Writing through history

While history is written by the victors, historical fiction is sometimes written by middle schoolers.

About 25 Sacajawea Middle School students participated in a creative writing workshop Friday at the school’s library, a perfect place to inspire young writers. Laura Morgan, who teaches creative writing at the middle school, has been providing the workshop every other year for the past 10 years. This year, she received a $500 grant from the Alice Whitman Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution that helped pay for supplies, prizes and food. The involvement of the Daughters of the American Revolution also created the theme for the event: historical fiction.

Students learned from local historical fiction author Ida Smith, who spoke about how to write historical fiction and why people should read the genre.

They then put their knowledge to work with different writing exercises and prompts. One was a flash fiction piece where Morgan showed pictures and the students had to write a story on what they saw.

That was the favorite activity of Shayla Olson and Hailey Tiffany, two sixth graders at the workshop.

Tiffany said she enjoyed the challenge of writing the flash fiction piece because she wasn’t sure what the next picture would be to create a cohesive story.

“You have to make it up along the way,” she said.

Olson agreed the exercise helped get “the creative juices flowing.”

Another writing exercise was a dual poem about a historical event. Two students or a group of students were given a historical event, like the Mount St. Helens eruption, the Battle of Gettysburg, the bombing of Hiroshima, or historical figures like Rosa Parks and Amelia Earhart, to write a poem about, and then they presented it. Each student had one side of the poem they read individually and then some parts were read together. The poems weren’t showing opposing sides, but rather two different voices working together in a cadence.

Seventh graders Kaylee Roberts and Zora Rowden had the Battle of Gettysburg for their dual poem. They read through the article they had about the event, highlighting important details and wrote a rough draft. Like many rough drafts, it needed some work, Roberts said, so they reworked part of it to get a final draft to present.

Seventh graders Callie Fisher and Paytland Schnell were writing about the Mount St. Helens eruption, describing what happened and what people did.

Fisher said it was a bit easier to write about an event that happened in the region because she’s heard stories of the eruption from her grandma.

As students worked on their writing pieces, the library filled with chatter of brainstorming, idea sharing and groups practicing the poetry.

Sixth grader Evelyn Morgan said she enjoyed the event and having time to focus on writing with others.

“Everyone has the same interests so it’s easy to talk to people,” Evelyn Morgan said.

The workshop is by invitation only — some of the students are ones that Laura Morgan has had in class or were recommended by other language arts teachers. The workshop is an all-day event and students are excused from classes.

“Kids who are really into writing don’t really have a lot of opportunities,” Laura Morgan said. “It’s just a really cool thing I love to do for them.”

Brewster may be contacted at kbrewster@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2297.