Well, the Huge Comic Strip Concept for celebrating at National Day on Writing at our school was pretty successful. It was also completely chaotic, as students rushed into the cafeteria at lunch, forgetting that they were there to eat and only wanted to write on the comic strip banner. At one point, I had to leave my own classroom just to act as traffic controller for the cafeteria staff, but it was fun to see so much energy and excitement around the act of writing and drawing.
I started with one large comic strip banner, but quickly realized that it was filling up and three times, I had to rush out, cut another strip of banner paper and add it to the original. I would turn my head and when I looked back, that one, too, would be filled with writing.
The original comic asked the question: What do you like to write? The answers ranged from stories, to poems, to plays, to comics, to tales about pets, sports stories and songs. It was pretty cool, and I had some great discussions with the younger kids about what they like to write.
I went on our closed-circuit morning television announcements to tell the school about National Day on Writing and to show the students (we have more than 500 students) the original comic strip banner, and one teacher later told me: “There was this incredible buzz in the room about writing. My entire class asked if they could run down to the cafeteria right then and start writing on it.”
Yeah.
I hope you were able to celebrate your own version of the National Day on Writing, too.
Peace (on the banner),
Kevin