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Teaching with Wiley's Way/El Camino de Wiley
Syllabus
Please Note: Regular author, illustrator, and mentor visits should supplement
the units and lessons below. Students should also be encouraged to start writing as soon
as they can, even though the "official" drafting stage won't commence until later in the semester.
Additionally, there should be a running discussion of style and language throughout the lessons.
Some teachers may wish to present individual lessons that address such topics as figurative language,
allegory, active verbs, show don't tell, writing lively description, writing with concision, etc.
It is also important that students be allowed time to FREEWRITE and respond to WRITING PROMPTS.
Lastly, please see our MATERIALS LIST (LINKS TO READING LIST AND FIELD TRIPS WILL BE ON THE
MATERIALS LIST PAGE) for the texts we used with our class.
Before we designed a schedule, we talked about some
planning issues. See SYLLABUS
PLANNING for our notes.
SPRING SEMESTER SCHEDULE
Week 1: Defining the Project's Objective's
Lesson One: Writing with a mission: what are the purposes
of this book and how to avoid propaganda pitfalls.
Lesson Two: your FUTURE; College crash course -
Having a plan / How going to college makes a difference, both for
oneself and for one's society
Week 2: How do you write, illustrate, and publish a Children's book?
Lesson three: Who is an author?
OBJECTIVE: To introduce and define concept of "authorship";
to serve as an icebreaker activity for the group
Assignments: Read Oxford English Dictionary
definition of "author"
Read various author profiles (Children's authors like
Maurice Sendak and Jane Yolen, as well as "literary
authors" like Eudora Welty, Maxine Hong Kingston
and James Baldwin)
Lesson three: Who is an author?
Activities: Respond to the question: who is an "author"?
Discuss the term and its connotation (the word "author"
is in the word "authority").
Write your own author profile.
Have students share their profile with the class. Post the profiles
somewhere in the room.
Lesson four: Children's Books: Text and Pictures
OBJECTIVE: to re-familiarize students with the books
of their youth; to explore the interplay between text
and pictures in classic picture books.
Assignments: Read samples of children's literature
(Our first keystone text was Where the Wild Things
Are by Maurice Sendak; later we referred frequently
to the smaller line drawings in Winnie the Pooh)
Activities: Give each student a line of text from
a Children's book and ask them to come up with an
illustration. Then, give each student a picture from
a children's book and ask them to write a line of
text for it.
Week 2 to 3: Critical Reading
Week 4: Elements of Fiction (we used lesson plans
from http://teenwriting.about.com)
Week 5: The elements of fiction in Children's Literature
Lesson Nine: The Book Report
(review a children's book and present report to class)
Lesson Ten: Know your Audience (interview
a reader in our targeted age group and present interview
data to class)
Week 6: Going to College
Lesson Eleven: College Visit
Spend a full day touring "host institution"
Lesson Twelve: Preparing for College
SATs, grades, filling out the application, finding
money for college
Weeks 7-9: Beginning to write / Team building
Lesson Thirteen: Group brainstorming session
Starting a Story
Lesson Fourteen: Team building / Ropes Course
Weeks 10 -12: Making a Story Plan
Additional Resources
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