young reviewers contest

Get your students fired up with a contest that will introduce them to the real world of publishing and scholastic recognition, not to mention real prize money.

The Virginia Quarterly Review is sponsoring a contest for young book reviewers. All writing contestants must be under the age of 30. It's a formidable project with the minimum word count at 2,000 words, up to a maximum of 3,500 words. Read about the requirements here.

Your students will probably be most interested in reading about the prize:

The prize for the winning entry is $1,000, publication in our Winter 2009 issue, and a publishing contract for three additional reviews worth up to $3,000. Finalists (up to five) will receive a complimentary one-year student or associate membership in the National Book Critics Circle, a one-year subscription to VQR, and may also be offered paid publication in VQR (in print or online).

Move fast on this one, as all reviews must be uploaded to the VQR website by September 30.

Here are two sites to assist with the fine points of writing book reviews:

1. Scholastic: Write a Book Review
   
2. Los Angeles Valley College: How to Write a Book Review
   

open and scholarly

We often hear complaints about the dearth of reputable sources on the web. While it is true that most worthy source materials may still be found in bricks-and-mortar research and community libraries, or locked up in subscription-only online depositories, there are excellent sources readily, and freely, available to our students.

The Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ should be at the forefront of sources for all research papers you assign, both as source material for references and as outstanding examples of research paper writing. The articles provide excellent lessons in reading comprehension, as well.

Subjects represented by the DOAJ are comprehensive, from the humanities to the sciences, to business and economics. Here's an article from journal Romantic Textualities that I'll definitely add to my reading list for Romantic Era studies, "Remediating Byron: Textual Information Overload During Byron's 1816 Travels":

Cultural insights into the communication phenomenon of textual Information Overload existed during the Romantic period. In 1800, for example, Wordsworth lamented the multifarious transmission and reception of information which, he found, blunted ‘the discriminating powers of the mind’ resulting in the mind becoming unfit for ‘voluntary exertion’ because the (over)saturation of print media precludes one to ‘think long and deeply’.

So we're not the only generation to experience the onslaught of information overload. How's that for relevance?

On the subject of scholarly articles, how do students tell the difference? Here's a video from the library at University of Wisconsin-Madison which spells it out so we can all understand. The video is a keeper; you'll want to show it to your classes and provide the link on your website.

poetic youth

At the beginning of every school year I ask my students--high school or college level--to respond in writing: What kinds of writing do you like to do? Without fail, every year the most common response is poetry. They like to write poems.

Now, sometimes a few students will write specifically that they create song lyrics, but by far the most common response is poetry. When I first started asking this question, I was surprised. When I tell my students the results of their written responses, they are surprised. We shouldn't be. Throughout history, the best poets have generally been young.

It probably seems surprising to us that teens would invest in time writing poetry because they have so many other ways to spend their time. We constantly hear how the bombardment of technology usurps the mental energy of youth. Yet, giving credit where credit is due, technology may be the perfect vehicle for reading, writing, and critiquing the ages-old practice of poetry.

Welcome to the Young Writer's Society (YWS):

Specifically created for young writers ages 13 to 25, we are an online community where we share a common passion for creative writing.

The poetry section accepts entries into three distinctively defined categories: dramatic, lyric, narrative, plus 'other' for whatever doesn't fit. There are rules, too. Site administrator, 25-year-old Nate, lists a few:

1. Be sure that all the grammar is up to standard. Do whatever you have to do to post a grammatically sound story. (common courtesy!)
2. Try not to preface poetry or fiction. If you have to explain to your critics what the piece is about, you are not doing your job as a writer.
3. Write constructive critiques. Constructive posts do not include things like, "this was super dooper! keep writing!"

Great advice all around.

I'll leave you with the opening lines of "The Last Word," a poem posted today by Gadi:

There it is—a faux pas in society,
lying feeble on this very page,
a cube, a puzzle piece, a block—
something like a sizzling fluorescent
light in an underground chamber,
resembling a migraine in the crooks
and corners of your brain.

tips for editing and proofreading

Most seasoned writers have a routine for editing and proofreading, so that they budget time in the writing cycle before the piece goes public. Too often, students wait until the last moment to write their papers. Once the content is down, they may (or may not) make a cursory check for errors, and call it a late night.

The techniques we use to teach writing may alter these bad writing habits, such as having our students freewrite blocks of text at a time. By definition, freewriting is writing without concerns for revision, so that editing and proofreading become the next steps in the process.

I have found it useful to begin writing projects with in-class freewriting, one block at a time, so that procrastination is not an option. We dig right into the content, skipping the introduction until later in the process, when students have a better idea of what they are writing about. Some may still wait until the last night before the paper is due to complete their final draft, but at least they will have something concrete to work with.

The blocks of freewriting form a first draft, from which editing and proofreading naturally follow. You will find very useful tips for these skills at the University of North Carolina writing center website. First, a distinction is made between editing and proofreading, encouraging writers to separate out the two steps in the revision process.

Here are a couple of my favorite tips from the site:

• Try changing the look of your document. Altering the size, spacing, color, or style of the text may trick your brain into thinking it's seeing an unfamiliar document, and that can help you get a different perspective on what you've written. [Familiarity definitely breeds contempt for finding errors--I need to try this!]
• Clarity-Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? [If they don't understand what their own sentences mean, no one else will, either.]

There's an interactive exercise as well: at the beginning, readers are informed that the text contains 7 errors. Have your students form pairs to find them. They'll be able to access the necessary revisions at the end of the article.

The UNC Writing Center offers great tips which, if followed, will benefit our students throughout their writing lives.

prompting creativity

Creative writing is often overlooked at school, since state testing and heavy curriculum requirements dictate how much of our teaching time is spent. This is a shame, since students generally write with great enthusiasm when encouraged to tell fictional stories, especially science fiction and fantasy.

For my tenth graders, I paired readings of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" with "The Garden of Stubborn Cats" by Italo Calvino, then assigned them to write their own sci-fi/fantasy short story. They were supposed to write 5-6 pages, but several students wrote for twice as long. Guys are especially intrigued by the assignment, even those who are typically resistant to any other writing lessons.

You can find Bradbury's story online here, and both the Italian original and English translation of Calvino's "Stubborn Cats" here.

If you'd like your students to start writing creatively on a more spontaneous basis and in a less formal manner, get some ideas (over 300!) from Creative Writing Prompts, designed to "ignite your creativity."

diablogging: reading tools

This week, tools that enhance classroom reading are on the minds of the bloggers I read. Instructify reviews a very useful bibliography maker called BibMe, and Educamation discusses the social benefits of sites such as Shelfari and Library Thing.

Your students are going to love BibMe for its quick compilation of references in a variety of formats, including the most frequently cited: MLA, APA, and Chicago. You can upload information from almost any source, even film. Here is the MLA citation for the New York Times article I wrote about this week with regard to how online reading affects literacy:

Rich, Motoko. "Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 31 July 2008 .

If you register at the site, BibMe will keep track of your citations, a helpful feature when preparing a long research paper. Of course, we still need to teach students how the citation process works, and BibMe helps us out with a handy Citation Guide.

Do you keep track of the books you read? I have for decades, starting out by recording in notebooks, then discs and CDs, and now Library Thing and Google Books. Edumacation has a well thought out post about the pros and cons of using social media for students to showcase the books they've read.

These tools are useful, fun to use, and cost effective. Best of all, they provide great incentives to read and write.

teen presidents with broadband

Here's your first writing assignment of the new school semester. The Alternative Teen Services blog offers a contest to get the under-18 crowd thinking about how enhanced communication through broadband benefits people:

"Entries for the new contest, “President for a Day - How I’d Change the World With Broadband!” will be accepted until the September 30, 2008 deadline. Contestants are invited to share their best ideas for using high speed communications technology to address a wide range of issues and problems. For example, do you want everyone to have access to health care specialists, even if they are located hundreds of miles away? How about telemedicine? Do you want to help solve global warming? How about a virtual conference to connect people and ideas? Do you want all citizens to be able to participate in the political process? Do you want all students to have the educational tools necessary to compete in a global economy? How would you use high-speed communications technology to make the world a better place?"

Consider the second to the last suggested question: Do you want all students to have the educational tools necessary to compete in a global economy?

Aren't you curious to know how students would respond? In what ways would they criticize or support the existing educational paradigm?

teach and delight

We know the positive results of getting our students to write about issues. They tend to write with more interest and passion because they are writing about something they care about. Ideally, they will conduct their own research with little prompting. The trick is to get them interested in the first place.

Here are three sites built with Flash technology that provide just enough factual information about environmental issues to get your students going. You will want to spend some time at the sites yourself, because they are amazing.

• The interactivity of nationalgridfloe allows us to calculate our carbon footprint--daily activities--to see how they affect creatures as far away as the North Pole.
• A popular ice-cream maker sponsors helpthehoneybees, reminding us that healthy bee colonies are responsible for many of the tasty things that go into our favorite summer treat: berries, nuts, and honey.
• Taking a tongue-and-cheek look at lightbulbs, unscrewAmerica, makes a convincing case for citizens for environmental enlightenment.

These are dazzling interactive sites, reminding us of Aristotle's maxim to both teach and delight.