Young Writer Chronicles: 500 Sixth Graders Write,...

Young Writer Chronicles: 500 Sixth Graders Write, Revise, and Publish their Novels

If you’re a fan of NaNoWriMo, you already know that we think deadlines are every writer’s secret weapon. Daniel Stone, a sixth-grade language-arts teacher joins us today to tell us how NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helped 500 students at Marvin Ridge Middle School in North Carolina write and revise their novels with a looming deadline:
This school year, my colleagues and I went through the Young Writers Program with our students. Over 500 novels were written, revised, edited, and published by our 6th grade students and teachers! One of the biggest reasons for this success was that the students knew that they were going to get their books published by CreateSpace. It’s one thing to be able to say that you’ve completed a huge writing project, but it’s another to hold in your hand a real novel with your name on it. That became a big motivator for many of our students.
Another reason for our success was the fact that we had over 500 students doing this project together. They knew that there were 500 other people who were having the same fears, going through the same struggles, and feeling the same sense of pride in their work. On top of that, their teachers were also writing a novel. This wasn’t just an assignment we were giving them; we were going on the journey by their side, and sharing our fears, struggles, successes, and failures with them along the way.
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