By Laura Jakubowski
PD Specialist

NaNoWriMo – What it is and why you should be interested

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? It’s been a phenomenon on the internet for years. Started in 2000 with the launch of NaNoWriMo.org, authors were encouraged to participate in an online community for the sole purpose of writing as fast as they can, starting every November 1st. The mission? Get to a 50,000 word novel by November 30th to “win” NaNoWriMo.

Some of your and your students’ favorite books started as NaNoWriMo novels: Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Stephanie Perkin’s Anna and the French Kiss. The non-profit even has volunteer regional event leaders, who bring tens or hundreds of writers together in various locations for “write-ins,” where NaNoWriMo participants write together for extended hours. One of the NaNoWriMo twitter accounts, @NaNoWordSprints, gives round-the-clock encouragement, daring prompts, and dashes of general silliness to keep things interesting for NaNoWriMo authors in the Twitter community.

Fortunately for you and your students, you do not have to travel to a location for a write-in, or have a virtual write-in over Twitter (though you totally still can and should). You can bring the NaNoWriMo enthusiasm to your students, and make your classroom the (virtual or physical) spot for your NaNoWriMo write-in!

The NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program

Thanks to the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, you can easily bring the fun of NaNoWriMo to your classroom. Once you sign in, set up your classroom, and invite your students in, you’re ready to go! Your students will be working toward their “word count goal” for their novels in no time. It can be a month-long writing club that then extends through the rest of the year as you guide your students through the editing, revision, and finalizing processes. Or you can introduce it as a component of your everyday classroom, by checking out the Educator Resource section of the site. In that section, they have Common Core aligned lessons, student work packages, and further resources to guide and inspire your students before, during, and after November.

Fun fact: I introduced NaNoWriMo to my students in 2014 and we had a blast. We shared our stories, came up with ideas together, and gave each other feedback. With G Suite for Education, I used Google Drive and Docs to keep track of my students’ progress, give feedback to them on a regular basis, and make sure that everything they were writing was school-appropriate. Everything was simple, paperless, and had a seamless process via Google Classroom. In the end, my students left with a better understanding of the kind of work that goes into what they read.

The Top 5 reasons to bring NaNoWriMo to your students

Here are the top five reasons why you should start a NaNoWriMo program with your students. 

1. Promote literacy in your classroom
   According to the most recent Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011 from the National Center for Education Statistics, only 27% of all 8th grade and 12th grade students are writing at a proficient (24%) or advanced level (3%). That makes NaNoWriMo all the more important as a form of outreach to get students excited about writing. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it’s not about how well you write, it’s about how much you write or how often you write. As students go through the process, writing becomes a daily, habitual activity. Then, as they read other students’ work to provide feedback, they can see common writing conventions, pitfalls, and grammatical errors. By writing and reading everyday, students will become indoctrinated in the writing and reading process–which for some students will be the first time they have ever thought of it as fun.
2. Create community in your classroom
   Every teacher knows that the early months of the year, from September to December, are the pivotal months to create a friendly culture and positive environment within the classroom. By engaging students in a fun, educational, and creative way, you can build a community that promotes trust, kindness and unity. When students write together, give feedback together, and share ideas together–no surprise, it garners a feeling of togetherness. Not to go all High School Musical on you, but that feeling of camaraderie can do wonders for your class community.
3. Give students the chance to feel a sense of accomplishment
   Writing a novel is hard. (Just ask 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2015 me. None of us finished our novels–though 2014 me got pretty close.) With the ability to set a word count goal, your students can set an achievable goal for NaNoWriMo. You can track their progress with Google Classroom and set up assignment goals for students to hit that match up with their personal goals, writing fluency and writing ability. Through a simple word count feature on the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program website, students can check their numbers periodically to get an idea of how they are doing on their monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Throughout the month, word count goals can be adjusted to reflect a more attainable goal if a student aimed too high on the first try. There’s no shame in always aiming high or taking into account circumstances, and students will feel great as they work toward accomplishing their goals. Just trying to write a novel is a commendable feat.
4. Incorporate new technologies in your classroom
   This is the biggie, especially since classroom technology continues to evolve on a daily basis. With Google Drive and Docs and Google Classroom, two apps within Google’s G Suite for Education, you can build your technology literacy and provide a classroom write-in environment that will extend beyond the physical walls of your classroom. It’s a digital age, and our students are online more than they are offline. With the cloud-based apps in G Suite for Education, you can see your students’ novels in real time as they work in a Google Doc and provide feedback (through the comments feature) that they can implement immediately as they write their novels.
5. Foster a positive and willing attitude in your students
   Look, not every student is going to become a famous author with millions of adoring fans and a snarky Twitter Feed that becomes the topic of several Buzzfeed articles. We cannot all be J.K. Rowling. However, that should not stop your students from trying out something new. Their participation in NaNoWriMo should be the start of a curious and inquisitive future that includes trying new things that are outside their comfort zones. Then again, maybe they will become famous and heavily lauded authors. Just hope they mention you on the dedication pages of their best-sellers!

To learn more about using technology to supplement your classroom, check out our Course Library for ELA courses with Teq Online PD. We offer courses on enhancing the writing process through technology, using digital tools for the writing process, narrative writing, and persuasive writing. Interested, but don’t have a subscription! No problem: Click on the link below for a free 7-day trial.