If your middle schoolers gets really inspired after participating in the Teen Poetry Contest in my earlier post, then NC State University has a summer camp that might be right up their alley. The Young Writers' Workshop, sponsored by the NC State College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of English, is a two-week, nonresidential summer camp with daily afternoon activities to help students in late elementary and middle school to develop their creative writing abilities.
The students spend two and a half hours on campus each afternoon with lessons on four different tracks: fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama (each students lists their preferences, and are placed in two different areas). Established professional writers, most of whom also teach at area colleges or high schools, give lectures, assign writing activities, put students into small groups to discuss or create something together, or work with students one-on-one on their writing.
The students-to-teacher is kept low (a maximum of 12 students per instructor) to assure that all writers get individual attention. The teen writers get instruction in such creative writing components as plot, character development, conflict, action, and more. On the final day, students invite friends and families to celebrate the creativity of the group through a public reading of the work they have produced; they also get to take home a journal of work created by themselves and their peers.
The Teen Writers' Workshop costs $250, and is open to rising 4th through 8th graders. They are now accepting applications, which require students to express what they hope to achieve through their participation as well as to submit up to two pages of their current creative writing. The deadline for applying is Monday, June 3.
For more information, check out their website or contact the program director, Laura Giovanelli, at lbgiovan@ncsu.edu.
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