Tag Archives: elar teacher

NaNoWriMo with Mrs. Always Wright Week 2

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With a Veteran’s Day holiday on Friday, it’s now the end of week 2 of National Novel Writing Month! That means it’s time to post an update of my 7th grade students’ progress!

As I reported last week, I have about 50 students participating, some more enthusiastically than others. I am not counting any students with 0 words written yet, though I do count the student who wrote 4 because 4 > 0!

A few fun updates:

I have my first official winner! Student BH set a 1,000 word goal and as of today sits at 1,287. I haven’t said anything yet though because I want to see how much more she writes 😉

6 of my students are over the 1,000 word mark. That was the minimum I allowed them to set their goal to. 5/6 of these students, however, have goals upwards of 5,000, so I’m excited to see their progress towards those goals!

This writing project has motivated 5 students to ask me about writing contests they can enter, so I’ve been on the hunt for some! If you know of any open to middle schoolers, hit me up in the comments or contact page!

Officially, our total word count goal is 267,606. Most students set their own goals; the few who did not I set to 1,000.

All students combined have written 23,565 words!

There are still 20 days in the month (though 10 of those days are Thanksgiving break and it’s hard to get some of them to write outside of my classroom but that’s ok). I set out a weekend challenge for them, so we’ll see how much more writing they can do on their own! I can’t wait to see how much more progress we can make towards our goals next week! Follow along for more updates!

NaNoWriMo ’23 with Mrs. Always Wright

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I did not forc- I mean – encourage my students to take part last year and regretted it the entire month. This time, I have such a group of writers I simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity.

I have two blocks of 7th grade Honors ELAR this year, and this is the perfect side project for them. They have the first 10 minutes of class to write (in lieu of a warm-up), and can choose to add to their word counts as early finisher work or outside of class time.

I told them that they can write ANYTHING they want (school appropriate, of course). The goal is just to write every single day. Some students are just writing about their favorite things, some students are writing diary entries about their days, and the rest are taking the traditional path and writing fiction stories.

We are officially 3 days in and I’m already so proud.

My 4th/5th honors block sits at 32 students currently – I am missing goals for 6 of them. With goals ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 (yes, really), the combined goal sits at 159,316 words. As of the end of their block period, not including 3 students writing by hand, they had combined for 6,647 words! 2 students are already over 1,000!

My 6th/7th honors block also sits at 32 students – I am missing goals for 15 of them (they’re a rough bunch, ok?). With goals ranging from 1,000 to 25,000, the combined goal sits at 86,790. That will increase once I get the rest of them and I’ll update next week. As of the end of the school day today, not including 2 students writing by hand, they had combined for 6,285 words. 1 student owns 2,500 of them!

I’m already so happy to see their progress already. Some of them get really excited when I remind them to work on their writing project at the beginning of the period, already begging for more time to write. Two students have asked me to find writing contests they can enter. Sometimes, you don’t really know how much you love something until you’re forc- I mean, encouraged – to do it!

I’m excited to share their progress with you as the weeks go on. We have a lot of testing these next two weeks (SIGH), but for me, this opens the door for more writing time. I definitely also plan to get permission and share some excerpts with you, because their words deserve to be read!

Until next time!

*oh and if you’re curious, I’m still at zero words. I’ve been drowning in reading chapters for my Master’s program!