Day Five - Writing, Revising, Shark Attacks

Today was the fifth day of camp. No guests, just students working on projects. For print, students moved from a first draft to revision. As part of the camp, we are stressing revising in a three stage process

First: Focus on organization. Is the point of the story clear? Does the sequence move the story along? Is there any extraneous or repetitive information? Is there anything missing?

Second: Focus on language. Do the sentences tend to have the same structure? Are certain words overused? Are there any drab or cliched words or images that need to be replaced?Is the tone appropriate? Does the writer's voice come across?

Third: Copyediting. Final check on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other print conventions.

By making each step clear, we hope that students really understand what revision entails. Today they began working on revising at the organizational level, and students took the lessons to heart. Paragraphs and sentences were added, moved, expanded, restructured, and deleted. In addition to students re-reading their own work, they received a lot of feedback from the staff and their peers.


These are some of the stories that students are working on:
- Parents pushing kids too much in sports
- Underground car racing
- Girls vs. boys lacrosse
- Is UNC the team to beat in this year's NCAA basketball tournament?
- How the media is going overboard in their coverage of LeBron James
- Debating the fairness of committing a handball to block a shot (a HUGE topic of conversation since the Ghana vs. Uruguay game)

There was also time to play shark attack.

Day Four - Blogging, the Red Bulls, and Planning Projects

Today as was the last day of the first week of camp. Students began the day by comparing two different sports blogs that covered the LeBron James decision. The first was from the Miami Herald and the second was from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Teachers helped students to think about the structure, tone, and expected audience of each blog post. We included this assignment to provide students with mentor texts for their own blogging and as a chance to think about the variety of goals a professional blogging journalist has when writing a piece.

The whole camp then went to a practice session the New York/New Jersey Red Bulls were holding on the Montclair State University campus. Students spent some time watching the practice and then had the opportunity to interview the Assistant Coach, Richie Williams,



Defense-Midfielder Danleigh Borman, and Defense/Midfielder Luke Sassano.



Students were interested in the recent history of the Red Bulls (including an ownership and name change), the diverse nature of the roster (in terms of players' ages and cultural backgrounds), and the interview subjects' predictions for the world cup final.



The students spent the rest of the day doing background research for their print features, moving towards organizing those pieces, and completing storyboards for their video projects. By Monday students will be working on finalizing their first drafts, starting revisions, and shooting content for their video projects. They have made a lot of progress on each of the projects, fine tuning their topics and really thinking about how to interest readers in the stories they want to tell.

Day Three - Interviewing a Professional Athlete and a Journalist

Today in the camp we had two guests - Bruce Harper, who was a running back for the New York Jets, and Jenny Vrentas, who is the new Jets beat reporter for the Newark Star Ledger. Jenny asked Bruce questions about this year's Jets roster, his playing days, and what he has been doing since he retired.



Students asked questions during the general question and answer period, and then interviewed the athletes 'locker room' style. The students, as reporters, had to listen to other questions being asked while trying to get their questions in. Students asked Bruce follow-up questions about his injuries, and what he is doing now. He spoke about his program Heroes and Cool Kids (http://www.heroesandcoolkids.org/), a program in which current and former professional athletes train high school students to mentor middle school students on important life skills (e.g., sportsmanship, conflict resolution and positive lifestyle choices)



The students were interested in Jenny's experience working in different forms of journalism, and how she moved from being a biochemistry major to working as a writer.



Jenny stressed that students who are interested in a career as a journalist should take every opportunity they have to write and be involved in the field. She worked on her college newspaper, and suggested students can write for their high school papers.



Students' questions were a mix of personal interest, sports specific analysis, and thoughts about writing as a career. This is the third year Jenny has worked with Write on Sports, and each year she brings a lot of insight and candor about the life of a sportswriter. She started as a sports blogger (for the Star Ledger) and is still involved in new media. Here is the address for her twitter feed http://twitter.com/jennyvrentas

Day Two - Women's Football, Photojournalism, and Writing

Today we had our first two guests. Dave Skretta, a journalist working for the Associated Press, interviewed Kathy Holloman, a running back for the New York Sharks - a professional football team for women. Kathy is also a teacher working on her third Write on Sports camp. After Dave spoke with Kathy for a while, students were able to ask both of them questions. Many of the questions Dave was asked focused on his career path and what the life of a journalist is like. Kathy was asked questions about her inspiration for playing and what kind of reactions other people had to women playing playing tackle football. After a formal question and answer session, the students gathered around the guests in a locker room style interrogation (you can see a photo of that below).

Brian Horton, a retired photojournalist then walked students through the process of taking good photos. He, and other staff, stressed that taking photos is like writing in that you need to tell a story, think about perspective, provide details, and set the scene (among other similarities). Here are some of his shots from the day - what do you think of them? Please leave comments below.

Photo One



Photo Two



Photo Three



Photo Four

First Day - Stories Already Developing

Yesterday was the first day of Write on Sports, and the students are already off and rolling. We spent the morning doing team building (including the ever popular "I like everybody who..." game) and talking about how to work together.

In the afternoon, students started working on possible feature stories, and have some interesting possibilities in mind. One story idea focuses on the health impact of sumo wrestling, another is going to look at the different types of bats (wooden vs. aluminum). Students are interested in street racing, baseball, basketball, and there is a lot of interest in soccer. There will be features about the World Cup results, individual players, and the equipment. The wide variety of interests is always fascinating, and teachers and students learn a lot from each other.

Today we have our first guests, and we'll post some photos and quotes from that later.

Summer 2010

This is the fifth year of Write on Sports, with camps taking place for students from West Orange and Newark. The first camp starts on Tuesday (July 6th), and nearly 30 students from West Orange will be working with 6 teachers for nine days. It will take place at the ADP Center at Montclair State University. As with past camps, students will be writing feature stories, game accounts (after attending a New Jersey Jackals' game), and shooting and editing their own video projects. This year we will also be joined by a retired sports photojournalist, and sample photos from events will be posted here.