New Writing Teacher

For the last few days and over the next few weeks we will have a new writing teacher. Her name is Cynthia Rylant. She is the amazing author of some fabulous children's books. Here are a few of my favorite:

The class is going to study Mrs. Rylant and notice what she does as an author. They have already noticed that in the book The Relatives Came she used a circular ending (the first page was the same as the last) and she used a lot of ands in sentences like this one: 

They had an old station wagon that smelled like a real car, and in it they put an ice chest full of soda pop and some boxes of crackers and some bologna sandwiches, and up they came from Virginia.

I love this sentence. It breaks the rules but sounds amazing. It has been great to see the class recreate sentences just like this one.

Our students have also noticed that Mrs. Rlyant will thread a line through her story like in the book When I Was Young In The Mountains. When we read the book Long Night Moon, they noticed that she wrote about each month and started each page with In December or In November. 

I love these two books and I have loved seeing the class try out these Rylant-ish moves. We have had stories with the thread When I Was Young In Lebanon or When I Was Young On The Football Field. We have also had stories that mirrored the idea of Long Night Moon. Instead of talking about the moon, though, students are walking me through the holidays of the year or a vacation they took to New York.

The students are getting better and better and better at the idea of taking techniques from an author and making it their own. It is so much fun to watch them stand on the shoulders of other authors (a phrase a colleague once shared with me). I cannot wait to see their next writing project where they get to use all of these ideas that they are borrowing from Cynthia Rylant. 

I hope you are having a great week.