Day #508 Writers Boot Camp

This week I’ve been going to Woodward Mill Elementary School to speak to the 5^th-grade classes. They have a “Writer’s Boot Camp” each year, and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to each of the classes last year. This year, I’m doing to same thing again.

We’re talking about verbs, and the importance of using effective ones when they revise their compositions.

One of the exercises I use allows them to fill in the blanks with either nickel words or dollar words.

1. The lion __________ across the grassland.
2. I _____________ my grandfather’s paintings.
3. My grandmother love to _____________.

And so on. You could use nickel verbs: 

1. walked
2. like
3. smile 

But think how much more interesting, exciting, compelling these sentences would be with dollar verbs such as:

1. stalked
2. abandoned
3. sky-dive 

We had quite a discussion about the story that’s implied when we say I abandoned my grandfather’s paintings. Don’t you want to know why?

Let’s see...another sentence could be 

1. Honey bees _____ (fly/buzz/sting/pollinate…)

BEEattitude for Day #508:

       Blessed are those who stretch their minds, for they shall find more room in their brains.

Day #506 WMES Walls

For more than a year I've been watching the walls of the library in Woodward Mill Elementary School take shape as professional muralist Kristie Chamlee works her magic on them.

She started by simply painting the top blue. Since the walls are 14 feet tall, it was a bit of a challenge.

Then she progressed through various stages, and I watched them all develop. 

You can see she's added clouds and land here...

And then trees and a barn.

She had great fun drawing a red birdhouse around the fire alarm you can see in the picture to the right, changing it from this:

 to this:

If you'd like to see the evolution in more complete form, this link is to her blog post about it. Of course, that was all last year. This year, she's painting the remaining walls of that huge room, and it's spectacular. Just yesterday I dropped in and took this picture of the waterfall over in the back corner.


And then there's the picture of the Woodward Mill water wheel in the reading alcove.

One question: how do you fill up bean bag chairs that have gone flat?

BEEattitude for Day #506:

       Blessed are those who make the world a more beautiful place, for their names shall be sung in thanks.  

Day #135 Writers Boot Camp

What fun! I spent time yesterday speaking the fifth-grade students at Woodward Mill Elementary School as part of their Writer’s Boot Camp program. The topic was “Draw Your Reader into Your Story: Pick the Right Verb.”

We talked about how changing the verbs can change the whole intent of the story. For instance, we started one story this way:

o   Mom pulled to a stop beside the road.

Then we wrote the same story, changing nothing but the verbs, and it started like this:

o   Mom screeched to a stop beside the road.

Two different verbs. Two different scenarios. See?

At the board, I wrote, “The lion __________ across the grassland.”

We quickly discarded tired words like ran or walked. Instead, they supplied fifteen or twenty vivid verbs, including:

Ø  limped

Ø  staggered

Ø  stalked

Ø  bounded

Ø  crept

Ø  roared

In “I _________ the picture from my grandfather,” they suggested verbs such as:

v  adored

v  burned

v  destroyed

v  inherited

v  detested

v  evaluated

Eventually I’d like to get an observation hive so I can haul it to the school and introduce them to the joys of raising bees—just as much fun and just as important as the joys of writing effectively.

BEEattitude for Day # 135:

       Blessed are the teachers, for they shall be illuminated by the light of knowledge.

Something Fran is grateful for right now:

       The students who jumped in joyfully with answers    

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