Mr W’s Blogging Great Thing

The National Write A Novel In A Month is back, and this year there’s a dedicated Young Writer’s Programme with lots of activities designed to help participants write that novel in a month!

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program is a fantastic resource bank for the English teacher. Designed to support the National Write A Novel In A Month project which challenges everyone to try and write a novel during the month of November, it is packed with resources to help encourage pupils to stretch their own writing, as well as having lots of ‘fun’ activities and suggestions (One of my favourite ideas is the ‘Dare Machine’ where you are challenged to include some, quite frankly, ridiculous suggestions into your novel).

There are also some fantastic NON-LAME workbooks for you to download… The High School workbook runs to 74 pages and has inspiring ideas on (almost) every page… and it is free! I particularly liked the section on creating well developed characters (Pages 8-12), but every section does have something to offer.

Being realistic, you are unlikely to have many pupils in your school writing a novel in a month, but be prepared to be surprised. I mentioned the competition to one of my classes last year and as a result found out that one of the class is currently writing her fourth novel! I’ve read the first one and it’s actually quite promising, so who knows what talent you’ve got hidden away in your classroom?

Tell them about the competition and see what you can uncover or unleash!