Ella is a really sweet and motivated student in our Spring 2023 GMU program at Daniels Run. Here is a photo of her with tutor Ingrid during Session 3. Ella's book, called "Lillie to the Rescue," tells a lot of adventures about a unishorkie named Lilly and her best friend, a pomeranian/cheetah named Marcus. 

Week three really special because our students continued to develop their stories, and they even got to meet Elea (Founder of KCW) as she was in the area this week! It was such an important session, as our students also began to include their drawings in their stories, and some are even almost done!

"She's so excited and ambitious each session to keep writing and develop her story. I always look forward to our sessions because even while she's so productive, we still manage to have fun," says Nate, one of her tutors.

Week Three, Week Three, Week Three! We're already halfway through the program and can't believe it. During this session, our students worked hard on their stories, writing until page thirteen! To the right is a photo of tutor Lillie Tynch with students Vivienne and Sydney.

Write, Draw, Create! During week three, our students finished up their brain maps and worked hard on their stories. To the left you'll find tutor Kaitlyn and student Aaliya. Aaliya is writing a creative story about a microwave that exploded and turned her main characters into really small people, and they got transported through someone's ear and into their brain! 

During week two, our students developed their story plots and began writing. It was a really exciting experience, as this was the the first time our George Mason tutors were helping students start their stories in the Kids Can Write program! Below is a photo of tutor Gazal (to the left) and student Noelle (to the right). 

It's already week two! Our students went over important adjectives and adverbs and began writing their stories. Here's a photo of tutor Kavya Shankar and student Vivienne K. Vivienne made a lot of drawings during this session for her story... look at how creative she is! You can see the drawings of the plane she'll include in her story, which is about a girl named Annie who goes to the wrong airport!

The Neuro Program has been such an exciting adventure! During the Neuroscience Lesson of Week Two, our students learned about neurons and drew their own neuron characters which will be illustrated in their books. To the left, you can see tutor Brianna with student Logan. The paper that Logan's holding to the left represents his neuron characters... Logan's neuron characters are hairy jelly beans with unique personalities and different colors. The paper he's holding to the write is his brain map that his characters will travel through. 

Here is a photo of our tutor team before entering Daniels Run Elementary School for our first session on 2/17/23! Today, our students explored different character ideas and created their character summaries. They also went through their plot ideas and created timeline maps. Our tutors can't wait for week two!

The Kids Can Write Program has begun its second program at Virginia Tech! We're continuing to tutor at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, and are so excited to work with our fifteen new students thrilled to become published authors. This week, they created their character summaries and drew their timeline maps. 

This is a photo of our tutor team walking to Gilbert Linkous Elementary School for our first session on 2/16/23! We are a team of 15 tutors and are working with 10 kids in the 3rd-5th grade. They're going to have a lesson on Neuroscience each week, and write a story about the brain. Their stories are fictive, but they're already thinking of their characters as neurons and neurotransmitters!

Today, we'll be featuring student Gretchen and tutor Elea! Gretchen is a student at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, and she participated in KCW's online tutoring program during Fall of 2022. Over the course of the program, Elea helped Gretchen develop her story and publish her first book in a fascinating series Gretchen plans to continue in Spring 2023!

Today, we had our Concluding Ceremony to celebrate our 15 students who finished their books and became official authors! It was such a wonderful experience to meet all of the parents and give our students their Gold Star Trophies and Certificates of Achievement! This whole semester has been such an invaluable experience that we'll all cherish with us forever.

Today was our final session before the Program Concluding Ceremony! Our students published their books and ordered them on Amazon, wrote their thoughts on the program, and took photos with their tutors. It has been such a wonderful journey to witness each student go from thinking of a character, to creating an entire world for them to thrive in, and publishing their own stories. It has been an invaluable experience for each of us tutors to witness the power of creativity and dedication.

This week, our students finished writing their books! We worked on finalizing the covers and completing final edits in the stories. They also created "About Me" pages in their books. Most students will have even published their books by our next session!! 

Covers Covers Covers!! During Week Four, our students had the chances to create their Book Covers with their Tutors through the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform! They were so creative with creating their covers on the platform. Each student had a different cover photo to display what their books were about, and some students even drew pictures for their cover photo!

Today we'll be featuring tutor Zavier and student Annie! "My student Annie must be the most talented artist I have ever seen at her age. She’s doing all the illustrations for her book which is about a kitty getting lost in the woods who learns to not stray too far from her parents. Along the way she meets Max the Dog and finds pretty flowers," Zavier said.

During Week Three, we worked on staying on track in the plot of the stories! The tutors helped their students make a revised timeline map and work with their students to get the books to about 20 pages. By next week, all of the students will have accounts made on the publishing website, and we'll begin working on the book covers!

Week Two was all about learning important things to keep in mind while writing and helping our students reach 16 pages in their books! Before our third week session, they're going to learn more about the self-publishing process as they went home with a "How To" pamphlet that teaches how to use Kindle Direct Publishing online. 

This is a photo of our tutor team walking to Gilbert Linkous Elementary School for our first session on 9/30/22!