Creative Writing Elective

Creative Writing is a course for students who enjoy stretching their minds in new directions. Students will experiment with a variety of genres including: fairy tales, personal narratives, short stories, journal entries and poetry. The first part of the course focuses on developing technique and style through writing exercises and journal activities. Students will be expected to share some of thier work with the class.

During the second half of the course, students will have the freedom to work on their own writing in a relaxed work environment. Students will produce an individual portfolio on their work that they will be very proud of. It is my hope that we will find a way to publish student's best work so that others might enjoy their creations.

It is expected that all students will use the computer to keep all of their work organized and allow for multiple drafts of their work. Purchasing a  4gb jump drive would be helpful for students to bring their work home to work on and bring it back to class the next day.


Marking Criteria: Student assignments will be graded on the following: develpoment of content and style, ability to meet the individual criteria set out in each assignment, vocabulary, develpoment of a writer's voice, and evidence of editing of their work. Each assignment will be weighted for its complexity. Most of the assignments will be marked out of 10.

So go forth young writers and in the words of Wordsworth..."Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

Goodbye to my fantastic writers

All work including porfolio is due Friday in class. A report will be handed out to students through their TA teachers next week.
Congratulations writers you have exceeded my expectations this term. I hope to push for a grade 10 writing class next year, and I look forward to seeing many of you in the class. Keep writing down those experiences, until next time...keep the ideas flowing onto the page.

The end of term 1 is within sight

There are only 5 classes (2 weeks) left until the end of term. OUR LAST CLASS IS ON FRIDAY NOV. 4TH. Keeping this in mind, I am not assigning any more work.The only thing students must complete is the envelope poem and 4 pieces of portfolio work. Students need to get busy and get some homework done, since there is very little time left to complete the work.

Week Ending Oct 7, 2011

Students should have the following assignments handed in for marking:

• self as character (10)
• earthquake poem (10)
• observation assignment (15)
• brainstorm 5 experiences (5)

The following is a list of which has been introduced and students should currently be working on

• Personal Experience Story (due Tues in class) (20)
• Setting: In this assignment students are to focus on the elements of setting ( time, place, description)  using the senses and the concept of show not tell. Students should begin a fictional story that might describe a favourite place, or a place they know well. (10)
• Dialogue: In this assignment, students should focus on one of two things when writing dialogue. It should function to move plot or enhance character. (10)
• Conflict: In this assignment, students should introduce a problem and try to resolve it within the story. Remember conflict can take many forms: Internal conflict: person vs. self, person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. machine/technology. (10)

Creative Writing: Week of Sept 30

We are now a month into school and all I can say about my current writing class is ...I am very impressed. Students in the 9 writing class are keen, creative and fast at writing. So far we have completed the following assignments.

Earthquake Poem: Students responded to our own earthquake and also watched some video of eathquakes. From this, they created their own earthquake poems. We discussed some basic poetic elements such as simile, metaphor, personification and imagery. We also discussed poetic form and the concept of writing in present tense using "bits of ideas" as opposed to full prose like sentences. There were no parameters put on this assignment with regard to form. The only requirement iwas to create a sense of feeling and emotion aorund the concept/idea of earthquake. Marks 10

An introduction of self as a character: In this assignment, students were to describe themselves as though the are a character in a story. The focus of this piece is to reveal the character through show not tell.
Marks 10

Observation assignment: Students are to spend some time observing an individual in their natural environment. They should write down some point form notes about what the individual looks like, acts like, how the individual responds to situations and other people (act and react), how they speak, mannerisms or quirks. After taking notes, students should weave this person/character into a situation and reveal them as a character in a story. Again the focus is on show not tell.
Marks 10

Example of show not tell: TELL: She has blond hair and blue eyes and is the prettiest girl in school.
SHOW: As I waited at the bus stop, a lanky blond with shoulder length blond hair dropped her heavy backpack on the ground, then brushed a strand of hair from her blue eyes.

Personal Experience Brainstorm: We spent some time sharing stories that have created an impact on us. Students were to think about stories that might fit into the following categories: Adventurous, funny, scary either physically or emotionally, embarassing, proud, and  risky. Stories are point formand are to be used to generate ideas. Marks 5

Personal Experience Story: We have spent time in class reading personal experience stories and talking about developing a style. If we start with our own stories we can branch out and write fictional pieces which have a sense of reality. Students are to write a full story focusing on a personal experience. The story should focus on the elements of story such as: setting, character development, plot, conflict, and resolution of conflict.
Marks 20

Welcome to Creative Writing 9

In the past this course was a 9/10 course, it has now been changed to a one term grade 9 class. The course is condensed which means students will have to work hard to get through a number of writing assignments. It also means we may not be able to get through  as much material. This class provides a fantastic opportunity for individuals to develop their creative skills. NO TESTS, JUST LOTS OF WRITING! Stay posted for the course outline and expectations.

Term 4 begins as does Poetry

This term has begun with students learning the toolkit of poetic terms.
Link to Poetic Terms

We then began with an 8 line poem that had a simile and an example of personification in it. The second poem was an issue poem which was to deal with a big world issue like: poverty, politics, war, suicide etc. Our third poem assignment, and probably the hardest,was to write a metaphorical poem. The idea was to choose a theme and focus the entire poem around the concept. Example poem could be on death, greed, love etc. Next came the envelope poems where students were given paper and asked to write 10 words on the paper. The idea with this type of poem is to try to create a poem from the random words one is given.

Rules for Envelope poems

• You do not have to use all 10 words only the ones that work, but try to use at least 6 of the words
• Derrivatives of the words are allowed  ex. travel travelled travels
• Don't compromise meaning for rhyme or to fit the words in, meaning always comes first
• Try to find creative ways to use the words ex.  peacock might be the word and an example of how it might be used is "peacock coloured imagination"

Students are to complete two envelope poems and two choice poems. The choice poems can be on any theme and in any style.