How You Can Help!

As always, we’ll love for more volunteers to help us continue our workshop.  You don’t even have to be local, as our workshop is entirely run online through web conferences and email.  You don’t have to be the best writer in the world to help!  All we ask for is some time and patience and love to help younger kids.  Whether you’re interested in maintaining our website and database or would love to work with the children and give lectures or edit essays, we’d really appreciate your help!  Send an email to teens_helping_kids@yahoo.com and we can get in touch!  Thanks!

-Xiaoxiao Lin  

How It All Works

THinK is an extracurricular activity designed for elementary school students by high schoolers. Every other week, there is a lecture given by the mentors through an online network conference application (we have used GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting as our primary conferences programs) to the elementary school students.

The lectures start with a brief biography of a famous writer, to get the students familiar with and interested in a wider range of authors

Afterwards, the lecture focuses on a specific aspect of writing (such as onomatopoeia, or varying sentence length). The newly introduced concept is internalized through a series of creative writing exercises, which allow the students to incorporate their imaginative ideas in an interesting way. Specific word games emphasizing the concept of the week are suggested for family play, again contributing to the fun factor.

After the lecture and exercises, there is a question and answer session, where students can freely ask questions to the instructors about anything they’ve learned. When every last question is answered, the session ends. Shortly following the session, a homework assignment is posted. This homework assignment requires the students to write a creative story, using the creative technique learned in the corresponding session and any others learned in previous sessions.

This story is submitted by a deadline (usually a few days before the next session) and graded by the instructors. The instructors make constructive comments and edits with regard to grammar, word choice, and appropriate use of creative techniques. The student receives this feedback immediately.

The process behind THinK is a very interactive one, which gets all parties involved (parents, students, instructors) in the process to work towards the common goal of improving the students’ writing.

-David Kim