Get This Kid a Book Deal, 2: Ghost Town-

I never let my kids write fiction in class.  Perhaps it's a personal hang up. I know all my adolescent experiments in fiction were filled with stereotypes and cop-outs like "And then I woke up. It was all a dream." 

But they beg and beg. So this week, I finally gave in...a bit. We've attempted spurts of fiction. For example, when working on describing setting, I gave them the following prompt:

"A group of teens are exploring dark woods when they stumble upon an abandoned village."

Here are some of their sentences:

"The trees in the woods looked like skinny arms grabbing for lost visitors."

"The grass acted as spikes on the ground, protecting the land from intruders."

"The woods were so dark, it was as if God forgot to turn on the lights."

(Another variation of this one was, "It was so dark that it was as if someone had forgotten to pay the light bill.")

"The dark clouds swirled above them like moths as they stared at the abandoned village."

"The radiant moonlight skimmed over their heads like flashlights in the trees."

"The animals were as terrified as two-year-olds at the dentist."

"You could almost hear the forgotten hum of the villagers."

They make the hard work of original writing look so effortless. 

Basically, I issued up the fiction challenge, and they responded with a, "Ain't no thang, lady."

Yet again, they prove me wrong. Each day, they show me how very little adults, like myself, truly understand about their capabilities.

Slack-jawed,

Ms. P

Damn Good Sentence Contest, Part 2

I debuted the Damn Good Sentence Contest on Monday. It's a bit of a competition where you vote for your favorite one of my students' sentences in the comment section OR on facebook.

Sentences that make you say "Then What?!"

1) I walked out of the room feeling confident that today was going to be easy, but if that was true, then turtles hunt bears with ray guns.

2) Two fatal gunshots rang out.

3) Right before I opened my mouth for disapproval, his furious, hungry scissors ate away at my hair like a parasite.

4) Uncertain, I started to creep forward, but with all my best efforts I still couldn’t help from snapping a few dried up twigs. 

5) I would rather give The Count the wrong number of the day. I’d rather be lactose intolerant and try the gallon milk challenge than be by this kid. I would rather watch Glee. I’d rather clean a gas station bathroom. I would rather staple my eyes shut and run around busy streets.

Pick your favorite. I know mine.

Damn Good Sentence Contest, Part 1

If you are reading this entry, consider yourself a judge. 

A judge in the "Damn Good Sentence" contest. It starts today, ends on Saturday, and will come in 3 waves. All sentences were pulled from my students' personal narratives. 

Today is the Most Cleverly Descriptive Contest. Wednesday will be the Most Suspenseful Contest. Friday will be the Most Quietly Brilliant Contest.

You have 3 votes. One in each category. Use them wisely, and leave them in the comment section. Voting will be closed on Saturday evening. 

MOST CLEVERLY DESCRIPTIVE: Choose one.

1) My elbow. It looked like an antelope freshly punctured by a lioness.

2) “Go, go, go!” my coach said, wagging his hand like a dog’s tail.

3) I watched as the drops of blood were pulled and stretched into bands in the dirty tub water.

4) She had snipped and snipped so much until she made two gigantic triangles that looked like the pyramids of Giza. Apparently she had been studying geometry, because she not only made those triangles but also a square on one sideburn and a circle on the other.

5) We were heading to the door like a train about to run off the tracks, except there was no Superman there to help us.

6) There were low branches that hung thin curtains of leaves over the rushing water and the silent rocks that held many secrets. Squirrels tangoed through the trees in rhythm.

7) It was a dust bunny with golden glitter eyes - from St. Patrick’s Day when we were covered with it by leprechauns during nap time - and one shiny staple for a mouth.

8) My brother’s long, brown hair flopped around like a bloodhound’s ears when it finds a rabbit.

Vote or die,

Ms. P

Ain't no thang.

Back to the grind, kids. I woke up today feeling a lot like this....

And then I looked in the mirror at my bank account and got real post-haste.

However, I am glad I went to school because on the way to lunch I had the following conversation with one of my accelerated students who is like Tom Clancy, but twelve.

Picture this with glasses and more awkward, but in a lovable way.

Dialogue with Kid Clancy:

Ms. P: So, Kid Clancy, how was your break?

KC: (matter-of-factly) Pretty uneventful. I did finish my novel that I've been working on. Typed it up.

Ms. P: (sheepishly and less upbeat than before) Oh, uh cool. I...uh...made a wreath.

KC: Right. That's...nice.

Wondering what the heck I'm doing with my life,

Ms. P

Get This Kid a Book Deal, 1

Occasionally, one of my students writes a sentence that is so clever, witty, or just darn ingenious that I am jealous that I didn't think of it first. The reader and teacher in me is thrilled and beaming; meanwhile, my inner-writer (who happens to be a self-centered, cotton-headed ninnymuggins) throws a mini pity party because a 12 year old beat me to the punch! Look, I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is.

My wise mother once advised me, "The greatest compliment to a teacher is when the student surpasses her." Or maybe I read that on a bathroom stall in the teachers' lounge. Either way, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that mommas and bathroom stalls don't lie.

Which brings me to my point. Today is the first installment of what I hope to be a regular feature here at Best in Class - "Get This Kid a Book Deal!" - where I'll share some student writing that slapped my adult self around and put her in her place.

A couple months ago, I had my kids write about a goat, sheep, or a chicken for a journal entry in class. One student wrote about a fictitious trip to a butcher's shop. This is the concluding sentence of his rough draft:

 

  “I had been planning on being a vegetarian, but when I went to pick up sausage from the butcher shop, my vegetarian dream was chopped up and packaged into a Styrofoam tray.”

This is the stuff New York Times' bestsellers are made of, people.