after The End

Teaching and Learning Creative Revision

Barry Lane

This book is unique in that it is not your traditional book on how to do revisions. The author, Barry Lane, provides the teacher with a wealth of ideas on how to perform creative revision. The majority of these ideas are springboards for other writing adventures.

The book is divided into two categories. The first category is creating a Language of Craft. Here are the sections included:

v Good writing is good questions- this section focuses on using questions about your writing to create new leads for your next writing adventure.

v More than wallpaper- there are some wonderful activities for leading the writer into using details to develop focus and meaning to their writing.

v Snapshots and thoughtshots-I found this section to be very helpful because it uses a variety of literature that emphasizes focusing in on an individual passage or object in the text. There are many helpful and fun exercises that teach the students how to write snapshots and thoughtshots.

v Don't make a scene! Build one-Use this section for creating scenes from books and their fictional characters. It also integrates the techniques that were taught in the previous sections.

v Explode a moment and shrink a century-This teaches the student about writing the way you would really like to live. In so doing, these become exploding moments and provide a wealth of creativity.

v Friction or Nonfiction-First, second, and third person writing are covered in this section. It also shows how to use graphs and webs to bring characters to life

v Don't fix my story, just listen to me-This is an excellent section on student conferencing using journals, atmosphere and dialogue between students and teacher.

The second category included in this book is called The Writer's Struggle. Included in this category are the following sections:

v But what if I can't freewrite? - This section presents alternatives to the ever so popular freewrite activity. There are activities for freethinking and starting completely new ideas for stories.

v See Dick revise. Revise, Dick, revise- it is obvious that the author intends to spoof up the text in these basals through creative writing activities.

v Voice and Choice-students learn about taking risk when using voice and choice in their writing.

v I probably shouldn't hand this to an English teacher-this chapter covers how to model risk taking strategies in writing.

v Words in collision-poetry revision is covered in this section. Looking at poems written by famous authors is a vital part of poetry revision in this chapter.

v Befriending the language-grammar and editing is tackled in this section through games and journal ideas.

After The End has a wide variety of ways to teach the student creative revision. Each chapter in this book contains specific activities to accommodate the lessons. They also have a section called Spin Offs, which have a variety of ideas to expand each lesson. I read through many of these Spin Offs and found them to be highly motivating for the teacher, as well as the student. I highly recommend this book to any teacher who wants to break away from the same monotonous writing strategies and provide some fresh new ways to approach writing in their classroom.