Community reviews for NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program

This is a very creative way to inspire students to write. In the classroom, students might feel insecure about their writing, but this source inspires creativity for students who use it which will lead to confidence in writing. Using this source at a young age will prove to be beneficial to a students ability to develop a story in the later years of their schooling.

Writers write! To simply practice writing "enough" (to a pre-set word goal), will create in students a feeling of success that will change their whole relationship with writing as well as assignments. They'll never be "afraid" of a page requirement again - AND - by writing to a count goal instead of for a pre-established rubric of quality, they'll actually produce great work! Giving students practice with writing and giving them "credit" or calling it successful simply because they accomplished this standard, will forever impact their relationship with writing and assignments.

I LOVED all of the resources this sit has to offer. I did not love the fact that the only way I could add students to my online group was to have them register individually with an email. A lot of my 5th/6th graders do not have email addresses. While I will definitely use this website again with my high school students, I will only use the resources from this website with the younger students.

This is a great, very specific teaching tool for a unit that can revolutionize writing in your classroom. Students will learn things by writing a novel in November, about writing, about fiction and about novels specifically, that they can't learn any other way. The hands-on lessons they can learn with this project will revolutionize what they learn about writing--they won't be the same at the end of the month.

Have not used this yet, however it looks like an awesome tool for the classroom.

I think this is an exciting project and teaching tool. It makes the challenge of writing a novel accessible for students and can lead to pride in their success at something which could seem so daunting. What I particularly liked is that all students can be successful since they will set their own word count, and differentiation in instruction can occur when conferencing with students about their current progress and drafts. There are also fun contracts, coupons, and goal setting sheets that put the accountability on the students, as well as certificates to print for participants. I also like that there are several ways to keep families involved. For example, students can get input from family members when filling out questionnaires on their characters, and there is a letter to send home to families at the beginning of the project. Whether or not students complete their novel, the process is valuable to reinforce concepts. I gave the support section a rating of 4 because I anticipate that some of the activities will be difficult for less advanced students, and there is a lot of reading that contains some sophisticated language on some of the sheets.

Young writers challenge themselves to pen a novel during the month of November. Through a virtual classroom, students can keep track of each other's progress, get story ideas, give critiques, and read advice from published authors. Great way to engage all learners and meet them at their writing level, challenging them to reach the next.

Make no mistake, writing a book in a month will require considerable commitment from you and the students. This website allows you and your students to sign up and access a class page and discussion forums with other students who are taking on the same challenge. There are also plenty of teacher resources and some extremely useful workbooks to help the students brainstorm.