Because every child's potential is fuel for the rest of their lives, let's drill for oil!

It will be a summer of productivity that feels like play!

REGISTER your child for Education Soaring's 2010 Literary Workshop and he or she will have the opportunity to author and illustrate a complete book! One to seven weeks in a small classroom setting with talented, successful writing and art instructors ensures unparalleled individual guidance and encouragement.

Each week can stand alone if one week is all that fits your child's schedule. (Your child's book will need to be completed outside of class, but the instructors will be available for periodic coaching sessions throughout July and August.) Multiple weeks of attendance will increase your child's literary skills and accomplishments exponentially, growth that will serve him or her invaluably throughout his or her entire school career.

Teachers will accommodate a range of learning styles (kinesthetic, audio, tactile and visual). Students will walk through the step-by step process of how an idea becomes a book: brainstorm, storyboard, write, critique, edit, print. Students who believe they have limited artistic skills will discover untapped talents, while others will have the opportunity to utilize already impassioned mediums.

Included in the program is a weekly book club in which a popular or classic book is reviewed, followed by questions prompting in-depth group discussions and deconstruction of the book's literary and conceptual elements.

Although students will be taught fundamental literary elements and themes, there will be no no cookie-cutter formulas, no compromising of any student's vision, and no required happy endings. Book-a-saurians are never wrong; perhaps unoriginal at worst.

The summer workshop will conclude with a "black-tie" book party, like a film premiere with books as larger than life (but accessible) and authors as the new rock stars. All registered Book-a-saurians and their guests will be invited to attend.

Literary Elements Taught

• Plot ~ plot chart, problem, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution

• Setting ~ time and place
  

• Characters ~ development of character revealed through situations and interactions with other characters

• Genre ~ students will choose their genre such as fiction, poetry, science fiction, expository,narrative, biography, autobiography, etc.

• Style ~ unique, recognizable, relatable

• Tenses ~ past, present, future

• Word Choice ~ descriptive words, adjectives, sensory, visceral

• Conventions ~ grammar, spelling, punctuation
  

Artistic Elements Taught

• Illustration ~ mediums include drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, comic book, collage, artistic penmanship

• Cover design

• Composition, layout and arrangement of text and images on a page

• Creative Writing

Long-term Academic Benefits

• Exponential expansion of literacy appreciation and involvment

• Improved reading and writing skills that can be applied throughout elementary, middle, high school, college, and on SATs and other standardized tests

• Studies show that in response to cyber and cellular texts as the primary form of our youth's communication, the human brain is adapting/declining. Prevent books from becoming an endangered species in your child's life.

• Time-management and ability to meet deadlines

• Learning to critique whether or not an idea or text is successful and WHY... does it alter opinions, biases, goals, and subsequent actions?

• Learning to constructively offer and receive suggestions that can be accepted or graciously declined

Benefits to Children as Developing Individuals

• Therapeutic outlet for any struggle in a child's life. The page is the healthiest place to accept and resolve conflicts over which the child has limited control

• Nurturing environment for every child's voice

• Confidence, pride, and humility through perseverance and accomplishment, ego not included

• Students experience the magic of filling pages with written text as they find their own rhythm.
  

• Empathy (inventing and writing about characters is a great exercise in simulating walking in someone else's shoes)

• Communication

• Organization