Post-It Publishing/ AU

Pow!   In honor of Saturday's Free Comic Book Day, here is Post-It Publishing in an Alternative Universe (AU for you insiders).   Okay, I actually used this Friday in the here and now, but you'll understand the AU in a hot minute.

You've probably seen that e-mail forward that claims to contain horrific samples from high school student essays.   We writers know that some of those sentences were so bad, they just had to be composed by experts.   Here's a link to a cnn.com article that includes some of the awesomely bad selections:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/01/28/bad.student.writing/index.html

If you are too impatient to click the link, enjoy the following sampler:

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes

just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city

and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement,

just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

After the 8th grade state writing assessment, we should be able try our hands at writing some of the worst short prose ever, for fun and competition.   I gave them each a copy of the 25 rotten blurbs and read them aloud.   We then broke all of the rules while writing with different genres in mind.   Romance, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, etc.   You get the idea.

Create a sentence or two that would never be published in a particular genre.   Adding genres to the assignment helps narrow students' ideas and focus their understanding on what a particular audience is expecting from the author.

In short, you have to know how to do it right before you can get it truly, deliciously wrong.   Repetitive language, inappropriate tone and diction for a genre and your audience, awkward comparisons that simply jolt your reader out of the text with a laugh...   Bad, badder, baddest-- that's what I'm talking about.

Yes, your English teacher is asking for your worst writing, but you are not in an AU.   Here's a Post-It.   Let's Battle!

Note: This Battle works best with average to advanced students, particularly those with quirky senses of humor.   You know, the kids that laugh at all of your goofy jokes.

Thanks to foreign language teacher Sandra Phillips for forwarding me an e-mail containing all of those baaaaaaaaaad examples.

Item #3 that does NOT need replacing: It was a sentimental favorite.   I found it at a yard sale.   The seller saw me setting aside all of his Willie Nelson LPs and mentioned that he had a van full of records in his back yard.   I found a sealed copy of a fly LP with this little jewel inside.   It's funny to see kids trying to pop and lock in between classes.   It's always good to know how to pass the flow.   Just don't ask me to battle with my hip hop moves.

Post-It Publishing

Yesterday's post was all about the 2-sentence journals that I tried with my students this year.   Once we got rolling with a few mini-lessons on word choice and imagery, I thought that I should create an opportunity for students to share their work.   Writers will usually sharpen their writing when their audience grows from one teacher to 25 classmates.   I introduced the idea of....The Battle.

Battles usually took place on Mondays.   Students could choose any of their journals from the previous week to use for the competition.   They could make final edits and revisions in preparation for showing their work to their classmates.

I gave students yellow Post-It notes for their final copies.   They put them in a stack on a chair in the front of the room.   My original plan was to "publish" the notes by sticking them to the huge white board at the front of the room, so they could browse through their classmates' gallery of entries.   Post-It notes do not stick to my white board for more than five seconds.      

Plan B: I fired up my document camera, and placed the entries in heats of four.   I tried to group them topically.   If four students wrote about their cats, I put them in a set together.   By popular vote, students chose one of the four to make it to the final round.  

Winners were awarded something ridiculous.   I would find an old kids' meal toy or grope around in my desk for something obscure.   The stranger, the better...as far as the kids are concerned.   A checker that had been long separated from its brothers was one of the most coveted awards.

As time went on, the Battles were intensified.   Some entries did not make the initial cut.   If that week's journals were supposed to include sensory imagery, and it wasn't there, it's fair to all contenders that you do not allow that journal to compete.   I would not advise you to ever make any cuts because of spelling.   If you've been teaching for a few years, you know that some of your best writers sometimes have the worst spelling for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with laziness.

Please also remember that the idea is not to have a writer embarrass his or herself, so using the same color Post-It notes for the class helps with anonymity.   Also,if you know that a child is sensitive about spelling or handwriting issues, it's fair for you to help him/ her by doing the spelling/ writing...not the composing though.   It is a competition.
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