Mercer County educator Lisa McGhee from Princeton Public Schools, was awarded a $6,000 continuation grant to carry out a project at John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton.
Students will be able to see the value and entertainment of reading and discussing books, while use reading strategies such inferencing, questioning, making connections etc. when discussing books to demonstrate comprehension. Students will demonstrate the components of fiction writing and use music and pictures to develop characters and settings. Viewing themselves as successful readers and writers will help the students view reading and writing as an enjoyable life-long skill.
The Book Club will run 7:45-8:25 am every Tuesday/Thursday morning from the first week of October 2020 through the last week of April 2021. Students will participate in a survey to ascertain the most popular genres of interest. Three mini-workshops with an author will begin and culminate the program. Four different novels will be covered during the program. Students will work with the author of the first novel throughout the program as a group and individually and be provided with feedback and constructive criticism on their creative writing pieces. Students will learn how to find inspiration through music, digital images, etc., how to build memorable, dynamic characters, word building and learning the process of revision, editing and rewriting. Students’ work will be published into a class book by Scholastic. Finally, the students will be given the same survey, as the beginning of the program to ascertain what they learned about fiction writing and the process as well as how they see themselves as writers.
For more information, contact:
Lisa McGhee, Project Coordinator
(732) 513-9789 (home)