Noveling Assignment Series

Assignment #1 In your book groups, compile a list of what makes a book have value for you. Think about books that have made you think or books you found boring, and consider the importance of topics, readability, plotline or characters. Once you have a list, individually pick the one you think is most important. You will journal for fifteen minutes about this item as it relates to good books. A few questions to think about while you write:* What makes a book good or bad? Challenge level, important themes, gripping writing, a readers needs or desires? How does this relate to your life? What about you and your experiences affect your judgments about a book? How does your selected trait influence whether or not a book is good? Could a book be good without your trait? If so, how? Why do people ban books? How does this reflect our value of specific characteristics over others? To what extent to banned books lack value?

*It is not my expectation that you answer all of these questions. These questions are merely a starting place to think of literature as part of a bigger picture. Rationale: I want my students to begin the noveling unit by thinking critically about literature and what we value in it. The students will soon begin reading books in literature circles where they can apply their ideas about good books to a specific novel, and this assignment is both a formative assessment and a starting point to engage their background ideas and schemas surrounding valuable literature. The questions I ask are open ended and aimed specifically at a middle school audience; they are there to guide them towards A) what influences their personal values in a book and B) the cultural values we place on literature. They are invited, based on their comfort level and interests, to relate this to their personal experience, societal expectations, or defining good or valuable literature.

Assignment #2 Pick an excerpt from your literary circle novel that grabs your attention. This excerpt might be one that challenges you, makes you think, prompts an emotional response or has gripping and exciting action, but it must be something that strikes you in some way. If you cannot find an excerpt that particularly speaks to you, select one that grabs your attention because it confuses you or makes you question a belief of yours. Print and paste the excerpt in your journal and write two pages about what you think the passage shows about the book and whether the passage affected you positively or negatively. Use your original

journal about valuable books as a starting point to analyze. While responding, refer back and quote specific parts of the text in order to help prove your point. A couple questions that you might consider: Why did you select this passage? What does this say about what you find valuable in literature? What specific quotes from the text influenced your decision to pick this piece, and why? Which parts of this piece do you disagree with or make you uncomfortable/challenge your perspective? Consider why the author might have written it that way. Using your passage as a basis, what do you think your novel is trying to say? What predictions can you make about the story based on the excerpt?

Rationale: At this point, students are halfway through reading realistic fiction novels and have been discussing the novels in their literary groups of 3-6 students. This assignment assists them in practicing text-based arguments, and it is also open for students to write against the prompt if they dont believe the novel theyre reading is valuable. Because the students are in the process of reading a novel, this assignment is meant to help them reflect on the text and what it means to the novel or to literature as a whole. Ideally, this close reading provides a concrete example for students to grapple with as they figure out what value means to them in a literary sense. The bolded words and bullet points make the assignment prompt more readable and easy to follow for middle school students.

Assignment #3 After finishing your literary circle novel, return to your initial journal assignment about what makes certain books valuable. Using this entry as a starting point, write an essay about how your literary circle novel fits (or doesnt fit) into your concept of a good novel. In your well-developed essay*, include both examples from the text and your thoughts on what elements of a book make it have value. Here are questions to get you started: How did this novel stack up against your expectations for a valuable book? How have your qualifications for a good book changed since you wrote the initial journal entry? To what extent is your idea of value in this novel based on your personal experiences? That is, how does your background and personal connections change what you find valuable? What audience might find this novel to have value? Why? What audience might think this novel is bad or worthless, and why?

*There is no length or format requirement for this essay, but you must adequately explore the ideas of literary value in your novel. It is my expectation that you write this essay for depth and quality, not quantity. That having been said, keep in mind that this will be difficult to do effectively in a paragraph or two, and the most effective essays are still organized, have a thesis/main point, and use a combination of details and analysis. Rationale: I want my students to build upon prior work theyve done concerning value in literature, and I also want them to be aware of how their schemas have shifted during this reading unit. Now that theyve had practice at close text readings in assignment 2, they can apply these skills to working with the larger novel. This is also going to be a building block for the next part of the unit, where students begin to

map out their own novels and decide what they think is important to include to make their own novels valuable. The directions I give for essay length and format come from my belief that it is more important for my students to authentically learn what makes an essay effective rather than writing to fit the mold I give them. In class I will offer more support about how to organize a paper and write a thesis, but this assignment leaves it open for students to decide how best to make their paper function. In essence, Im asking them to invent the university, but in the way that suits them best.

Assignment #4 Were beginning to brainstorm our own novels for National Novel Writing Month, and well use our knowledge of valuable literature to get there. For this three-part assignment, you will need to A) answer the guiding questions about your main character (the protagonist), B) draw a birds eye view of one part of the setting (including info about the time period and geographic location), and C) a description of the initial conflict or inciting incident (what conflict/event gets the ball rolling). Keep in mind that the more your story excites you, the more you will enjoy writing about it. Here are some things to think about: What about your characterappearance, actions, relationships, background-- make this character intrigue you? How will these elements help the reader visualize and relate to the character? What are the characteristics of the setting? What makes it surprising or interesting? What is the conflict? How is it challenging to resolve? (Think ahead: plan for more related or surprising conflicts later in the story)

Rationale: This novel brainstorming is intended to be open ended enough to challenge my students to be creative, but also help scaffold them into successful story writing. One of my goals is to ensure that they start out with characters, a setting and a plotline that will be interesting to them and also create further avenues for writing. This assignment also helps to review elements of story building, and will create concrete ideas (pictures of setting, line representation of plot) that they can base their stories off of. Currently one of my goals is to get them excited for writing and connect their imaginative writing ideas with some basic story foundations.

Assignment #5 For the first day of writing, focus initially on a beginning of your novel. Taking a look at your plot rollercoaster and note that there are 3 places people tend to start stories, all three listed below. No matter where the book begins, its important that the first few sentences tell us there is something interesting to follow so your readers want to keep going. Think about the beginning of your literary novel and how the beginning influenced the rest of the book. Then, open up your journals and write a couple possible beginnings for your story. If youre not sure where to start, here are prompts for each of the three types of beginnings: 1) Story starts at the set-up, before anything happens

-What is your protagonist doing before the inciting incident? -Starting in the middle of a normal day, what are they doing? Who are they with? 2) Story starts at the inciting incident, where we get thrown into the action right away. -What are the sounds, sights, smells of what is happening during the incident? -How is your character feeling during the incident? Scared? Excited? Confused? 3) Story opens at climax, falling action or resolution (and then jumps back to the set-up.) -Your character is being chased/attacked/yelled at- describe what is happening around them. -What is your character thinking or feeling as they finally figure out whats going on? Once youve written at least two alternative openings for your novel, read them through. Which make you want to read on? Pick your favorite and start writing your novel- your goal isnt to write a perfect story, but a compelling one with some of the values weve been learning about. Good luck! Rationale: Its important that the students have a basis to begin their novel on, particularly since the opening of their novels can have a big impact on how the story unfolds. My implicit lesson here is that structure matters, and I want them to process that a particular story can have many ways of formingthey are, again, trying to create one with the most value it can possibly have. This assignment is meant to be more of a stepping stone towards their eventual novel.

Assignment #6 Using your novel maps and your opening scene, start writing the story of your character as they travel on the adventure youve created for them. The goal for this month isnt to write an error-free perfect masterpiece; the goal is for you to keep writing, experimenting and creating a story. This means for November, turn off your inner editor. You are not all alone in this- we will be meeting up in small groups once a week to work through some of our novel challenges, and everyone will have a couple opportunities to meet up with me individually to talk about how the novels going. While you write, here are a couple guidelines: Show, dont tell! Descriptions keep your reader interested (and boost your word count). Example (you decide which one makes you want to read on): -Valek was angry. (Telling) -Valek took a gray rock off his desk and hurled it toward me. Stunned, I froze as the stone whizzed past and exploded on the wall behind me. (Showing) Give your protagonist a hard time! The more challenging the conflict is to solve, the more engaged your reader will be. Think about experiences, emotions, people, or places that are familiar to you. Dont feel like you have to copy real life, but the more familiar something is to you, the more your reader will connect to it.

Keep typing until you finally achieve your word count goal! Dont worry so much about spelling, paragraphs or that one sentence that still doesnt sound right- you will have time to go back and edit in December.

Rationale: This assignment will span the entire month (because thats how long the National Novel Writing Month lasts), but there will also be interloping assignments, lessons and support. The students will also have already had a lesson about what exactly NaNoWriMo is, which is why the assignment is not particularly descriptive about the constraints. Basically, students set their own word count goal for the month, and there are to write a fictitious novel until they meet that word count. This assignment is the beginning of their noveling process.

Assignment #7 Bring in a section of your text to share with your literary group. Each group member will explain the premise of their novel and then read their excerpt aloud. The group members listening will give one glow and one grow for the writer (one thing they think is really interesting about the novel, and one thing they think could be added to make the novel even more compelling). Because this is going to impact the outcome of each others novels, take this assignment seriously. My expectation is that we build each other up to write the very best novels we can. Here are a couple questions to ask your group after youve read your piece aloud: Where do you predict my story going from here? Which characters/situations do you connect to? Which ones are hard to understand? If you could add a plot twist right after this excerpt, what would it be? How helpful are the descriptions and dialogue?

Once everyone in the group has had a chance to read and get responses about their novel-in-progress, write a few sentences in your journal about what advice you are going to apply to your novel. Rationale: While I dont want my students editing their work, per se, I do want them to be reflective in their writing process, and it is my hope that they can use their peers feedback as a basis for later on in the story. This assignment will take place about a week into writing, and will be repeated (with some variations) each week so that they are getting a break from writing and hopefully giving and receiving some helpful feedback. This assignment is intended to urge readers to give each other valuable feedback and think critically about their own work as well as others. Assignment #8 Today in the process of writing your novel, you have a challenge on your hands. One of the things that make good writers is that they step outside their comfort zone, and during class today, you are going to do the same. Your challenge? Write a scene that makes you uncomfortable. You have thirty minutes of silent writing to write this scene into your novel. If youre stuck, here are some prompts to give some ideas: What is something that scares you?

Have your character confront a dilemma that you have deeply-held beliefs about. Remember a situation or event that challenged you or made you feel incredibly uncomfortablehave your protagonist experience something similar.

Rationale: As part of the writing experience, I want my students to challenge themselves to write beyond their comfort level. They will have the opportunity to incorporate several dares into their novels (i.e. include a mysterious letter), but this one challenges them to write something that forces them to think a little harder and reconsider how they write.

Assignment #9 Now that weve completed our final days of writing, were going to take a three-step approach to editing and making sure our stories are ready for peer review. 1. Re-read your novel and fix spelling, grammar, and wording issues. This is the time to correct the mistakes you were too busy for before. Use spell-check, but dont rely on it! 2. Read the ending of your novel. Does the beginning and middle of the story support the ending? Are there inconsistencies in plot, character behavior/beliefs, the world of your novel? Go back and patch these up. 3. Now is the time to get a little more creative. Going back through your novel, comb through and add devices such as foreshadowing, dialogue, explanations, whatever is missing. While you do this, dont be afraid to cut down pieces that you dont think serve your story well- clichs, poor descriptions (that were added just for word count), and lines that dont feel authentic all might be part of this. Once youve completed these over the weekend, bring in your improved novel on Monday for peer review. The better youve made your novel, the easier it will be for your peers to give great feedback and advice. Rationale: As the final piece to this assignment series, its important that students are also able to reflect on their work and find ways to pull it together in a more meaningful way. This is also a mini-lesson on editing and the skills they will need to improve other writing- theyve spent a month quieting their inner editor, and they will need scaffolding to bring it back in.