Writing across the States

This is an assignment for an upper-class English course. It would take a lot of connections and a lot of collaboration across great distances to be able to do this, and I would have to establish those before I could even begin to plan something like this. So it’s mostly brainstorming, but here goes…

I would love to do a creative writing assignment that follows a boy and girl on an adventure around the country (or world). It would start in my classroom where my kids would be split up into groups of around 6 and asked to write a three-page story about a character adventuring throughout the state of Washington. There would be parameters to this assignment, with certain things that needed to be included (theme, setting, plot, etc.) Each group would create this story in a Google Doc and we would then read them to each other, and through a method of fathoming, we would incorporate the main ideas of each story to eventually create one five-page story about a Washington adventure. Beyond the enjoyment of writing stories, we would really focus on quality of writing, and what makes a story good, and how to build a character, etc.

Now what my students wouldn’t know is that in many other states across the country (however many I could find connections with), there are other upper-class English classes that are doing the same thing and creating a story about a boy and girl going on an adventure in their state – each of the classes would go through the same process as what mine did so we would end up with a five-page story about these two characters in each state. Then all of the kids would learn about all the other classrooms across the country who are doing the same thing, and we would Skype with each other and come up with clever ways to connect the story from one state to another (maybe they go on a boat, or a plane, or they walk, etc.). We would take out parts that didn’t fit, add parts in, and create cohesiveness so that eventually we could have an amazing short-story about an adventure two young kids went on throughout America (or the world) written by high school students all across the country.

Depending on the success of this, I would then want each state to create a short video of the adventure the characters go on in their state (this could be acting, cartoon drawings, going to the actual sights referenced in their story, etc.) and we would combine all the clips to make a cohesive “movie” to follow along with the story.

There are a lot of details that would have to be worked out, like: what these Skype sessions would look like so they are structured and everyone is involved, I would love to come up with one running theme that has to be throughout the story, how to do this with multiple class periods, etc.

Other options could be each kid creating their own story, then Skyping with one other kid from each classroom in each other state, and combining their stories so we would end up with 30 plus stories – this might ensure that all kids are involved better.

I also would love to make this a global thing where kids around the world were adding to this story – that one is a lot more daunting because of language barriers among other things, but I would love to try it.

I think that this lesson is at the redefining level because it is literally redefining how these students are experiencing and experimenting with creative writing. 6 classrooms from 6 different states will be working on and creating one story together on a Google Doc in real time while talking to each other on Skype – that is definitely a new way of learning and writing! This would allow kids to learn about different states, cultures, traditions, landscapes, and climates from other kids who are experts on those things because it is where they live. And they aren’t learning about these things through writing letters to each other – they are hearing the kids talk about it, seeing their faces, maybe even seeing some of the landscape outside, in real time. Also, the idea of writing a story across the country is something that couldn’t be done without the technology. Kids could write a portion of a story and mail it to another class who could add on to it and pass it along, but there would be no collaboration or communication of ideas, and that is the really amazing thing about this assignment.

I think this is something that the kids would love and would really teach them about the power of technology, the power of collaboration, and the power of writing.