me downs

From the shoes my sister gave me

I am actually from the chilli crab.

I AM FROM…..

by Joy

I am from pots and pans

used to cook dinner for three.

I am from the little brown squirrel

Climbing up the durian tree.

I am from the old stale pork resting on the kitchen table

Surrounded by flies.

From the untouched mango pudding

Frozen in the fridge.

I am from my guinea pig, Jerry,

Squeaking us insane.

From my tortoise ,Humphry,

Who stinks like rotten steak.

I am from Mr Ong Teng Chiong

One of the presidents of Singapore.

I am from my mum and dad

An egg and a sperm.

From the dear lord Jesus

Born in a manger.

I am from the 21^st of December

The day I was born.

About blah, blah writing 1

                                            1. Prompts for Writing

                                            2. Freewriting session

I have written about and advocated a writing strategy called Quick Write in my classes and in my newsletters for quite a number of years already, but I don’t think it has been consistently implemented anywhere.  Again, the perception seems to be that it is too time consuming although it’s a mere ten minutes and could be done as part of journaling. I’d like to revisit this topic and share how we used this approach in our writing camp recently.

What is Quickwrite/Freewrite?

Quick Write simply is an activity where students are asked to write to a prompt or write about any topic they wish to in a fixed time, say five minutes to begin with, without stopping to correct anything. Sometimes, this is described as stream-of consciousness writing. In other words, just write and do not stop moving your pen for five minutes. If students run out of ideas, they simply write, “I have no ideas. I don’t know what to write” or other similar thoughts going on in their head until they find a new thought to put down on paper.

A timer is an excellent way to keep track of time and once the timer rings, every one stops writing, and they count the number of words on their page and write that at the bottom of their piece. This is optional, but I find that counting the number of words give students incentive to want to write more the next time. After this, the teacher can have students read aloud their own piece or to their friend in the course of which they can edit their writing if they wish to.

Goals of Quick Write

The main goal of Quick Write is to help students develop fluency in writing and to be able to put their thoughts down on paper.  Many students have problems putting their thoughts down on paper because they consistently do self censoring as they write. Others are hampered by a need to get everything correct at the first try or they are paralysed by their inability to spell or to find the right word.

With Quick Write, students write without paying attention to such concerns. They merely put down what comes to their mind even if these thoughts are about their difficulties with writing.  Eventually, they will find that find it easier to put their words down on paper and their writing will increase in length.  I did Quick Write for a short while with Junior when he was in primary school and he enjoyed it and was able to write more after a while. He also became more alert to his own mistakes when writing.

Quick Write vs Freewriting

I am bringing back this topic simply because we had a chance in the Bay Area Writing Project’s (BAWP) Writing Camp to practise this with our students for four days in a row. In our camp, the teachers refer to it as Freewriting but the concept is the same.  This is how Peter Elbow, writing guru and professor of English defines Freewriting:

To write and not stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing (quoted in Wendy Major, 22 Oct 1994).

Freewriting gives students an opportunity to write about what they want without worrying about accuracy, relevance, organisation, style, grammar tec. They just focus on writing.

Freewriting at the BAWP writing camp

So, how did this work out in our BAWP camp with our 10-12 year olds?

Students came in each morning to two or three prompts written on the board. They take out their writing journal and begin writing immediately without talking. On the first day, we had students who were a bit lost. They sat and stared into space or at their brand new journals for a long time not knowing what to write. They were then introduced to the concept of blah blah writing. They were told that if they had nothing to write, they could just write blah blah blah, but in between they may overhear something or think of a word, a phrase or even a sentence. They are to include this into their writing and continue.  But they are not to stop writing.

 After the first day, all students knew what to do and fell into the routine without any hassle. They all wrote for 10 minutes after which they put away their journal to begin the first activity of the day. Sometime later during writers’ workshop, they can go back to work on their Freewrite piece if that’s what they want to do or they can go on to write  a new piece introduced by the teacher.

In the next posting, I will share an example of a child experiencing freewriting. 

More writing and a writing camp

                                                   1. Free Writing Time

                                                     2. In the silent writing room...

                                                         3. The daily prompts

Don’t remind me. I know it’s December and I haven’t been updating this blog since September. It’s true that I’ve been busy but I am always busy and that hasn’t stopped me from writing one more thing. But October was spent in Jakarta (two trips) and November was my personal development time. But in between all these activities, I was busy writing too.

Yes, writing the Teacher’s Guide for the P4 textbook, writing and rewriting various bits of the materials and most of all writing a 16-page, 7000 over word piece on one of our English textbooks.  After that was done, I was truly exhausted from writing. Writing is not difficult for me but writing is always a pain, and I still struggle to put words on paper and to organise thoughts. True, the end product is always satisfying but getting there is another story.

After the many writing exercises, I was planning for the beginning of the Bay Area Writing Project’s (BAWP) Singapore Writing Camp that I was jointly organising with the Adam Khoo Learning Centre for primary and lower secondary children. The camp ended on 2 December but what an experience that was! It left me completely exhausted but also totally invigorated. I am once again charged up for more writing adventures and here I am back at the computer.

In the next few posts, I hope to share some lessons from the camp with you-- lessons that I hope will help you rethink your own writing life as well as your pedagogical practices. In the meanwhile, I am busy setting up my writing group and getting my drafts in order in my writing journal. And in case you are thinking, oh, good for her but I have no time and nothing to write about and I don’t write well. Well, I too have little time and I am just wondering how to fit in my walk, yoga practice, writing and swimming into my working day. But busy woman finds time and every one can write; they just need to find their writing voice.   Read my upcoming posts about our reluctant writers at the camp and perhaps you can find some inspiration.

And in the words of Elmore Leonard, There isn’t any secret. You sit down and you start and that’s it.

Seoul and Dog Poo

Two weeks ago, I was on a lightning trip to Seoul to visit a writing camp organised by the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP). I have known about the BAWP from my postgraduate days at UC Berkeley and was keen to see what programmes they were offering. Unfortunately, I landed in Seoul on the morning of the storm-of-the-century and was caught in a four-hour traffic jam getting to the hotel.  Our very resourceful taxi-driver worked hard, taking every short cut he could think of. Otherwise, we could have been in the jam for a much longer period. With no English newspapers, it took me a day or more before I discovered the extent of damage in Seoul from the rains that fateful day.

Our three-day trip was spent in the camp and during our free time, we were in a mall to escape the rain. Sadly, I am in no position to say much about Seoul from this trip. But I was most impressed by Incheon airport and learnt a bit more about the art of kimchee making.

                                 A "royal" procession at Incheon airport, staged to entertain tourists.

Back home, I spent the Sunday attending the Buddhism and Science Symposium, where experts spoke about the link between scientific research and Buddhist practices like meditation.  Here are some of the ideas I took away from that day:

1. The map is not the territory. Our perception of the world is just that- a perception, and not the real thing. We should not use our perceptions of people and of the world to measure or judge people or events because ours is only one view.  A timely reminder.

2. Life is not about being good. It’s about being real. CG Jung.

3. We have 5 dreams per night and 1825 per year. We all dream but each dream is unique and particular to the dreamer.

4. Here’s an exercise that Dr Marke Greene suggested. Try it.

      Close your eyes. Imagine a person who is very difficult. Choose someone of the same gender. Think of a word that describes what makes this person difficult.
Chances are that the word you chose to describe the person also describes you. I tried this and it took me a while to understand and accept that the word also described me. That was humbling and enlightening.

      5. The Ven Chuan Guan gave a lively talk during which he told a story about dog poo. Here’s a paraphrase of what he said: When we are out and about, and we step on dog poo, what do we do? We try to get rid of it immediately, either by wiping our shoes on some grass or with tissue. We don’t pick the dog poo up, put it in a bag and tie it up neatly to take it home. And when we get home, and we are asked what we did outside, we don’t take our pack of dog poo out, unpack it and share it with our family. Nor do our family members share the dog poo they've inadvertently stepped on with us. 

The Venerable’s message is this: Don’t take home your emotional dog poo and share it with your loved ones. Leave the dog poo outside where it belongs. Making your loved ones deal with your dog poo is not a loving gesture. 

I thought this was an interesting metaphor and a good story to share with everyone. Like itor not, we are all a little guilty of unloading dog poo on our loved ones every now and then when we get home from a stressful day at work. Perhaps it’s time to rethink this habit.

So, it was a Sunday well spent and after that I had a week of work and fought the flu at the same time.  National Day came and went.  At one point, it was bad enough for me to cancel yoga and all physical exercises and although work went on as usual, I never really got better. Today, I still have a bad cough after having consumed a whole bottle of cough syrup.  Ah well.  Thank goodness it’s Friday!