Abstract of

A Writers' Camp in Action: A Community of Readers and Writers

Margaret A. Moore-Hart

At a writers' camp, teachers and children collaboratively write and learn together during the summer. Through student writing samples, this article shows how teachers and students apply journalistic techniques of observing, note-taking, and interviewing to collect information about their local community. Teachers and children taking part in the camp transform their observations, notes, and interviews into poems, descriptive paragraphs, or articles each morning. Each afternoon, teachers reflect on their experiences at the camp, consider applications of real-life writing and information collecting to their daily teaching, and think about ways to refine their teaching practice. These reflections illustrate ways teachers can modify and adjust instruction to help students with their writing. The article summarizes the benefits of this collaborative writing adventure for both children and teachers, with quotes from students suggesting how the camp helped struggling writers. The article concludes by suggesting ways classroom teachers might adapt the real-world writing for classroom use, as well as ways educators might modify the writers' camp to create alternative courses for teachers.

Abstract from Moore-Hart, M.A. (2005, December). A Writers' Camp in Action: A Community of Readers and Writers. The Reading Teacher, 59(4), 326–338. doi: 10.1598/RT.59.4.3