Every year I have blogged NaNoWriMo with my students, I have posted the conclusion SO LATE into December. I’m sure you can imagine the struggle of teaching in December: the end of the semester means all the late work, semester exams/project, and obviously the behaviors that come with being so close to a long break. I love many of my students but to say I needed this break is an understatement.

Not only that, but I was finishing my own grad school work to close out the semester. Humble brag that I’m 36% through my program (Masters in Curriculum & Instruction) and still carrying that 4.0! Honestly feels so much easier than undergrad; just have to make the time to do the work.

ANYWAY. All that to say, it’s late, but here is the final tally for my students in their NaNoWriMo endeavors.

We started off with some very excited goals. It kind of took me back to middle school band and our practice logs where the entire flute section claimed we somehow made time to practice for 20 hours/week. Students who hated writing were setting goals like 10,000 in the month, and as the time went on, realized they were a bit overzealous. But that was okay – I wanted them to dream big, and adjust their expectations as needed. That’s apart of the learning process!

In the end, the final total word count goal for both classes (55 students) was 101,467. I set my own personal goal that they’d get to 50,000 together.

We will all be having a big celebration in January! The final word count was

62,936 / 101,467 or 62%!

The top student in each class period wrote 6,102 and 10,011 words respectively. The first a work of fiction, the second a completely independently written guide to Super Smash Bros. (I told him to start selling it!).

To celebrate, I have printed winners and participant certificates (in color!), and will be giving a treat to all writers, a goody bag to all winners, and a trophy to the top word counts in each period. I’m so excited by what they all accomplished with only a little bit of class time dedicated to it each day.

I’ll likely be having them use this project to practice revising and editing throughout the remainder of the school year, and be sure that they remember the success they all had in just thirty days.