The National Day on Writing is this Monday
Will your students participate?
Since 2009, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has sponsored the National Day on Writing, a day on which students are encouraged to share their writing with the world.
This year, the NCTE is asking students to write about their communities. The website mentions that writing can take many forms; students can create videos, charts and graphs, newspaper op-eds, poems, tweets, Facebook statuses, and more.
Students can share their writing with the world by using the hashtag #WriteMyCommunity.
Here are some questions your students might want to consider prior to and during writing:
- Who is my audience?
- What's something about my community that is important for people outside the community to know?
- What would make other people want to read about my community?
- What are some of the problems in my community that need to be solved?
- How can we begin to solve these problems?
- What about my community deserves to be celebrated?
- What's unique about my community? What makes it like other communities?
- How is my community making a positive impact on the world?
The hardest part about writing is getting started, and prompting your students with a few questions is a great way to help them put words on the page.
Writers know that understanding rhetoric is essential to the craft. Here are some sample pages from Rhetorical Devices, a book that helps students learn how to use rhetorical devices to great effect in their own writing. In these sample pages, your students will learn what rhetoric is, pitfalls to avoid when using rhetorical devices, and the four aims of rhetoric.
Rhetorical devices can help students make the structures of their pieces more apparent to readers, not to mention they can add some needed flair to otherwise prosaic writing.
Will your students be participating? If so, let us know!
We'd love to see some of the writing your students come up with. If you want to ask us any questions, feel free to write us at prestwick@prestwickhouse.com. Put "National Day on Writing" in the subject line, and we'll be sure to get back to you.