Newark Day Nine and Ten - All done!

Yesterday was the last day of the Newark Write on Sports camp.

Students' work was published in a magazine format.

Sample stories include:

Cheerleaders: Made to Fly, Jump, Kick, and Stunt
Is NASCAR a Sport?
600: Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame?
The Life of a Professional Football Player
Is Michael Jordan Really the Greatest Player to Ever Live?
Chris Broussard Speaks On Education
Strength, Flexibility, and Dedication = Great Gymnast
So You Think You Can Play Soccer?

Students also finished up their video projects. Some hosted their own shows about topics they like.

In this case, skateboarding.

Here specific moves are recreated with a mini-skateboard setup. 







Students also co-hosted shows

played themselves

or asked staff (and other students) to play roles.

This kind of role-playing takes place because the students want to create videos that look as much as possible as what would be shown on television.

Some of the camera work was shaky, some of the editing was a bit rough, but students generally had a sense of how they wanted to shape their stories. They had introductions, multiple perspectives, and conclusions. You can tell that their sense of structure was ahead of their technical ability to pull it off, which is fine. The staff felt that with just a little more time the videos would have been stronger. This is something to keep in mind for next year. We packed a lot of work into two weeks - drafts of multiple spot stories, one final draft of a spot story, a feature story, and a video.

Time to catch our breath and reflect on the summer.

Newark Day Eight - Feature and Video

With the spot story out of the way, today was spent working on the print feature and video project.

The morning started with another jump rope challenge.

With the jump rope going, the students were asked to see how many they could get jumping at the same time.

They made it to four. I think the teachers only made it to two.

Students spent about an hour working on their print feature, trying to get all the background research done so that they could move into writing their first draft. They then worked on their video for the rest of the morning.

The lunchtime physical activity was a game called "Peek-a-who."

Students line up in teams on either side of a cloth

and as the cloth is dropped, whoever says the name of the student on the other side wins the point.

The game was a real hit with the students.

The afternoon was spent with more work on the feature. The plan is to finish them tomorrow, since we have to print them in form of a magazine.  The students did a great job today and they know they are in the stretch run. Only two more days.

Newark Day Seven - Working Away

No guests - just students and teachers getting down to work.  The students did a great job of staying focused today. They finished their spot stories, with continuing support from teachers.

After completing the spot stories, they got to work on their feature stories.

Here a student is reading up on volleyball.

This student is using a graphic organizer for her feature story. It provides an outline of the issues the story will focus on (and what questions they will answer), a headline, a lead, options for how to structure the piece, and a conclusion.

Students also worked on their video projects.

The competitive cooking video is taking shape.

Physical activity today included a group jump rope activity. Students had to dash under without getting hit by the rope. Fun was had by all.

Newark Day Six - Revising for Language (Among other work)

The second Monday is always hard. Students are coming back after the weekend, and a summer weekend at that. For a few years now, we have made sure to start the day with a physical activity to get them going. Today we decided to play Shark Attack.

For those of you who don't know this game, everybody starts off on an island (made of a hula hoop). There is one shark in the middle. When they yell "Shark Attack" everybody has to move to a different island, and anybody who is tagged by the shark also becomes a shark. Once everybody who isn't a shark is re-established on an island any free islands are removed, and the next "shark attack" happens with all the new sharks joining the first shark.

SHARK ATTACK!

After we got the students' blood going, we started working with them around revising for language. They read the day's paper, and wrote down words they liked. Once they had a working list, they shared them with other students in a "give one - get one" activity. One reason for this activity was to get students thinking about replacing over-used words.

I like the word 'bamboozled" so I'm glad it made the general list. 'Furious' is also a good replacement for 'mad.'

Students were then given some bland sentences and asked to punch them up a bit.

The teachers encouraged the students to make their writing come alive.

Students then turned to their own spot stories and worked on revising them for language. They had worked on organization on Friday, and they will do copy editing tomorrow.

In the afternoon, students continued working on their video project and their feature stories. Staff have talked to students about how to keep track of your work so that you can properly cite it and how to analyze the trustworthiness of a web site.

All in all it was a productive day. 

 

Due to our low teacher-student ratios, students who need extra work can get extended one-on-one attention.