How to use this Page

Beginning June 25, I'm thrilled to announce that Suzanne Lieurance will be a guest blogger!

Suzanne Lieurance is a former classroom teacher, now a fulltime children’s author, freelance writer, and The Working Writer’s Coach. She teaches children’s writing for the Institute of Children’s Literature based in West Redding, Connecticut, and is the founder and director of the National Writing for Children Center.

Lieurance is the author of 20 published books and has written articles for a variety of magazines, newsletters, and ezines like Family-Fun, Kansas City Weddings, Instructor Magazine, New Moon for Girls, Children’s Writer, and many others. She hosts a talk show about children’s books, called Book Bites for Kids, every weekday afternoon on blogtalkradio.com.

Her daily topics will be:

Part 1 - June 25

GET READY - The Basics of Writing for Children: What You MUST Know Before You Get Started

Part 2 - June 26th

GET SET - How to Build Your Writing Resume Even BEFORE You Start Your Career

Part 3 - June 27th -

GO - How to Start Your Career as a Children's Writer

So, join Suzanne June 25-27...and tell all your friends!



Mary Cunningham Books

I finally sat down and created a short fiction rubric for the picture books my students are going to “publish” this-coming week. If you’re in the market for a rubric that provides space for students to self-assess their performance, then click here.

I'm writing a couple of assessment passages for a company right now, and I thought I'd share just a little of what's involved (without listing any details because of confidentiality agreements).

Some writers think writing passages for assessment companies just involves writing a story or poem or article at the correct grade level. But there's more to it than that. It's true that some companies do buy already published pieces in the form they were published in. The writer gets paid and does no more work. Sweet!

But most passages are commissioned for the testing materials, and writing them involves specific skills. The most important one, and the one most difficult to achieve, is writing in a way that lets items (multiple choice questions) be written about that passage. It's kind of the same idea as when you work on picture book manuscripts and "leave room for the illustrator." In passages, you must "leave information for the item writer."

For instance, I'm working on a poem for a particular grade level for a particular state. So the testing company has sent me a copy of the language arts standards for that state (and companies do this about half the time, and I love it). I need to write this poem in a way that 12 items can be asked from it. That's a lot of questions about one poem (or very short article or story). 

But I can use the standards as I create the poem. One standard says that students will be able to use prefixes and suffixes to define words. So as I revise my poem, I make sure to include two to three words that use common prefixes and suffixes, like un-, dis-, and -ly. Another standard says students will be able to identify the setting of a literary passage. So I make sure I have references to time of day, time of year, and general place in my poem.

I don't try to meet every single language arts standard in this one poem. But any standard that I can work in, within reason, I do. I want the item writer to have plenty to work with.

If you pursue passage-writing work, make sure to give your passages plenty of depth, so that the item writer and the editor will be happy to read your work!