Not only are vampires big business in the latest book series and on the big screen, but vampires took center stage during the Coalfield Writers annual summer creative writing camp for middle school students.

As books, movies, and television shows featuring vampires and paranormal features continues to ride a wave of popularity, Coalfield Writers teachers decided to design the annual summer camp to capitalize on the current literacy interests of most middle school students, and Vamp Camp was born.

Camp was held June 21 through 25 at Chapmanville Middle school, with 25 campers meeting daily. Throughout the week many fun activities captivated the students, but underneath the fun was a multitude of beneficial academic skills.
The lessons of Vamp Camp focused on the traits of good story

So what do teachers do during summer? Do they spend time lounging at the pool? Do they read many books? Do they vacation at the beach? Certainly they do all of those things, and additionally, they work. The idea of a teacher taking summer vacation with three months of free days is a stereotype that does not fit most hard working teachers who wish to strengthen their classroom practice. Instead, most teachers spend portions of their so-called summer break in professional development programs designed to deepen their understanding of learning, and as soon as school was dismissed this year a large group of area teachers began the first round of professional development sessions.

This year Coalfield Writers, a satellite of Marshall University Writing Project, offered the opportunity for teacher consultants of the site to participate in a Resource Development Retreat. The program was designed to allow participating teachers large blocks of time to envision and create programs that would strengthen offerings in all area schools.

Students in Andréa Santos' Spanish classes at Logan High School modeled poetry after Latino poet Martín Espada's tribute poem "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's "I'm Explaining a Few Things". See video below...

This is a video of my second grade class doing their first newscast! They came up with the idea and I filmed it for them! They did a really good job :)

Marshall University Writing Project, in association with Coalfield Writers and Logan County Schools, hosted a spring Creative Writing Camp for students. The theme for this camp wass FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES and all classes had literacy lessons that involved movie night.

Friday Night at the Movies was a creative writing camp program with separate classes for students in grades 2, 3 - 5, 6 – 8 and 9 - 12. Camp was held on the evening of March 12, 2010 at Logan High School and was open to all area students in grades 2 through 12 this school year.

Coalfield Writers 2010 Summer Institute will be held at Logan High School from 9 a.m. till 3:30 daily, June 14 through July 2, 2010. There will be 5 additional follow up days for participants to complete during the fall term.

Upon successful completion of the institute Summer Institute fellows earn a stipend of $500 paid through Marshall University Writing Project.

Additionally, fellows can choose to earn 6 hours of graduate credit (3 for the summer institute and 3 for the fall follow up program) with tuition completely waived.

Marshall University Writing Project Offers VAMP CAMP Summer Creative Writing Program for Middle School Students

This summer Marshall University Writing Project, Coalfield Writers and Logan County Schools will hold a summer creative writing program for middle school students. The theme of this year’s camp is VAMP CAMP.

VAMP CAMP is open to students of all area schools, currently enrolled in grades four through eight. During Vamp Camp students will engage in a variety of fiction writing opportunities, themed around vampire stories.

Tracy added a video from Round Up 2009. While we work out Firefox VS Internet Explorer issues, click here to watch it. Sorry about that. Our site works well with Firefox, but IE sometimes throws a huge monkey wrench into the works. I may or may not find a work-around to the problem.

Rituals
Crystal Howell

We walk down the street, the napes of our necks pinking in the clear New Mexican sun. The church is modern—white stucco, clean lines—but the talk, dark doors beckon, and we decide to enter.

My eyes register only dimness for a few moments, the cool stone floor absorbing the candles’ small light. I wipe my hand across my face, but the palpable stillness that clouds my vision doesn’t dissipate. My friend, the lapsed Catholic turned yoga devotee, dips her fingers in the grey stone basin before crossing herself. She saunters down the side aisle and stops near the altar, fumbling in her bag for two dollars, enough for the big candle. She’s lighting if for her grandmother—her grandmother who right now, as we head to the flea market, is dying. The sticks to light the candles are stuck in a small urn of sand, but she can’t seem to find them so I reach her one. “Thank you,” she replies, placing the clean white candle on the wooden stand with the others.

This is not my ritual, the calm rhetoric and routine of the rosary. My protestant sense of reality has undone a little of this mystery. But I find two dollars for the box, and line my candle up beside its brothers and sisters. And together they are a choir, a visual song of prayers that I imagine must be beautiful to look on from above

Adopt art as the next R in one of the recommendations for media literacy, according to Jason Ohler. Read the whole text at the link.