ABOUT
At Super Saturdays, students participate in a presenter’s workshop, which includes demonstration, mentor texts, engaging strategies, writing time, and sharing. These sessions take place on select Saturdays, usually for an hour. This year, Super Saturday is offering workshops for grades 8-12!
Our Super Saturdays use a "lab school" model, in which teachers and students participate in the presenter’s workshop lesson together in small groups, generally including the following: mini-lesson on writing craft, study of a mentor text, demonstration of innovative and engaging pedagogical strategies, large blocks of time for students and teachers to write, and sharing writing in small groups or whole group.
Student Event Schedule
10:00am - 10:30am* - Registration in front of Sweeney Hall Courtyard
10:30am - 12:00pm - Super Saturday lesson led by Teacher Consultant
*Students will not be let into the classroom until 10:30am as teachers in attendance will be pre-briefing the lesson with our presenting teacher.
Super Saturdays
with Girl on the Line author FAITH GARDNER
Writing for Publication
So you think you want to be a writer—but how do you actually become one? How do you go from writing words on a page to getting published? Professional fiction writers almost always start with building a list of publishing credits in magazines, literary journals, or blogs. This class will provide young writers with a space to work on their first pieces to submit to publications. Along with writing exercises, we will be going over the steps and different pathways that lead to publication for creative writing, how to find the right publication for your work, how to submit, and how to polish up your submission so it's in the best shape possible when you're ready to send it out.
About the
Instructor
Faith Gardner
Faith Gardner is the author of GIRL ON THE LINE, THE SECOND LIFE OF AVA RIVERS, and PERDITA. Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of online and print publications. When she's not writing, she works at Daily Kos and plays in the band Plot 66.
GRADES 8-12
Writing Without BS: Guiding Students Toward Authentic Analysis
Students complain often and loudly that they hate writing. But could it be that what you hate is not writing itself, but the odious requirements we teachers attach to it? Perhaps the real problem is not writing, but pre-determined essay forms, minimum lengths for papers, and strict adherence to formal conventions, all of which lead inevitably to BS—the true agony of writing.
What might a writing class look like if we taught you to place your trust not in easily gamed formulas (see: ChatGPT), but in your own powers of perception and communication? And how might we balance this preference with the practical challenges of teaching writing—without BS? In this workshop we will consider what BS is, the ways your learning might contribute to it, and how we can liberate ourselves from it.
Super Saturday Lab School Lesson with Marty Brandt
Super Saturday 2023
ALL GRADE LEVELS
Guiding and Coaching
Your Aspiring Writer
You receive an email notification from your child granting you permission to comment and edit their writing assignment. You click to open, apprehensive of what the document might contain. Remembering that your child is being vulnerable by sharing their writing with you, you hesitate to respond, fearful that your comments may sound overly critical or insincere. Worse yet, you don't even know where to start providing feedback! This parent workshop will give strategies to guide and coach your aspiring writer with confidence. We will talk about how to help your child improve sentences and how to affirm and gently nudge children to expand their idea development.
Jaime Koo was a middle school Language Arts teacher in Milpitas for 10 years. She is now a Parent Engagement Coordinator at the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
with JAIME KOO
Super Saturday
for Parents
About the
Instructors
Marty Brandt
Martin Brandt has been teaching English at Independence High School in San Jose for 31 years. He joined the San Jose Area Writing Project in 2003 and has since won the CATE award for Classroom Excellence and been honored by the Carlston Family Foundation (now Above & Beyond) as an Outstanding Teacher of America. His book Between the Commas: Sentence Instruction that Builds Confident Writers (and Writing Teachers) was published by Heinemann in 2019.