How’s It Going? Year 3 of Author’s Club

Three years ago, I started spending every Friday morning with an elementary writers’ club. Each year, it’s only gotten better! Today, I share an update on club happenings in the hope that these reflections might inspire others to create a space for passionate young writers of their own.

“Write Into The Day” is a practice I borrowed from the National Writing Project. As kids arrive, they respond to a creative writing prompt in their writing notebooks for just 5-10 minutes. This routine warms up their writing muscles and gets them talking. At the end of our writing warm up, kids have the option to share their response with the group. While I try to offer a variety of prompts to appeal to the diversity of the writers, a crowd favorite is when I simply display a funny wildlife photo from National Geographic, and kids craft potential dialogue or descriptions of how the animals wound up in that situation.

Minilessons led by kids is a cornerstone of the club, though I occasionally lead a strategy lesson, too. Kids who sign up to teach a lesson write a script, create an anchor chart, and follow the “I do, We do, You do” model to engage the group.

One popular lesson was guided cartoon drawing. You could’ve heard a pin drop as an expert illustrator used the document camera to demonstrate for her eager audience.

Independent work time reveals a lot about these writers’ identities. Writers navigate to the same corner of the classroom each week with the same cowriters, while others go to a solo spot and write alone for the whole time, never speaking to other kids. As “time to write” is the main goal of the club, I help kids keep minilessons short so writers have at least thirty minutes to work on projects of their choice. Some kids write a story in a day, while others come back to a longer piece or novel each week.

Author’s Chair is directed by the writer. They choose the type of feedback they’d like from the audience, and it’s inspiring to see the younger kids be brave and share their work with some of the older mentors in the class. Since some of the kids have been in the club for years now, the community feels like a safe and encouraging place to share and grow.

Hosting biannual contests for the whole school is my favorite way to engage kids who don’t participate in Author’s Club. Students in the club contribute by advertising the contest on the school announcements and judging the entries. I upped the ante this year by asking a local ice cream shop to donate free coupons for contest winners!

The March Slice of Life Classroom Challenge is approaching, and of course the kids in Author’s Club will participate again this year! I print off dedicated notebooks for kids and help them set a goal for the month. We have dedicated time to give each other comments in our notebooks. Since we only meet once a week, it’s harder to encourage them to persevere each day. One solution I’ve found is hanging a goal sheet in the hallway outside my classroom so the students in Author’s Club can stop by each day and check off the day’s they’ve written. I also host “Slice of Lunch” parties every Wednesday. Throughout the day’s lunch periods, students in Author’s Club are invited to eat lunch and write with their peers in my Kindergarten classroom. The Kindergarteners love to see these “writers in residence” at work in the back of our class as we go about our Kindergarten business.