WRITE ON! One-Off Workshops
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NOW HEAR THIS! offers a wide ranging number of WRITE ON! One-Off Workshops for schools, groups, and other organizations that are interested in single-session classes featuring one of our talented Writers-in-Residence. These workshops are designed to enhance creative activity as well as stimulate diverse thought in a variety of areas related to literacy, school curriculum, and issues important to the GTA community.
Each workshop brings professional authors into classrooms to encourage and foster students' writing skills, self-esteem and critical thinking. Our Writers-in-Residence develop creative writing exercises designed to enhance the students' learning experience. Instructors not only help students improve their writing skills but also encourage students to make connections between personal experiences and what's being discussed in the classroom.
All of our WRITE ON! One-Off Workshops may be adapted to work in a school or community setting. Many are suitable to children in grades 1-8, youth aged 14-18, or community members at large.
The following workshops are a sampling of what NOW HEAR THIS! offers and may be easily customized to fit within English, Media Literacy, Writers Craft and ESL classrooms. If you’re not finding a workshop that’s right for your class or organization contact us and suggest one!
Fee Structure:
*1/2 day: 2 periods (one hour each) $200.00
*Full day: 3 periods (one hour each) $300.00
*Each session can facilitate groups of up to 35.
If you are interested in finding out more about WRITE ON! or you would like to order a workshop, please contact our Special Projects Coordinator Hilary Fair at hilary [at] nowhearthis.ca
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WHEN THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM:
Understanding Media Texts
“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power
to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent,
and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
— Malcolm X
Why do you need this workshop?
Now, more than ever, the media plays a huge role in shaping the way we interact with the world we live in. But how do we know that what we see, hear and read is accurate? In this workshop students will look at forms, conventions and techniques used in various forms of media. Students will be encouraged to be critical of media hype and to question what is being presented to them as “news.”
What does the workshop entail?
The workshop will begin by encouraging students to brainstorm different forms and conventions that media can take from tweets to radio broadcasts to newspaper articles. They will be encouraged to look at the validity of these different formats and the ways in which the formats then influence their messages. Considering this, students will be asked to consider the ways in which they create media every day.
As an exercise towards understanding the ways that bias can influence media decisions the students will have the opportunity to interview the writer and ask a variety of questions about the writer, their experiences, etc. Following the interview, the students will then be instructed to quote the writer out of context. They will be asked to creatively twist the writer’s words as a means to understanding the multiple ways in which quotes and interviews can be interpreted and used.
From here the writer will provide a few different examples of intentionally false media pieces. (Potential examples include Concerned Children’s Advertisers’ “House Hippos” PSA at: cca-kids.ca/psas/media_literacy.html and the BBC’s 1957 April Fool’s joke about the “Swiss Spaghetti Harvest” at: news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm). This will then prompt a discussion of the accuracy of what can be found in media. As well, the students will be able to discuss the ways in which they judge the accuracy of media sources. What tools do they use? How do they decipher something as fiction? Are there varying degrees between fact and fiction?
Writers available for this workshop include:
Colin Frizzell
Joseph Maviglia
Emily Pohl-Weary
LIFE WRITING:
Personal Myth, Memoir & Autobiography
“The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.
Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.”
— Bernard Malamud
Why do you need this workshop?
Every writer is born with a set of givens: their childhood, family history, cultural heritage, second language and personal traits that form a unique and valuable literary resource. In this workshop students will begin by recognizing the particularity of their background and from there consider the ethical questions that writing about one's own life entails. Students will become familiar with critical distinctions such as Autobiography, Memoir and Mythology. Through either poetry or short fiction students will work towards the creation of a personal mythology where their unique “givens” are implicated, shaped into a narrative and valued.
What does the workshop entail?
Beginning the class with a discussion of different form of autobiographical writing, the students will explore (through examples provided by the writer) a variety of different ways in which a person can choose to tell their life story. How certain genres lend themselves to certain stories will be addressed. As well, the ethics around writing one’s own stories (including those of the people around them) will be addressed along with the ethics of fictionalizing one’s story.
Students will then be encouraged to draw from their own lives to find stories worth writing. In order to facilitate this, the students will complete an exercise having them draw a map of a well-known childhood location. They will then be asked to use these maps as a means to brainstorm different events and stories from their lives that may have happened at various locations on the map.
Each student will then pick one event generated from his or her map and write about it. They will be asked to choose a particular form or genre for their writing and decide to what degree they do or do not want to fictionalize the piece. Given time, it might also be useful to have the students justify these decisions.
Writers available for this workshop include:
Devon Code
Andrew Daley
Larry Frolick
THE SONG IS A POEM:
Writing With(out) Sound
“Recently, in a used bookstore I stumbled across a nice, reasonably priced copy of Bob Dylan’s Lyrics: 1962-2001. Being a huge Dylan fan, I snapped it up, figuring I’d use it mostly for reference. That evening, however, I cracked it open and began reading. Three hours later, when I’d made it about halfway through the book, I realized that, taken as a whole, these lyrics were some of the best ‘poetry’ I’d ever read.”
— Rob Woodard,
“Lyrics poetry?,” The Guardian, Dec. 19, 2007
Why do you need this workshop?
Music touches all of our lives, yet we don’t often examine what it is about our favourite songs that affects us. By covering the works of songwriters and their poetic influences, this workshop is intended to bring into the classroom what students usually keep to themselves in their circles outside of school. Students are encouraged to bring in and discuss their own musical preferences and then think about the relationship that song lyrics have to writing and poetry. Students will be given the opportunity to create their own material individually or collectively thereby developing a deeper appreciation for the music they listen to and a greater understanding of how their favourite musicians create it.
What does the workshop entail?
This workshop begins with a class discussion comparing and contrasting song lyrics and poetry. The writer will provide one or two pieces of music to listen to (potentially from their own oeuvre) and lead the class in a discussion of what makes them good writing. What literary devices are at work in the song lyrics? How does their attachment to music affect their interpretation?
Following this, each of the students will be asked to write down one line or phrase from a song of their choosing that they find to be poetic. Students will then have the opportunity to pick one of their fellow students’ choices. Taking these song lyrics, the students will be asked to generate their own song lyrics/poetry. An optional variation on this exercise would include having the students write their song lyrics to match an instrumental music piece provided by the writer.
After creating their own pieces, the students will be asked to distinguish whether their created works are poems or lyrics and justify the differentiation. While it may be difficult for even professional writers to make these distinctions, it gives the students an opportunity to talk about their own writing and make such decisions for themselves. Do their pieces function alone or with music?
Writers available for this workshop include:
Desi Di Nardo
Chris Eaton
Joseph Maviglia
GRAPHIC NOVELS:
Beyond the Comic Book
— Charles McGrath,
“Not Funnies,” New York Times, Jul. 11, 2004
Why do you need this workshop?
From Egyptian hieroglyphs to the modern-day comic book, graphic storytelling has long been the simplest and most effective way of connecting with a great number of people. Considering this, and our increasing reliance on imagery as a form of communication in our daily lives, the graphic novel might well be the next great democracy (and rebirth) of books and literature. The students will be asked to look at how to translate stories into imagery and vice-versa. Students will have the opportunity to discuss their own writing/illustration, and how best to fuse these media into one finished project, using techniques of sequential narrative, layout, illustration and design.
What does the workshop entail?
The writer will begin the class with a discussion of what makes a graphic novel. How does it differ from comic books? From traditional novels? The class will address these distinctions by looking at different examples of graphic novels (potentially from the writer’s own oeuvre). From here they’ll look at some of the key elements of graphic novels such as captions, layout, illustration, characters and plot.
The students will be encouraged to create their own graphic novel concept starting from an existing short story (provided by the writer). Beginning with this pre-arranged short story the class will decide on character descriptions, narrative, design, plot and composition.
During this discussion it may be helpful to have the writer (if they are also an illustrator) sketch out these ideas on the board or using a transparency. Another option is to have one or more of the students illustrate the character description and/or a few panels of their “graphic novel”. In a classroom with Internet access, an alternate variation would be to use the comic creator at: readwritethink.org/materials/comic/index.html for quick and fun illustrations.
Writers available for this workshop include:
Willow Dawson
Clayton Hanmer
Marc Ngui
Emily Pohl-Weary