Bookish Christmas wishes from the AES writers

Lots of

sweet words

tasty phrases

delectable books

Lots of 

literary goodies!

Learning to write dialogues in a fun way!

In the last Becoming a Writer meeting for 3rd graders students continued writing dialogues. They learned them in a fun way - through a dialogue game and by creating dialogues to the famous and equally ambiguous painting The Ambassadors.

Dialogue game with students' names

The Ambassadors - a challenging but engaging painting for creating dialogue

Most of the postcards have been sold!

Large sums were shouted out! The Christmas Auction is now over. It seemed like a happy event and one of tremendous success! Also, most of the 3rd grade writers' postcards were sold. We can therefore be proud of our modest contribution to the worthy endeavour. Below, photos of the "Christmas postcard counter":

Postcards by members of Becoming a Writer club

Postcards by members of Becoming a Writer club

Postcards by members of Becoming a Writer club

A limited collection of Christmas postcards on sale tomorrow at the Auction!

Younger members of Becoming a Writer club are impatiently looking forward to tomorrow! For, it's tomorrow that they will show and sell their Christmas postcards: a limited collection of twelve (only 12!) cards holding famous Nativity scenes. So, to see and purchase you must simply drop by the AES Christmas Auction and look for Becoming a Writer members' Christmas postcards! 

First come, first served!

Putting pen to paper!

This blog has been silent for quite some time... However, to assure writing is ceaselessly thriving at the AES, it's crucial to say it's not because students lost their interest or that the club stopped growing. To a great extent it's due to the simple truth that writing is after all a quiet and solitary pursuit. Writers have a tendency to draw back once in a while; to retreat in order to gather thoughts. 

Regardless, you may still wonder, what stage are they at? Thus, in Becoming a Writer for 5th and 6th grades students are beginning their stories after having already planned them. This is when really not much work can be exhibited apart from a couple of unpolished literary bits and pieces. It's these pieces, however, that will make up the final stories.

However, younger members of Becoming a Writer club are impatiently looking forward to tomorrow! For, it's tomorrow they will show and try to sell their Christmas postcards: a limited collection of twelve cards holding famous Nativity scenes.

Writers design Christmas Cards. A limited collection will be on sale during the AES Christmas Auction!

In preparation for the upcoming AES Christmas Auction, younger members of the Becoming a Writer club are designing Christmas Cards. They hope to sell their limited collection and look forward to see how their modest literary contribution makes a difference. The cards will be composed of images - Nativity scenes, and, of course, words! Composed of what kind of words? Well, you can surely expect top-shelf words, like: shepherd, Nativity, halo, incense, myrrh and more... The cards will be signed by their authors! 

One of the postcards will be based on Chagall's Nativity

A painstaking moment for all fiction writers - coming up with a plot!

5th and 6th grade writers are now in the moment of moving on from carrying out specific writing exercises to writing their actual short stories. In fact, they are now in the most crucial and creative stage of coming up with story plots. This task, however, is not simple. It's often discouraging and not at all spectacular!

They are creating plots that are to grab their readers' attention, bringing to life real and interesting characters, coming up with suspenses and satisfactory or unexpected endings. They are choosing, often subconsciously, their modes of expression - some choose realism, some fantasy, others horror...

Mapping out story plots...
can be a struggle!

Soon, their current brainstorming will take on a shape of actual literary forms - short stories that, at the end of this school year, will be published in form of an anthology. Just as it happened last year.

3rd grade writers respond to another famous painting

C. D. Friedrich Wandarer above the sea of fog

During our last Becoming a Writer workshop, 3rd grade students put themselves in the shoes of the wandarer from Friedrich's painting. This is what they saw and felt:

"It looks Russian because the colors are cold."

"The sky reminds my of vapour from behind a plane."

"It is so cold that it makes my mind cold."

"The rocks in the water look like sharks in the sea."

Transforming a painting onto words

One of the most famous paintings - Monet's Sunrise has been transformed by 3rd and 4th grade AES students into words. The young writers are on the right track to understand that painting, music or writing are just different ways for expressing something. They begin seeing that words are like a palatte with drops of paint - the more colors a painter has, the more interesting pictures he can create. And, parallel to that, the more words a writer knows, the greater his literary images. 

Monet's Sunrise in painting

Monet's Sunrise in words

A writer's imagination

A writer's imagination has to go beyond what most people see. It has to exceed the mundane reality taken for granted. A writer needs to perceive more than just a 'fat man,' 'a cone,' 'a beautiful woman,' 'a seashell,' 'a leaf'... Instead, a writer should ask him or herself: What does a leaf remind me of? What can I compare it to in order to describe it best to my readers?

Therefore, in the AES Becoming a Writer club students practice sharpening their sensual perception of objects, people, surroundings… This is what they have recently noticed: 

What do these objects remind you of?

Students looked at the above objects carefully through a magnifying glass. A dry leaf became a saucepan and a boat, a seashell - a band shell and a fingernail, a cone - a fat Christmas tree and a flower. This is what writers see!

Vivian Maier's photograph (detail)

The man, however, is not simply an obese man, but "an obese man who looked at me as if he wasn't prepared to be photographed" - isn't that a much more interesting way of showing him to readers? 

Johannes Vermeer's painting (detail)

And this lady became "a girl whose lit face looks like the lighter part of a rape peach."