Programs

While every aspect of our programming promotes student voices, no program does so quite like our flagship publishing program: the Young Authors’ Book Project. YABP includes students in every aspect of writing, editing, and publishing from the rough pages of drafting to the polished pages of a professionally published product. Past partners have included Capital City Public Charter School and DC’s 2016 Teacher of the Year Topher Kandik of the SEED School of Washington. Our most recent YABP book, “This Time They Hear You,” is a fully illustrated collection of science-inspired fairytales, each written by a third-grade author from Bridges Public Charter School!

Mondays through Thursdays can be rough thanks to all the homework that comes with the daily academic grind. From 3:30-6:00pm, though…POOF! The work gets done during our two-hour Monday-Thursday volunteer-supported homework help sessions, complete with a half hour of creative writing. AWL Registration for the 2018-2019 school year is now closed. If you’re interested in having your student write with us next year, fill out the form below and we’ll email you when registration opens again!

In these two-hour, action-packed, teamwork-centered, Common-Core-ticking, publishing-focused writing sessions, DC-based students and teachers participate in the writing process from brainstorming to holding a freshly bound book. Beginning in October 2018, Field Trips are available to DC-based schools on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10am-12pm. 826DC’s Field Trips are entirely free for Title 1 schools. Other schools may request Field Trips and are charged on a sliding scale, but in adherence with our mission, partnerships with Title 1 schools take priority. Unfortunately, we cannot provide transportation. We currently offer the Storytelling & Bookmaking Field Trip. All other Field Trips will be available at a later date. If you’d like to join us for a Field Trip, contact Emily.

Grades 1-4 A dynamic group storytelling activity where students write collaboratively before they complete the narrative on their own. Each student leaves with an individualized book.

Grades 4-7 Students write a Choose Your Own Adventure story that includes alternate situations and endings in an interactive adventure of both group and individual writing.

Grades 7-10 Students become poets when they delve deep into the world of sonnets and blazons. After creating collages for inspiration, students write an individual poem and have the option to perform their work.

Grades 7-10 Through close examination of a scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the parallel scene in West Side Story, a musical based on the Shakespearean play, students learn how authors use different mediums to convey emotion, love, and narrative tension. Students will rewrite their own version of a scene from the classic love story and perform their work in front of their class.

Know a young writer just bursting with ideas? Want to give the reluctant reader a way into new worlds? Join us for any one of our wonderful Saturday or Evening Writing Workshops where, in two hours, young writers will explore a new topic and leave with a piece of writing of which they can be proud. Upcoming Workshops: Check back soon! Click here to register for upcoming workshops (English) // Haga clic aquí para registrarse en los próximos talleres (en Español)      

826DC’s Saturday literacy program, Reading All-Stars, provides DC Public School students with individualized, one-on-one literacy mentorship and enrichment at their school. Volunteer mentors and students build writing and reading skills together, as well as a deeper love for the written word, all while working closely with school administrators and teachers to reinforce and build on classroom learning. Plus, the kids get lots of stickers! Saturday literacy programs are co-led by a dedicated team of volunteers and supported by committed volunteer mentors. Our current Saturday literacy program partner school is Harriet Tubman Elementary School.**Students must attend Harriet Tubman Elementary School in order to be eligible for this program.** Interested in registering as a student or volunteering with Reading All-Stars? Email ReadingAllStars@826dc.org for more information.  

826DC offers support to teachers in the K-12 classroom though this program, one of our most flexible and teacher-driven. Teachers can choose a curriculum delivery model or for 826DC small group/one-on-one support. In-Schools can range from one class period to multi-week sessions.

The program is 100% free to schools, teachers, and students.

Editing and Publishing 826DC joined five classrooms of 11th grade students to work in small groups on revisions for a personal memoir project around food writing over the course of two days. 826DC then worked remotely with the students via Google Docs to proofread and copyedit their work. Finally, 826DC designed and published a collection of the students’ writing and corresponding recipes. Poetry Writing Workshop During National Poetry Month in April, 826DC led a poetry writing workshop for a group of 9th-12th graders, focusing on a reading and discussing a poem and guiding the students through writing poetic responses to the work. Students’ poems were subsequently submitted for publication consideration on the Poetry Foundation’s website. Group Storytelling 826DC led a storytelling writing workshop with 1st-3rd graders. We introduced the students to the basics of any narrative (protagonist/hero, antagonist/villain, plot, setting, characters, and dialogue), and then guided the students through writing the story as a group. The students then wrote their own individual endings to the story and illustrated the pages themselves. Each student received a bound copy of the book to keep.

Realistic Fiction Over three days, 826DC led a lesson with 7th graders to build their “show, don’t tell” descriptive language skills.

LoNoMeMo (Local Novel Mentoring Month) 826DC volunteers served as mentors for high school students who (frantically) wrote 50,000 word novels within the span of a month.