Tag: English

Contest #6 That Works for My Students: Outdoor Writers Association’s Norm Strung Youth Writing Awards

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Here’s another writing contest for you to try with your students.

The Outdoor Writers Association, based in Missoula, Montana, is an organization of writers, editors, broadcasters, photographers, film makers, and other communicators who are, according to OWAA’s website, “dedicated to sharing the outdoor experience.”

The organization is involved in many outreach activities, including the Norm Strung Youth Writing Awards, a national contest for students who submit works in prose or poetry that is outdoor-oriented. Students may enter as many pieces as they wish, but only one will be chosen as a winner.

One of my eighth-graders won the second place prize in the prose junior division in the 2017 contest. Read about it here. You can read my student’s essay here: Natural Nostalgia.

Age Range: This contest is open to students in grades 6-12. There are two divisions: junior (grades 6-8) and senior (9-12).

Topic or Prompt: Students may write about kayaking, camping, hunting, ecology, fishing, boating, just walking outdoors… really any outdoor-themed topic.

Mentor Texts to Use: At the outset of the contest, we read previous winning poems and prose pieces for examples and ideas. While I do have some copies of previous winners that I used in class last year, I’ve been unable to find those online recently. Here’s a link from Outdoor News where I was able to locate a winner from the 2010 contest entitled, “My First Deer, My Dad’s Fifth.” Leave a comment on this post so I can help you find more mentor texts for this contest.

Best Thing To Me About This Contest: Student choice. The fact that students can write about any topic, as long as it’s outdoor-oriented is a big plus for this contest. My students wrote about hiking, taking their first deer, fishing, and just climbing a tree. Anyone can relate to this topic and has an outdoor memory they can reflect on. I also like that poetry is an option, although only one of my students entered a poem last year.

Skills Addressed:  This contest lends itself to narrative writing skills. Students must learn to sequence events logically, use appropriate transitions, and incorporate sensory language and imagery. However, there are other ways to approach the contest. For example, argument and opinion pieces may be entered. Again, choice is central to this contest. 

Length: No length requirement is listed on the contest’s guidelines.

Deadline: In 2017, the deadline was March 15. Make sure to adjust the deadline around spring break. Check back here to confirm the 2018 deadline date. Winners are announced in early August, which will seem like an eternity to your students! However, if one of them wins, it’s a great way to start the next school year!

Prizes: This year, Falcon Guides, a publisher of guidebooks for outdoor enthusiasts, provided prizes totaling $1,500. In addition, the OWAA eventually publishes all winning entries in its print magazine Outdoors Unlimited and on its website.  So far, however, I’ve had a hard time finding winning entries from recent years.

How to Enter: Entries may be submitted online via an email address. However, entries can also be mailed to OWAA’s Missoula office, which is what I chose to do last year, my first year to try this contest. I attached a slip of paper to each entry that noted the division (junior) and category (prose or poetry). This is a required step for all entries. Next year, I may try emailing the entries.

For more information:  Click here for complete rules.

Give this contest a try! I think your students will find engagement due to the wide variety of topics they can explore with this contest. Good luck!

 

 

If you learned something from this post, click like, leave a comment and share on social media! Follow my blog for more student writing contests and ELA teaching reflections. Thanks for reading!

We have a winner!

Student’s essay places second in national contest

Congratulations to Elijah D., whose essay placed second in the Outdoor Writers Association‘s Norm Strung Youth Writing Awards.

IMG_5056 (2)Eli’s essay entitled “Natural Nostalgia” placed second in the nation in the junior prose category. He also received a check for $100. Eli graduated from Kirbyville Middle School in May and will attend Branson High School this fall.

For more information about this contest, please follow my blog to see my next post, “Contest #6 that Works for My Students: Outdoor Writers Association Norm Strung Youth Writing Awards.”

Let Students Talk, Think, and Think Some More

Here’s what else I do to help students find writing topics they care about and then start writing

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Photo by Anton Darius | Sollers on Unsplash

I know from teaching middle school (6-8) ELA for a few years that, in order for students to be passionate about their writing, they must first have a topic that they care about. When they care, they won’t mind taking the time to struggle to get their ideas expressed effectively. They’ll  persevere through the thinking and writing (and rethinking and rewriting) that inevitably happens when they are truly engaged and committed to their ideas. In a previous post, I listed three ways I help my students find topics they care about. Here they are:

1) I give them lots of choices. If they don’t like any of the fifty or more prompts I offer, they can write about their own idea.

2) I regularly assign slice-of-life essays about the ordinary moments of life that, while small, reveal our humanity and common experiences.

3) I simply give students time to think.

The fourth thing I do to help students find a good topic is this: I let them talk.

Nothing builds enthusiasm as much as inviting students to share their ideas, connections, and memories. Writing ideas bubble up around the room as others share their experiences. I carry a dry erase marker on me at all times so I can rush over to the whiteboard and jot down a random idea like “snowboard life lesson thing” for Gwen or “spaghetti disaster” for Casey.

Usually, after they’ve talked for a while (about 15-25 minutes), I’ll notice students here and there pulling out pen and paper to start writing. I use that as my guide. I make a quick announcement that it’s time to start writing. I invite them to grab a clipboard and find a spot on the floor around the room or at a table where they can be productive. Many choose to stay at their desks. If they sit with a buddy, they must still be productive.

Then I turn off the fluorescent lights and flip on the white Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. It creates an inviting glow that signals it’s time to settle in for writing.

Those kids who pulled out their paper first to write will usually be my star students. Because I know those kids can easily dive right into writing, I make sure to keep an eye on those who may need help getting started. I let everyone know it’s okay if nothing gets written down that day, but the goal for the next is to have a semblance of an idea at the beginning of class. And then I let those strugglers stare at the wall some more. I pour out the patience.

One of the most introspective pieces ever composed in my classes was written by a student who stared at the wall for most of the class period. At first, I thought Joe was just biding his time, but when I checked with him, he told me he just couldn’t think of anything. So I let him stare.

The next day, he rushed into class with a sheet of notebook paper covered on both sides with some wonderful personal thinking about being young, making choices, and about how it can actually feel bewildering to have so many options in life. A truly interesting piece with ideas I never expected this student to harbor. In fact, I still keep a copy in my “Why I Teach” binder. Rereading it reminds me that I should be patient when discussion doesn’t ignite everyone’s imagination right away.  Some kids just need more time to think.

The next steps I take with my students will be discussed in an upcoming post. I’ll be finishing that soon. Click the “like” button and share on social media if this has been helpful to you. Feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget to follow me to catch that post! Thanks for reading!

 

Contest #4 That Works for My Students: New York Times Editorial Contest

 

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Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

 

Since 2014, The New York Times has sponsored an opinion-editorial contest on its Learning Network site. Last spring, all of my seventh-graders submitted entries for their chance to win.  This contest engaged my students, especially because they knew they were writing for The New York Times.

Age Range: This contest is open to students aged 13-19.

Topic or Prompt: Students may write on any topic they wish. If they have trouble finding a topic, give them this list published by the Times. Consider narrowing it down first, since the size of the list can be overwhelming. Also, depending on the age of your students, skim through the list to eliminate any topics that aren’t age-appropriate. Some of the topics are too mature for my middle schoolers. Some sample topics from recent years include Is Social Media Making Us More Narcissistic? Another one: Do Teachers Assign Too Much Homework?

For a complete list of 2017 winners with links to the top ten, go here. Copy off a few of the winning essays to use as mentor texts.

Best Thing To Me About This Contest:

The clout of writing for the Times makes this contest special. My students hold this newspaper that’s been in publication for 162 years in high esteem and like knowing their writing may receive recognition from it.

Skills Addressed:  Students must state their argument and support it efficiently with background information, examples, evidence, and counter-arguments. As for evidence, at least two sources must be used; one of those must be from the Times.

Click here for a rubric that shows what the judges are looking for. We discussed the rubric in class and used it as a checklist during peer response.  I also used it during grading.

Share these tips from the editors with your students. Here’s one the editors offer: “Start strong. Grab our attention in the first few sentences, but don’t take too long to state your argument.”

Length: 450 words or less. This is about concision.  Students learn to make every word absolutely necessary to the argument.

Deadline: Early April. Check back here in early 2018 for next year’s date.

Prizes: This year, 128 winners were chosen out of nearly 8,000 entries. This includes 10 top winners, 15 runners-up, 45 honorable mentions, and 58 writers whose essays survived to the third round. Winning essays are published on the Learning Network site.

The Unexpected Bonus: Students enter their essays online themselves here. This makes it super easy to submit entries. Students also must enter their sources in the online form. Examples are given so students format citations correctly.

For more information:  Click here for complete rules.

 

If you learned something from this post, click like, leave a comment and share on social media! Follow my blog for more student writing contests and ELA teaching reflections. Thanks for reading!

Heads up! Student poetry contest deadline August 18

 

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Photo: Pixabay

If you’re planning to incorporate contests into your ELA classes and/or writers workshops, you can get started as early as Friday, August 18! That’s the deadline for the summer poetry hardcover anthology to be printed and published by Creative Communication. The books will ship in December. Teachers who have five or more students accepted for publication receive one free copy. Click here to visit their website. Read my recent blog post that outlines how the contests work.

My school’s first day is Wednesday, August 16.  Hmmmm… not sure how we can make that deadline, but I’m gonna try! (And based on past experience with this publisher, deadlines are often extended by a week or two,  so I’m crossing my fingers that will happen again.)

If you need poetry ideas, the CC website offers poem templates that will get your students crafting verse in no time. I’ll probably try those templates to get up and running ASAP.

I can’t think of a better way to start the year than with jumping right into an authentic writing assignment. It will be so fun all fall to look forward to that moment in December when my students hold their anthologies in their hands and become published writers!

If this post has helped you, click the like button and follow my blog to keep up-to-date on more contests and writing ideas!

 

 

 

Dear English teachers who have stumbled upon Medium during your summer break,

Originally published here July 19, 2017 on Medium.com in From a Teacher.

 

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Photo: Tran Mau Tri Tam on Unsplash

 

Congratulations! You found Medium. You should stick around and see what this site offers English Language Arts teachers.

Wander aimlessly throughout this platform and its writers and publications. It won’t take long before you’ll unearth some very cool stories (btw, everything is called a story on Medium) about an unending supply of topics: from coding to human rights, from motivational thinking to tacos. Get lost in the good stuff on Medium and then plan to share this goldmine of writing with your students in the fall.

One way I share Medium with my middle school language arts students is by finding a story to use as a mentor text. If we’re writing, for example, how-to articles, I search in my Medium network for an age-appropriate one I think will intrigue my middle schoolers. Then I print, make copies and we read them in class.

Then we’ll do a straight-through “cold” read. Sometimes I read aloud; sometimes I have students do that on their own. After that first read, students are often surprised at the original, sometimes quirky, always engaging writer’s voices found on Medium. They can’t believe, for example, that someone actually wrote this. They also can’t believe the variety. Research-driven studies and silly listicles… it’s all here. Medium stories are a fresh change from the made-for-school reading they get so much of.

Then we pass around the highlighter bucket and we read the story again, marking it up and keeping track of the ideas it presents and the questions it poses. And then we talk. Here are the questions we throw around:

  • Do you like this story? Do you find it enlightening? Does it speak to you? How?
  • How does it begin? How does it end?
  • Where is the strongest moment in this story? Weakest?
  • What do we notice about how it’s built?
  • How many paragraphs? How many sentences in a paragraph?
  • What techniques does the author use? Repetition? Alliteration?
  • Does it have a topic sentence or a main idea? What is it?
  • How does the author develop and explore this idea?
  • Does the author use evidence? How is it presented? Is it effective?
  • If you had written this article, how would you have tagged it?
  • What techniques could you pull from this mentor text as you write your own how-to?

I know that looks like a lot of discussion questions. In fact, you may be thinking, Wow. Way to take a perfectly good story and ruin it with over-analysis.However, our discussions are casual and organic; we ask the questions that make sense for the story we happen to be reading. Everybody is free to contribute, of course, and they do because the stories on Medium are accessible, relevant and created by real, living and breathing, connected writers who blog about the world that exists beyond the concrete block walls of school.

So now that you’ve found Medium, delve deeper. Find a handful of stories that you’re enthusiastic about. Restock your highlighter bucket. Get lots of colors. Plan to read, talk about, and imitate some Medium stories with your students this fall.

Click like if: a) you liked this, or b) know some teachers who need to find Medium. Could that be you??? Follow this blog to stay in touch. I’ll be posting more Medium resources for teachers soon. Thanks for reading!

Contest #3 That Works for My Students: Creative Communication Poetry Anthologies

Originally published June 26, 2017 ©Edutopia | The George Lucas Educational Foundation

 

Three times a year, Creative Communication (CC) of Logan, Utah publishes hardcover anthologies full of K-9 poetry. I know what you’re thinking. Must be a pay-to-play anthology, right? The company judges the poems received and publishes the best ones, without regard to whether the student purchases a copy or not. Students upload their own poetry via the publisher’s website at poeticpower.com.  The website, which is extensive with links to teacher and student information, is easy to navigate and search. So far, more than thirty of my students saw their poetry published last year. Students loved seeing their poetry in print! Several parents ordered the anthologies, which are handled directly by the publisher. Here’s a link to my class website where I talk up the contests and winners: Kirbyville Middle School Language Arts website.

 

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Creative Communication publishes hardcover poetry anthologies, similar to this one, three times a year for different regions and age levels.

 

Topic or Prompt: Student choice reigns! The website has many poetry ideas and lesson plans with examples. For mentor texts, use previous winning poems found on the website. When introducing the contest, make sure to show your students Taylor Swift’s winning poem that she entered in the contest when she was in fifth grade. That always gets attention! Here’s a link to the poem. Just scroll down to her picture and click to open a page to read it.

Best Thing (To Me) About This Contest: I love how this contest is competitive, but not too competitive. Everyone has a real opportunity to see their name in print. According to the FAQs on the website, “We take pride in the fact that we are selective with our entries. We reject more entries than we accept to be published. Our objective is to make it an honor to be selected for the anthology.”  FYI: Each anthology is considered a contest since the top ten entries win prizes, but more on that below.

What About Privacy? First names only are published. School names are included. Students must receive permission from parents in order to be published. Teachers will receive a free copy when five students are published. You can also earn points for more books and school supplies with the rewards system. To read about the system, click here.

Skills Addressed:

  • Idea Development. Students must meet the criteria of the particular style of poem I assign or the style of poem they have chosen from the website.
  • Conventions. Students must submit their best poetry.

Length: Poems must be no longer than 20 lines.

Deadline: There is one deadline for each of the fall, spring, and summer contests to coincide with your poetry units.  See the website for exact dates.

Prizes: For each of the three grade levels (K-3; 4-6; 7-9), the top ten entries in the poetry contest will be given a $25 check, special recognition in the book, and a free anthology copy.

The Unexpected Bonus: Students rose to the occasion when they knew their work would be submitted for publication and possible top ten recognition.

For more information: See CC’s Facebook page or check out their blog.

Let me know if you have any questions about this contest by posting a comment. Have a contest success story? I would love to hear from you!