Learning from our Students

One of the fun things about teaching young adults is that invariably I learn from them also. Right now I am teaching a small group of home school girls who are excited about creating their own stories. Last week when I asked them what every story needed, Savannah Ann answered, "A point. Every story needs a point." Hmmm… I hadn't thought of that and promised her if my book goes into a third edition I'd consider including that.

This week, I introduced the concept of creating a character FAST. In Teaching the Story I said that the acronym stands for:

F- Feelings
A-Actions
S- Speech
T- Thoughts

On Monday when I introduced the concept I just wrote "FAST" on the board and asked the girls what they thought each letter stood for. Caleigh said that she thought "A" should stand for "Attitude" or "Appearance." Hmmm again. Another addition to the third edition!

“Being a knower/learner communicates to the student that we’re in this together. We’re on the same page.” Peter Johnston, wrote in Choice Words. (Stenhouse Publishers, 2004)

Not only is it fun, but learning from your students empowers them.
How about you? What did you learn from your students today?

Brian’s Return

It's been a long time since I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, but I can still remember the eloquent detail Paulsen used to show Brian's survival in the wilderness. Since he first published that book in 1987, Paulsen continued the series with The River and Brian's Winter. I was not disappointed with the sharp account of Brian's return to the bush—authentic detail abound. The conflicts that Brian faces in trying to return to civilization are acutely captured in this short 2-CD audio book from Listening Library, but I kept thinking—how can this book end so quickly? I admit, I was hoping for a different ending. But after listening to the author's note at the end in which Paulsen talks about his own life and his difficulties coming back into "real life" as you and I know it, I realized that Paulsen wrote the only ending that would truly fit who Brian was (and who Paulsen himself is.) This series of books are unabashedly autobiographical and I would recommend them as stellar examples of an author mining his own life to create realistic fiction—an element which I talk about in Teaching the Story and in my workshop, Mining Your Students' Lives: Writing Rich Short Stories. Brian's Return
was released as Hatchet: The Call by Macmillan Children's Books in the UK on January 8, 1999.

Technorati Tags:
Books for boys and girls, book on cd, Teaching the Story: Fiction writing in Middle School, Gary Paulsen, mining students' lives
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |