Tag Archives: nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo with Mrs. Always Wright | The Conclusion

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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.

NaNoWriMo with Mrs. Always Wright Week 3

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As we now head into Thanksgiving break, I have some fun statistics and updates to share for my students’ National Novel Writing Month journeys!

Knowing that we’re on break, I do not anticipate having a week 4 update, so I plan on sharing some snippets of students’ writing in its place! Then we have four school days left before the end of the month and the end of our journey. I may have created some extrinsic motivation with the promise of a full color certificate and goody bag for each student who reaches their goal.

With that offer, I did allow students this week to change their word count goal. Some were very eager in saying they’d write 10,000 to 50,000 words. For many, I knew even 4,000 was a stretch, but I refused to question them. I let them lower their goal with zero judgement. With that, the percentages feel more realistic, but the word counts are still amazing!

So here we go –

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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!

Mrs. Wright Does NaNo – The Extremely Late Conclusion

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Well, well, well.

January is definitely not too late to finally tell you how my students fared during National Novel Writing Month in November, right?

Better late than never, right?

Ok ok. The gripping conclusion:

This year, I had a total of 73 students write at least one word during the month. Some wrote stories, some journaled daily, some did other questionable things but I counted it anyway.

Period by period, it broke down to:

1st period32056
2nd period37850
5th Period36906

For a grand total of……

106,812 words!

Pop the confetti cannons, sound the horn!

You guys, I was so blown away by what my 7th grade students accomplished in just one month of incorporating daily writing. I’m even more so astonished because roughly 60% of them are still learning at home, joining in through Zoom daily.

I did add in a little bribery to help propel that number into the six figure mark. Obviously, Thanksgiving falls in November, so that meant a full 5 days where I couldn’t force students to write during class time. Recognizing that I would not get to 100k if they didn’t write, I offered up a total of $40 in gift cards. $10 for the most words written in each class period, and one extra $10 to the most words written overall. I had about 10 students write some during the break, but the three who took the gift cards combined for over 10,000 words to add to the total. Those students received a gift card of their choice before we left for the break. 🙂

We were hoping to have a huge party at the end, have students share a paragraph or two, enjoy some snacks and drinks, but some sudden changes in our 7th grade team forced us to change plans. Teaching in 2020-2021: 0 stars/do not recommend.

BUT this gave me hope. I was never prouder entering in final word counts on December 1 and seeing not just the 100k, but just some of the amazing word counts students were able to put up. So many didn’t think they’d write more than 100 words, and were amazed at themself at the end seeing they wrote more than 1,000!

I can’t wait for the opportunity to do this again, perhaps on a bigger scale? But if not, my own classroom is good enough for me.

Cheers!

2020: A Year of Self-Reflection

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Even though I haven’t blogged regularly this year, I have had a post like this on my mind for the last week or so. I feel like I’ve spent many days of my Christmas vacation thinking about everything that has happened this year, for better or worse (mostly worse). 2020 was a hard year for everyone (my therapist reminds me weekly: “it’s not just you, Danielle”).

I actually spent some time yesterday rereading my journal (which I started regularly writing in in July). I had mentioned to my therapist I was afraid to read a lot of what was in there because it was so raw. There were a lot of emotions behind those entries…MY emotions. Rather, as she said (seriously how does she know everything), it gave me a chance to look back on all the challenges I pushed through this year and the progress I’ve made.

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NaNoWriMo: A Shocking Week 2 Update

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It’s the end of week 2 of National Novel Writing Month, so you know what that means — time for an update on my students’ progress!

I promise this post will be shorter and much quicker to the point. You can recap all the information about our NaNoWriMo project in my first two posts! (One) (Two)

Once again, these is only the numbers for my students; I do not have data for the other 7th grade ELAR teachers’ students at this time, but hope that at the end I can share their numbers as well. I’m trying to figure out how to get those numbers without creating more work for my colleagues. 2020 is hard enough, am I right?

Ok, without further ado…

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On Being Hard On Yourself

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After leaving a meeting that I joined into even though I had to take the day off today, I sat here at my desk recognizing that I am literally my own worst critic. Honestly, I already knew that, but I feel like I need to keep saying it out loud to fully accept it as the truth. It’s a mindset I do not wish upon anybody, because in my mind, I am never good enough.

I strive and strive to be the best at what I’m doing. Weirdly, this does not affect me in all parts of my life. I never strived to be the best in sports – I was okay with being good enough. I never strived to be the best in school – C’s get degrees, baby. I never strived to be the best, most successful sibling/family member/friend, etc.

For me, I strive to be the best in my career: I’m a 7th grade ELAR teacher who is struggling through every part of this school year.

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NaNoWriMo 2020 – Week ONE

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Ahh, you have come back to see how my students fared in week one of National Novel Writing Month, I see. Well let me tell you, you are going to feel PROUD when you see these numbers. After a rough week in general, being able to put these numbers on the whiteboard at the end of the day on Friday made me forget some of the stressors I had faced beforehand.

This year, as I mentioned in my previous post, all of my students are participating in some way. Some are going full out, having set word count goals and are writing a larger story via the YWP website. Others are free writing, journaling, using my optional daily prompts, etc. through the month and have not set a word count goal.

My goal is just to get them to WRITE everyday.

So this year, all stats will be numbers only, no percentages. But these numbers – WHOA.

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Writing Through An Emotional Journey

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After a long hiatus from writing regularly, I am (at least at the moment) back on the grind again. While I haven’t started contributing to my bigger writing project (I’m Not Ok) as of yet, I have been doing my best to write everyday.

Most days, it’s just a journal entry. But as I wrote the other day (When Your Main Character is Really Just You), sometimes when I journal I make these huge self-discoveries that maybe I knew subconsciously, but it didn’t really HIT me until I wrote it down.

When I was younger, writing was all I did. It was all I wanted to do. I was blessed to be 1-to-1 with a laptop through high school, and I would avoid doing classwork because I was working on a story or National Novel Writing Month (sorry mom and past teachers). It was so much simpler back then to find the time to write.

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