Out of all of the girls, we ended up getting nine completed stories handed in with the word count totalling 39,500 words.
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I am beyond excited to read these stories in their entirety. We had romance, dragons, parallel universes and monsters in forests!
What worked well?
- Every lunchtime throughout November we had a sign on a table in the Learning Commons set aside for the NaNoWriMo girls and they could eat their lunches at the table.
- We set up my mother's old typewriter, which is about 50 years old as a prop and the students loved to type with it. "Where is the delete button", they would ask!
- Every few lunchtimes we had a bag of lollies to share.
- Every few lunchtimes we had quote cards for them to pick up.
- Every few sessions we took a word count log to see how they were progressing.
- We celebrated the half way mark with chocolates.
- We encouraged the students to print out drafts of their work so that we could proof as they go and offer advice.
What didn't work well?
- We tried to bring in other English teachers into help with the proofing, but given that it is a busy time of the year it didn't work too well.
- We always had one or two girls who loved the notion of writing but then produced nothing.
- Not every student wanted to share their writing along the way, so some of the final drafts are a bit rough around the edges.
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They loved the idea of an anthology and come Sunday night at 7pm I had nine stories in my inbox. If I can get them edited and proofed by next week I will put them together into a booklet that the girls can go and get copied and bound if they want to.
