Writing/Grammar Presentation

Serious Daring by Lisa Roney 

5-6 minutes, Write a short paragraph of a plot where one character says, “Wow, you really shouldn’t have done that.” Characters: Dwight Schrute, Darth Vader, Forrest Gump

• Separated into 3 parts; Craft matters, writing life matters, and anthology

• Craft matters
• Gives examples of where to find material, current daily life, adventures, inspiration from other writers etc. 
• Poetry, creative non fiction, fiction, plays, hybrid forms and emerging media
• Goes into each element of creative writing;

Imagery and Figurative Language	Character
Sound and rhythm	Plot
Form	POV and Voice
Memory	Action and Dialogue
Research	Performance
Description and setting

• Writing life matters
• How to read as a writer 
• What does reading as a writer mean? 
• Figuring out how a writer reached the desired effect on the readers by examining the choices they made.
• How do we do that?
• NOTES NOTES NOTES
• Figure out what confuses you and why it confuses you
• Try to summarize certain parts of the work 
• Examine language under a microscope 
• Workshopping 
• Explains why we workshop and different ways to do it 
• Could be helpful for students to become more comfortable with recieving and gaining constructive criticism
• Discussion rather than attack 
• Literary vs Genre debate
• Discussing different reasons for writing whether it be for fun, for social change, or affecting the individual.
• Curious to hear what literary works affected each of us?
• Writing life
• Details why writers are important and how you can make a living as a writer
• Anthology 
• Collection of example works for students to read 

2. Please explain why you chose this text. What was your rationale? How does your understanding of this text influence your thinking about your teaching?

• I chose this text because it is helpful for teaching how to write creative writing. It includes a lot of helpful, in-depth descriptions of each aspect of writing, which can also be used in non-creative writing. One part specifically I thought would be helpful for this is the voice chapter. I was taught voice was important in a paper in middle school, but then was taught that voice was irrelevant and students needed to write to please the teacher. I think keeping a voice in writing in secondary ed is important and will help students stay more engaged in their writing. This book helps students know how to effectively find and use their voice. I also chose this because I noticed many parts of this book included things that I learned in high school, and effectively outlined how to have students practice these parts of writing in a fun way, rather than just sitting and listening to a lecture about it. I thought it was cool to see how many things you can teach to students through creative writing, that they can also use in other writing. 

3. Please include some teaching ideas. How do you envision employing this text in a secondary English language arts classroom? Provide at least 3 specific ideas for what is possible with this text.

• Reading and discussing a chapter, then giving students a choice between a few of the pathways at the end of the chapter
• Having students practice workshopping (older grades or maybe an advanced class)
• Have students practice close reading with a text that could be confusing to many readers

4. Please consider some challenges to using strategies from this text. What are the potential issues that may arise from using these strategies? Predict students’ responses. How will you address these challenges?

• A big issue I can see arising from teaching this text is unproductive workshopping. It takes a level of maturity to be able to give and receive constructive criticism without making it too personal.  This might be better geared towards higher grades or in advanced level classrooms. This can be resolved by coming up with specific rules that everyone in the class comes up with and agrees on before we start workshopping. Another issue I see with this text is because it is more geared towards college students, the selected readings at times can be inappropriate for secondary ed students. One way to combat this issue would be to have students read selected readings from the book on worksheets or scanned online. Another issue with this text is students might not want to workshop their own work, or they might not want to write creatively at all. I think a good way to get past this issue would be to workshop another author’s piece of work, whether it be a final version or an earlier version of any author’s work. 

5. Anything else you think is important for us to know and understand about this text and its use with students.

• At the end of the book, there are templates on how to send work in to be published for any student who may want to take their writing to the next level. I know I like to do creative writing on my own, and this text is really helpful to me as an individual to work on specific parts of my own writing.