I’m starting to think about curriculum for the year (it’s better than just thinking about all the things that can go horribly, horribly wrong). While I know I want to run my class as a workshop, and I know I want to use mentor texts, there are a lot of things still up in the air. But I had an idea today that I think might be fun.
Recently a website called Significant Objects was featured on Daily Candy. The way it works is the people running the site buy some random tchotchke at a garage sale or thrift store. They send that object to a writer, who then writes a story about it (totally fictional, in no way supported by anything other than the writer’s imagination). The object and a copy of the story are then put up for sale on ebay, with all proceeds going to the writer.
The part that interests me is looking at how the objects inform the stories – they all play major roles, but some stories, like this one by Curtis Sittenfeld, use the item as an inspiration even to the characters, whereas others tell a story through the item itself.
I don’t think I’d want to do a whole genre study around these, but I could see doing a focus lesson on the concept and then having a binder with copies of some of these stories to use as mentor texts, as well as a bin of what would basically be random crap that kids could then write about. They could be incredibly creative but would have to have deeply studied an object and really thought about ways in which it could be used to be able to write something like this.
What do you think? Interesting concept with possible classroom usage, or would transferring it to a school setting be kind of lame?
(Read the story behind the pictured Significant Object here.)