Wells JH Workshop – Two-line Twists
This is my worksheet sheet from the activity that I ran in a small group of around ten seventh and eighth graders. Two-line Twists was an activity I was unfamiliar with prior to this workshop, but I was able to pick it up quickly and answer students questions. Our warm-up game was Rumors where students could improvise “twists” to prepare them for this activity. Once the groups had finished the “twist” part of this worksheet, the original owner received their paper back and wrote poetry that expanded on one of the twists.
Publishing Workshop – Ordering the Anthology
After many rounds of cutting out pieces and deciding which to keep, it is finally time to figure out an order of the chosen pieces for this year’s anthology. As a group, the students in Publishing Workshop discussed and debated why one piece should go here or there. It was great to see how things got moved around and it was exciting when we found a place for a piece in the lineup. The picture below is a potential order for the anthology. We did not want to lose the order we had created, so I offered to write down what we had in case we wanted to try something completely different. Ultimately, the group liked the order we had initially but it is still not solidified.
Second to last day at the York Residency Goals
My main goal as the York Residency wrapped up, was to ensure students were happy with their final drafts, and that they were complete in general. These worksheets helped guide students through this, but more often than not, they needed assistance with carrying out these items. My job was to go in and read their poems to identify if anything should be revised and help them along with that process. Some great works came out of this residency alongside the Cape Elizabeth residency and it was great seeing how each piece evolved over the past twelve weeks. One piece from York and two pieces from Cape will be in this year’s Telling Room anthology.
