Friday, April 27, 2012

I'm Thinking of Teaching a Creative Writing Class...


Indeed. Earlier today, I was searching the Internet for a curriculum to use.
The one I found that looked most interesting and promising for my tastes was the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum, which my mom had actually found last year.
See, I don't want to teach some random English class; I want to teach a creative writing class to a handful of kids I know are going to be interested and consistent with the assignments I give them--not kids who will skip every other assignment with some crazy excuse, like that they had gone on a vacation. I mean, for heaven's sake, if you wanted to sign up for this class, why bother going on a vacation smack in the middle of it? Sheesh.
Also, I'd rather teach novel writing instead of short story writing, or report writing, or whatever.

So, besides the OYAN curriculum, I haven't been able to find anything else I like. There's the Excellence in Writing curriculums. However, as I suspected, they focus on mostly short stories and reports--and they tend to focus more on outlining than the actual character development and plot development. The upside though is that the EIW curriculum is cheaper.

See, the OYAN curriculum costs about $200.00 for the whole set (DVDs, workbook, teacher's guide...). Most of the EIW workbooks and teacher guides come at around $30.00 for each.
Of course, OYAN looks like it will be more informational, as well as more enjoyable.
So...I don't know. I could create my own curriculum; I know enough from reading 'How-To-Write' books from the library. All I need to do is look at the OYAN curriculum, see which kinds of chapters they have (Character Development; Editing; whatever) and write up an assignment and chapter about it using the knowledge I have. It might be pretty hard, though, and I have a lot of writing on my plate already.

Do any of you have any ideas?


6 comments:

  1. I actually use IEW and I like it. It is focused more around short stories and reports. Which I think is one reason why my sister and I have drawn away from it. OYAN is actually something I've looked into, (and haven't gotten yet) and would love to try. Also, after you do the first year you are able to a Fantasy version of the Adventure one! Which I would /love/ to do! Creating your own writing curriculum would, yes be hard, but I think, very worth while. I think I'm going to brainstorm on this for a bit~
    -Olive

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  2. Hey-o, Olive! And yeah, EIW does concentrate more on reports and short stories, which is kind of the reason I'd rather not do it; I want to teach a novel writing course.

    Thanks for commenting! ^.^

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  3. But yeah, I've done IEW and liked it too. XD

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  4. Well, if you want to teach a novel writing course, which would be very cool, you would have to write a curriculum anyways. Yeah?

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  5. Well, not necessarily. A lot of people I know have taught classes with curriculum created by others.

    I do think I'll create my own curriculum though. It'll be fun! XD

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  6. ...you are right. We use curriculums created by other people for our school work and such things. I think it would be cool to create my/your own as well though!

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