Screaming Pens

Screaming Pens is a year long Teen Writers Group that kicks off with a day-long workshop involving visiting local writers who teach the necessary skills to write and to write well.  Different approaches to writing work for one writer and not another and students need the variety of experiences to enhance their writing.  Connections to writing groups will be made within the Kennedy community (i.e. Eagle Talons literary magazine and Eagle Eye newspaper) as well as outside community groups using teen publications such as Teen Ink and area writers groups.  Visiting authors, will be invited for an additional day-long writers' workshops, to talk about their creative process, teach aspects of the writing craft.  They will sensitively critique student work, having the authority and presence that allows students to hear about these topics.

As we move through the year a series of bi-weekly Teen Writers Group meetings will take place with our workshop participants sharing their progress in writing and critiquing the work of others as well as their own.  Once again, visiting writers will be engaged in this process and share tips and tricks of the trade with the students. Thus, each quarter teen writers will be encouraged to submit their works to a variety of publications and to read their works to selected student audiences.  The student audience groups will be selected by Mrs. Goodman to provide performance capabilities that are not available during the Teen Writers work sessions.

Game Plan of Activities:

• Bi-weekly group meetings during lunch periods/study hall time
• Creative writing sessions
• Visiting writers/authors
• Teen readings of their own works for critique by group
• Field trips to signing/authors
• Submit pieces to contests/newspapers for teen publications
• Teachers writing themselves
• Short stories, poems, novels
• Food/treats each session
• Quiet space reserved in the LRC for writing
• Short focused exercises on how to write
• Learn how to critique
• Public Readings for groups at the school drying study hall times