Requires commitment, offers fantastic resources

How I Use It

I have used the teacher's resources from YWP with my after-school Authors Club as well as my regular classroom. The first year I tried it, none of the students felt they had finished their stories in a month (which was fine, since our program ran all year). The next year we used the site as a supplementary resource but extended the first-draft-writing period from October through December, which was more doable. For an English/Language Arts teacher who wants to use this in a classroom and complete it in November, my suggestion is that you would likely need to have the kids working on this almost exclusively for that month.

The workbooks, by the way, are simply amazing. Not only do they help students understand how to effectively use dialogue, create character, build tension, etc., but they help readers understand how authors do these things in the texts they read. If the Common Core has you focusing more on author's intents and choices, explore the writing workbooks for ways to teach this from a writer's perspective and then have the kids look fore these techniques in what they read.