WOS was founded by Byron Yake, a former sports writer in Pittsburgh for the Associated Press and later Sports Editor of the AP. Inspiration for the project arose from Yake’s interest in journalism, sports writing and education and his desire to help students improve their writing skills. During the summer, Write on Sports runs two-week camps. During the school year, Write on Sports runs afterschool programs and holds special press-conferences. As part of their work, students interview athletes and journalists, observe and write about a minor league baseball game, and write their own stories for print and video production. The camp covers all kinds of sports - from baseball, basketball, hockey and football to soccer, fencing, swimming, curling and any other sport the students might be interested in.

Monday, August 2, 2010

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. 

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