Writing camp draws Northwest Arkansas kids back to school

NWA Democrat-Gazette/CHARLIE KAIJO Creekside Middle School Literacy Facilitator Christin Rupert (from left) fist bumps Bethany Crose, 11, during a summer writing camp Thursday at Creekside Middle School in Bentonville. Fifth-graders at Creekside Middle School learned about writing strategies and the writing process in a two-week summer writing camp. The camp was hosted by Creekside Middle School with the University of Arkansas and The National Writing Project.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/CHARLIE KAIJO Creekside Middle School Literacy Facilitator Christin Rupert (from left) fist bumps Bethany Crose, 11, during a summer writing camp Thursday at Creekside Middle School in Bentonville. Fifth-graders at Creekside Middle School learned about writing strategies and the writing process in a two-week summer writing camp. The camp was hosted by Creekside Middle School with the University of Arkansas and The National Writing Project.

BENTONVILLE -- Students who just completed a two-week writing camp at Creekside Middle School said they enjoyed the experience and now are more confident in their writing abilities.

Creekside hosted the Young Writers Camp, put on in partnership with the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, which is based in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas.

Northwest Arkansas Writing Project

The Northwest Arkansas Writing Project launched in 1997 as a site of the National Writing Project. It’s one of four sites of the National Writing Project in Arkansas.

National Writing Project sites focus on improving the teaching of writing and improving the use of writing across the disciplines by offering high-quality professional development programs for educators in their service areas, at all grade levels, K–16 and across the curriculum.

Source: Staff report

Three other schools in the region -- Shaw Elementary in Springdale, Kirksey Middle in Rogers and Gravette Upper Elementary -- also offered the program. A total of about 100 students participated.

This was the third year the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project has offered the summer camp. It's geared toward grades three and up.

Kim Kendrick and Christin Rupert, both literacy teachers at Creekside, agreed to run the program at their school.

They met with about 20 students for three to four hours each morning for two weeks, providing lessons on different types of writing including poetry, narrative stories and plays.

Once the students left, the teachers traveled to Kirksey Middle School for four hours of professional development with teachers from the other schools offering the camp. Karen Johnson, an instructional facilitator at Kirksey, led the professional development sessions.

Those sessions gave teachers a chance to analyze published material on good writing strategies and talk about any problems they encountered during the camp, Kendrick said.

Rupert called the program "a great learning experience" not only for the students, but the teachers as well.

"Sometimes we'll have ideas that may work for some of our students that other campuses may not have tried, and vice versa," Rupert said. "So it's nice to be able to bounce ideas around. We wouldn't normally be able to do that with four school districts all together at one table, so it's a nice way to collaborate."

The goal of the camp was to build a "community of writers" by allowing students the opportunity to conference with their peers, published authors and their teachers, according to Rupert.

"Some kids who just weren't confident writers when they came in, even by the second or third day they were like, 'I can do this,'" Rupert said.

On Friday, the last day of camp, students recited some of their work on stage in front of classmates and parents.

Jeff Wasem, Creekside's principal, watched the performances from a table in the cafeteria and cheered on the students.

Wasem said he used money from the school's Title I budget to pay for the camp, which includes paying the teachers. Title I money is meant for schools with high numbers of children from low-income families.

"I've already put money aside from the Title I budget to do this again next year," Wasem said.

Dara Babalola, 11, who will be a sixth-grader at Creekside, said she wanted to enroll in the camp because she likes writing and wanted to improve her skills. One tip that stuck with her was to make her first sentences more interesting in order to draw in the reader.

Joey Huddleston, 11, said she increased her vocabulary through the camp. The students learned through fun activities, such as one focused on superheroes, she said.

"We got to paint our own superhero bookmarks. We got to write our own superhero story," Joey said.

Other students mentioned doing "blackout poetry," where a person takes a page of existing text -- from an old book or newspaper, perhaps -- and creates poetry by isolating certain words or phrases on the page.

The Young Writers Camp is one of about a dozen programs run by the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, said Chris Goering, director of the project and an associate professor of English education at the University of Arkansas.

"If we're moving people forward as writers during the summer, I believe that's a win," Goering said.

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette/CHARLIE KAIJO Ankita Nair (from left), 10, and Serenity Crose, 11, discuss a story they are working on during a summer writing camp Thursday at Creekside Middle School in Bentonville. Fifth-graders at Creekside Middle School learned about writing strategies and the writing process in a two-week summer writing camp. The camp was hosted by Creekside Middle School with the University of Arkansas and The National Writing Project. Kim Kendrick and Christin Rupert, literacy teachers at Creekside, created lessons designed with a variety of genres and topics including poetry, narrative stories and play writing.

NW News on 06/18/2018

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