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Posts from the ‘PAWLP’ Category

Aug 26

WCWP Summer Camp!

What an incredible summer we had at Young Writers Young Readers! Our campers filled the weeks with creativity, imagination, and unforgettable memories, making this one of our most successful summer camps yet.

One of the biggest highlights was our Camp Carnival, where campers enjoyed exciting games, laughter, and plenty of opportunities to celebrate all of their hard work throughout the summer. We also loved seeing everyone’s creativity shine during Tie-Dye Day, as campers designed colorful shirts that captured the fun and spirit of camp.

We were also thrilled to welcome Looker Books, giving families the opportunity to browse and purchase fantastic books to inspire young readers and writers long after camp ended. It was wonderful to see campers leave with new stories to enjoy at home.

Thank you to all of our campers, families, staff, and supporters who made this summer such a tremendous success. Your enthusiasm, creativity, and love of storytelling are what make our camp so special!

Looking Ahead: Summer Camp 2026–2027

The excitement doesn’t stop here! We’re already preparing for our 2026–2027 Summer Camp, and we can’t wait to reveal our brand-new theme: Broadway!

Get ready for a summer filled with show-stopping stories, dramatic adventures, creative writing, theater-inspired activities, and plenty of opportunities to let your imagination take center stage.

Before summer arrives, be sure to join us for our first event of the 2026–2027 year:

Camp Reunion: Sea Adventure

Reconnect with your camp friends as we set sail on an unforgettable adventure featuring a unique blend of:

  • Dungeons & Dragons-inspired roleplaying
  • Choose Your Own Adventure storytelling
  • Creative writing
  • Hands-on crafts

It’s the perfect way to kick off another exciting year of imagination, creativity, and fun!

Be sure to follow @WCWP_YWYR on social media to stay up to date on camp announcements, upcoming events, registration information, and all the exciting adventures we have planned. We can’t wait to see familiar faces and welcome new campers for another unforgettable year!

Bobby Rea is an ESL teacher at Penn’s Grove Middle School in the Oxford Area School District. He is also the Youth Director for the West Chester Writing Project.

Aug 19

Demo Lesson – Using Museums to Compare Nonfiction Texts

As we gear up for a new school year and classrooms begin to buzz with the energy of back-to-school in-service days, I’m excited to share the final lesson demo from this summer’s West Chester Writing Project Summer Institute. This lesson, created by Abby Boquist, invites students to use museum exhibits and artifacts as nonfiction texts, encouraging them to compare perspectives, analyze multimodal sources, and think critically about how information is presented. It’s the perfect reminder that meaningful literacy experiences can extend far beyond the pages of a book—and a timely dose of inspiration as we begin imagining the possibilities for the year ahead.

And stay tuned to the West Chester Writing Project for an exciting opportunity this year! Through a Library of Congress grant, teachers will have the chance to visit local museums and develop primary source-based lessons to bring back to their classrooms. More details coming soon!

Demo Lesson Slides – BoquistDownload

Abby Boquist is an 8th-grade English teacher at Charles F. Patton Middle School in Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. She is also pursuing her Masters in English on the Writing, Teaching, & Criticism track at West Chester University. If she’s not visiting a museum, she is probably writing about a museum, talking about a museum, or figuring out how to incorporate museums into her teaching.

Jul 29

Book Review: The Confidence to Write

Overview

Writer’s Block. Imposter syndrome. Fear of simply being perceived as a writer. The roller coaster of emotions that can spiral through all students, teachers, and writers alike are unpacked authentically in Liz Prather’s third book, The Confidence to Write: A Guide for Overcoming Fear and Developing Identity as a Writer. Throughout, she pulls from her personal experience as a high school creative writing teacher in a gifted program at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. 

While many pedagogical books approach writing in a way that seems methodical, what I appreciated most about this book is the colloquial voice that Prather took when writing it. This book felt less like a “how to” from an expert, and more like a conversation between teachers of writing. In it, she unpacks her own personal fears as a writer and teacher of writing, and offers a plethora of tools, metawrites, and techniques to try out in your classroom to help students grow as writers. 

Big Ideas 

While highlighting the importance of writing overall, Prather clearly defines writing identity with precision and unpacks the fears of being vulnerable as a writer. Throughout the book, overcoming the fears that accompany writing, discussing healthy modes of communication, and understanding where procrastination and perfectionism stem from within a writer are unpacked. In this, she discusses how a writer’s self identity and social identity both influence and feed into the formulation of one’s writing identity. Since writing is such a personal and vulnerable experience, writing identity has to be closely defined and developed by the writer’s experiences themself. 

Pedagogical Tools

This book is constantly acting as an applicable tool for the writing teacher. Whether it’s presenting techniques to break down student walls and apprehensiveness toward writing, connecting with students, building up their writing autonomy, and so forth, Prather gives a litany of resources for teachers. Something as simple and applicable as her metawrites that have students reflect on themselves as a writer while actively engaging in the writing practice is something that all educators can easily adapt into their classroom practices. Establishing routines for writers and bringing to light the overarching anxieties that come with writing so that students don’t feel alone and are willing to challenge themselves are constantly put into practice throughout this book. Overall, one thing stood out: for a writing teacher to be effective, they have to be authentic and vulnerable with their students as well. 

Throughout the entire book, Prather provides a wide range of resources for teachers to pull and immediately embed into their lessons when appropriate. Her metawrite prompts and anchor charts are embedded throughout all chapters, varying based on the general goal or focus for writing itself. The metawrites are constructed in such a way that it pushes students as writers, while also making them aware of their own writing habits and purpose as a writer. All of the metawrites brought higher-level thinking to the writing process as a whole for students in a way that was attainable for a wide range of ages. 

Recommended! 

Personally, as a middle school writing teacher, I found this book to be both comforting and helpful. I saw many of the anchor charts and metawrite prompts as tools that I could immediately incorporate into my own classroom. For the metawrite prompts in particular, they felt attainable for a wide range of ages and ability levels while still reaping the full span of benefits. For my seventh graders, these prompts felt very attainable, but I could see the same prompts being applied to a high school English classroom and continuing to bring an awareness and new depth of understanding of the process of writing itself to all students. I especially liked the way the prompts pushed students’ writing abilities, while also making them aware of their own choices and thought processes as a writer. 

The same struggles I face everyday as a writing teacher, and the struggles that I watch my students face every day were brought to light and were normalized. I think as teachers, we strive for perfectionism with our students out of love, but that puts an incredible weight on our own shoulders. I think this book is a great resource and tool for all writing teachers to see easy ways that they can debunk writing anxieties for students, while also providing themselves with tools and the realization that their experiences are universal when teaching and writing in the classroom. 

Lauren Durante is a seventh grade writing teacher in the Avon Grove School District and a graduate student at West Chester University. 

Jun 26

Research and Reflections on Building a High School Writing Center

Throughout the past year, I had the opportunity to work alongside two truly brilliant educators to research, reflect, and write about one of the projects I’m most proud to be part of: bringing a university-supported writing center into our high school. This program is a collaborative effort between classroom teachers, university faculty, and preservice teachers, all centered around one simple belief – every student deserves an authentic audience and meaningful support as a writer.

The article shares how the program came to life, what we learned along the way, and why partnerships like these can make such a difference for both high school students and future teachers. In the introduction, we explain, “This case study matters because it outlines the importance of school-university partnerships, while it also offers insight into how school-university partnerships can evolve over time to better support preservice teacher development, secondary writing instruction, and cross-institutional collaboration.” Building community through writing has always been at the heart of my instruction, and this research is a reminder that some of the best learning happens when classrooms extend beyond their own four walls.

The above image is shared during mentor training and illustrates the various roles and responsibilities pre-service teachers take on through this partnership.

If you’re interested in creating a writing center, partnering with a local university, or simply curious about what this kind of collaboration can look like, I hope you’ll give it a read. You can find the full article here: ‘It’s a Win-Win Situation’— Cultivating University & School Partnerships.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

May 21

Readers Are Writers: Using Romeo and Juliet as a Mentor Text

A cornerstone of my literature instruction is to treat every text as a mentor text. I want my students to see that readers are writers and writers are readers — even when the text feels intimidating at first. Lately, my high school ELD students have been studying Romeo and Juliet, and while Shakespeare’s language can feel overwhelming, his figurative language is actually the perfect invitation into creative writing.

Today’s lesson focused on similes and metaphors from the scenes when Romeo and Juliet first meet and later speak on the balcony. Before diving into Shakespeare’s lines, we started with a low-pressure brainstorm warm-up. Students made lists of people, foods/flavors, activities, sensory experiences, and things in nature that make them happy. This gave everyone a bank of ideas and images to pull from later.

Next, we reviewed teacher-generated examples of figurative language together:

  • “Mrs. Selter’s smile shines bright like the sun.”
  • “Ms. Virgin is a tornado of energy dropping assignments on our desks as she twirls around the room.”

We talked about the two parts of each comparison and discussed the deeper meaning behind the imagery. The goal was not just identifying similes and metaphors, but understanding what each comparison communicates.

Then students collaborated with partners to create their own figurative sentences. They:

  1. Chose a topic card (“my best friend,” “school,” “the first day of school,” etc.)
  2. Chose a positive or negative image from the board (“rollercoaster,” “sunflower,” “hug,” “volcano,” “traffic,” “broken pencil”)
  3. Combined the ideas into original similes and metaphors

This part of the lesson was so much fun because the combinations led to some fresh and original figurative comparisons. Afterward, students completed a gallery walk where they read classmates’ examples, wrote down three favorites, and illustrated one image that stood out to them.

The second half of class brought us back to Shakespeare. Together, we studied six figurative language examples from Romeo and Juliet. We color-coded the “focus” of the comparison (Juliet, her eyes, Romeo, our love) in pink and the comparison image (sun, stars, lightning, dove) in blue. This visual support helped students clearly see how figurative language is constructed while also discussing the emotional meaning behind the imagery.

To support independent writing, I broke the lines we studied into accessible sentence stems students could build from:

  • “If ___’s ___ were ___, it would…”
  • “Our ___ is like ___.”
  • “___ is a/an ___.”

Students then returned to their original brainstorm lists and began crafting their own figurative writing independently.

A cornerstone of my writing instruction is writing alongside my students. Throughout the lesson, I pause to model my own thinking, draft examples in real time, and share both the writing that works and the writing that absolutely does not. I want students — especially language learners — to see that strong writing is not about getting it perfect on the first try. It’s about experimenting with language, revising ideas, and sometimes laughing at the metaphors that flop before finding one that finally clicks.

As a culminating activity, students will choose one figurative sentence they crafted and turn it into a “figurative doodle” that we’ll publish on our classroom writing walls. I also create and share my own finished figurative doodle as an example before students begin their final project. Having a teacher model gives students guidance and inspiration, but I think it also communicates something important: I’m not asking them to do anything I’m unwilling to do myself. We’re all writers in the room together.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Apr 22

Happy National Poetry Month!

Poetry is not a one-month or one-unit experience in my classroom. Instead, I intentionally weave it into our literature work all year long because it deepens engagement and adds meaning for both me and my students. Here are a few small ways I weaved poetry into our lessons this month:

Using Poetry to Teach Character Development

We’ve been working on direct and indirect characterization, so I pulled an excerpt from Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. In the passage, Jude describes her cousin using both “telling” and “showing,” which made it a perfect mentor text.

After analyzing the character development, students wrote their own short character poems about someone in their life. To support my ELD students, I gave them a simple structure:

  • Start with what the person wears
  • Show personality through what they do
  • Include what they say

The scaffolding helped a lot—students who might normally struggle to get started were able to jump right in, and the results were thoughtful, funny, and surprisingly detailed.

Turning the Lens Inward: Writing About Themselves

As an extension, students wrote poems about their own identities. We used “Weird”, a poem from Just Like Me by Vanessa Brantley-Newton for a mentor text.

After noticing how the poem builds around a single adjective, students chose one word to describe their “best quality” and used it as the foundation for their own poem. I gave them some sentence starters, which helped keep the writing flowing while still allowing for individuality.

This activity ended up being one of my favorites—there’s something powerful about giving students space to name and celebrate who they are.

Exploring Conflict Through Poetry

We’re also studying literary conflict, so I had students read an excerpt from The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. First students reviewed conflict by noticing how the speaker reveals both internal and external conflict, especially around anger.

Then they wrote their own “conflict poems” using the stem:

Teacher, since you asked, I’ll tell you why I’m so ______…

What followed was honest, reflective writing that went way beyond what I typically see in more traditional assignments.

Letting It Go (Literally)

To keep building on conflict, we read “What She Asked” by Virginia Euwer Wolff. Before reading, we talked about what students do after conflict—walk it off, listen to music, talk to someone, etc.

Then I shared how I sometimes write to process frustration, which led into the activity.

After studying the mentor poem, students used the line:

Remember that classroom afternoon, every big and little thing was wrong…

…and created their own lists of annoyances, frustrations, and lingering conflicts.

After a few minutes of writing, I had them tear the page out, fold it into a paper airplane, and we ended class with a throwing contest—sending those problems flying down the hallway.

It was chaotic in the best way—and a surprisingly cathartic ending to the lesson.

Version 1.0.0

Final Thoughts

None of these activities took more than a class period. Each one connected directly to our curriculum, and all of them got students writing, thinking, and (maybe even) enjoying poetry.

Poetry doesn’t have to live in April. It doesn’t need its own unit or elaborate setup. It can slip right into what you’re already teaching—and sometimes, that’s when it works best.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

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