Young California Writers Take the Stage

Publication: Marin Independent Journal
Date: July 8, 2010

Summary: Students at the Bay Area Writing Project's Young Writers Camp took their words from the paper to the stage, reading before an audience of their peers.

Excerpt from Article

Students learned how to find inspiration in nature, in ordinary objects and even in technology. Campers searched for metaphors to describe the sounds they created using the computer program GarageBand. They also watched part of a movie without sound and talked about how they could transform the mood of the film with just their words.

"There's nothing wrong with just sitting with a journal and a pen outside," said Sara Niesen, a fourth-grade teacher at Bacich School. "But there are so many other ways to write, and so many things that can spur writing."

Niesen and her fellow instructors - Bacich fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Cook Sterling and Heidi Avelina-Smith, a middle school Spanish immersion teacher in San Francisco - spent the first week of camp talking with students about sensory experiences. During the second week, they focused on narrative writing and dialogue, encouraging the students to develop conversations between inanimate objects.

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Read Kentfield writers' camp lets young authors take the stage in the Marin Independent Journal.