Run BTS Episode 143 and Teaching Character Development

Episode 143 of Run BTS is such a delight! The Bangtan Boys wrote stories for children and they told/read them aloud after. Needless to say, it pushed me farther on to the BTS rabbit hole. 

Since Suga was recuperating at the time of the shoot, there were only six members present. They were grouped in two but later on became three groups. RM and Jimin worked together on a story about a super cloud. Jin and JK wrote and drew a story of a man with a single strand of hair. V and Jhope finished the story of a fairy who gave out special stars of emotions. The boys were natural storytellers!

Of the three stories, I pulled out JinKook's to use it as an example for character development for my creative writing class this summer. My students are elementary school aged children and yes, they are ARMY. Just like their creative writing teacher!

Entitled as A Single Strand, the man with a single strand of hair searched for ways to enhance the single strand of hair. All his efforts were futile, of course. Until, he realized that the best thing to do is to accept his single strand of hair. Yes, the story stays so true to the theme of love yourself. 

After showing my students several samples of stories where the characters experience different trials and problems, JinKook's One Single Strand of hair was my last example because of the very simple problem-solution structure and yet, the character is at the very heart of the story. My students are making character studies this week and I am excited to read their story concepts.

Online Author Visit 2021: When Students Write Back To Me

I am glad when I get feedback from children and young people. This group of readers are the people I write for. Their comments, questions and replies to my books or author visit sessions affirm the work I do and inspire me to improve and to continue writing. 

In a recent online Author Visit at the De La Salle Zobel Learning Resource Center, I designed the online experience consisting of a priming activity, an input session that is 15-20  mins long and a post activity. The priming activity is the introduction to the session and it is aimed to prepare listeners or participants to the session. I use the theme, main concept and skill as anchors of my activities. For this Author Visit, I used Character and Character Development as theme and skill. I worked around the concepts of story as windows, mirrors and doors. 

Have a look at the infographic and the questions I asked to prepare the child audience by following the link. The video for the input session is up on the Librarians Tambayan channel on YouTube. 

Included on the video are activities that students can do asynchronously. Imagine my surprise when the librarian sent works of students a few days after she presented my video through the library's web portal! I also received emails from students. I replied to them, of course! 

One student asked me for writing tips and how he can improve his story map.

Thank you for doing the activity :-) !

You followed the instructions and did more - you wrote a story! The next step is to clean and polish what you made. Here are my suggestions:

1. Keep your sentences simple. Go back to the story and identify sentences that need to be changed. Remember, a sentence expresses an idea. 

2. Try putting in dialogues between and among characters. What conversations did the family have about going to Baguio? What did they feel about Cara the dog being hurt? What did the vet tell them about taking care of Cara's wound? How did they all feel about adopting a pet in the end? 

3. Make sure that the images you picked for the story are good for sharing to others. Your librarian can help you establish this. Send your librarian a message.

I would be interested to see improvements on your story. Good job!

The librarian shared the students' works with me. I will be sharing some of them in the blog with permission from the students and their parent/guardian.

Online Writing Workshop for Kids Q& A

1. Why did we have activities on storytelling and structure of stories?

The activities we had last week will help you frame or organize your writing. There is free writing and there is process writing. We will be doing both writing activities in the weeks to come. Examples of free writing are keeping a diary, writing journal entries and writing prompts. Some free writing activities also integrate art. We will do all of the free writing strategies.

Process writing follows a series of steps. There are four steps namely Pre-writing, writing the first draft, revising and publishing or making our own book. We will also do process writing since we are going to make a book!

Storytelling and knowing the structure of stories help writers writer better. As a writer myself, I am constantly telling stories, looking out for stories and understanding how stories are told and presented.

Writing is a lot of DISCIPLINE. It is fun, but it also demands time, focus and patience.

2. Are your answers in the assignment fine?

Your answers in the assignment are all correct!

3. What kind of books are we going to make?

We are going to write fiction, so we will write story books.

4. Do all.stories always have an epilogue?

Not all stories have an epilogue.

5. When do we stop and start chapters?

Writers make outlines. A short story outline is different from a chapter book outline and an outline for a novel. So chapters depend on the story outline that a writer comes up with. The story structure of beginning middle end can bean outline for a short story.

Chapter books and novels require a complex outline similar to a mountain range. So, depending on the kind of story and book you are writing, its beginning and ending follows with it.

6. Does there have to be a theme?

Yes. All forms of literature has a theme.

7. Can there be a moral (to every story)?

Morals of stories depend on the readers. I mean, a writer should not write to preach a moral.

8. Are the books we make always a story? and 9. What kinds of books are there?

There are 2 kinds - fiction and non-fiction. But there are many genres, fantasy, science fiction, romance.. And each has a way or approach in writing that genre.

10. Is there a number of pages needed?

The number of pages depend on the kind of story you want to write. Most story books have 16-32 pages including the illustrations. We can begin with a minimum of 8-10 pages

Online Writing Workshop for Kids: Stories In Me and the World Around Me

Early this April, I started an online writing class for children. The learning activities, story prompts and writing projects are all uploaded in Google Classroom, the platform of choice. The students work on the activities in a week and we chat or do a video call every Saturday. My students ask varied questions. Our weekly chat and video conferences have been fun and engaging. 

I am sharing ten questions from our chat and slides of the story writing prompts the do in the workshop. 

1. Why did we have activities on storytelling and structure of stories?
2. Are our answers in the assignment fine?
3. What kind of books are we going to make?
4. Do all.stories always have an epilogue?
5. When do we stop and start chapters?
6. Does there have to be a theme?
7. Can there be a moral (to every story)?
8. Are the books we make always a story?
9. What kinds of books are there?
10. Is there a number of pages needed?

I will post the answers in a few days.

DepEd Antipolo Teachers Make Mini-Books

Teachers love big books!

Big Books are perfect for read aloud sessions because it can hold the attention of a class of forty to sixty students. They are easy to make by a group of teachers who are working on instructional materials for the classroom. The process is a collaborative experience. This makes book making a lot of fun!

Mini-books, on the other hand are easier to do, as they are small. It can be a collaborative project also, but its nature is more personal in process and in the sharing of it. For K-3 teachers, mini-books are not only for instructional purposes, but also a student centered approach to teaching and learning how to create stories and construct knowledge.

When I received the invitation by the DepEd Antipolo to run a workshop on story writing, I turned to mini-book making as a final activity.

How easy it was for teachers to create their own mini-books! How proud they were! Their stories ranged from childhood memories of bullying, conquering one's fears, fleeing a land of conflict, eating nutritious food to folk stories in Antipolo.

Using the same materials as I have when I run Zine making workshops, teachers were able to write 2-3 mini-books. Here's hoping that they can carry the learning they gained from this activity to the classroom and in contests which the DepEd runs for regional story book making.

Writing and Teamwork in Tagayatay

During the last National Holiday, I joined a creative team of dreamers and advocates to work on a commissioned book project for a Philippine based non-government organization. We spent an overnight stay in a cozy house in Tagaytay to write and create. Ah, bliss!

With Darrel Marco, collaborating on a story while the rain falls softly outside.

 This is a big project that we hope to finish by February 2017. That's all I will share for now. More news to come, definitely. But for this post, let me tell you the wonderful thing that happened during the write-in.

There were three stories to be finished that day. The creative team critiqued the two stories and were immediately re-written for the final draft. The last story, the most challenging to write, was finished early that afternoon. While the writers worked on the third story, the illustrator, who was present during the workshop, worked on the studies of the two stories that passed workshop critiquing. By 4PM, we had a good idea how the two books will look like.

Thanks to technology, our Mother Tongue writer and translator was working alongside us through Fb Messenger and text messaging.

The project still has a long way to go. I am positive that, working on a steady pace we will be able to see the project through post production.

Here is a glimpse of our artist's study of one spread:

Tinsley Garanchon's study. So cute!

Book Launch: Big Sister

Totet de Jesus' squiggles strikes again!

This is one of my favorite illustrations in our new book, Big Sister (Lampara House, 2015). If you have not heard about it yet, the book is a collaborative work with Ruben "Totet" de Jesus. We will launch the book on September 18, 2015 at 3PM right after the Lampara Storytelling Contest. The venue will be at the stage area of the SMX, Mall of Asia. This event is in the program of the 2015 Manila International Book Fair.

Mr. de Jesus and I will be available for book signing at 5-6PM in the same area.

On September 19, 2015, Saturday Palanca awardee and Hall of Famer Eugene Evasco and I will be conducting a writing workshop at Meeting Room 4 in SMX, Mall of Asia. This is part and parcel of Lampara Books' book fair program. The writing workshop will start at 1PM.

Entrance to the workshop would be a receipt of your purchases from Lampara Books. See you at the MIBF! The fair begins on September 16, 2015 and will end on September 20, 2015.