Brooklyn Community High School of Communications, Arts & Media (BCAM), Arts & Media, Bedford-Stuyvesant, District 13

Patricia McCormick, Purple Heart: A fiction writing workshop.

Workshop 1: April 5, 2011
Workshop 2: May 10, 2011

Grade 11

After reading Patricia McCormick’s Purple Heart, 11th grade students at BCAM participated in a Behind the Book program with the book’s author. Prior to Ms. McCormick’s first visit, the class watched the movie The Hurt Locker and discussed the theme of child versus soldier. Their teacher gave them writing prompts in order to understand soldiers better, such as: what would the soldier in the book put in his duffel bag? Students also wrote responses to reading prompts in their journals. Ms. McCormick’s began her first visit with a PowerPoint presenting statistics about the Iraq War (focused particularly on what kind of demographics fight in the war). Ms. McCormick critiqued and commented on students journals and their answers to reading prompts. On her second visit, Ms. McCormick had the class complete a writing prompt in response to a quotation. In the New York Regents exams, students have to respond to a quotation with references to two pieces of literature, so Ms. McCormick’s prompt enabled the students to use her book as one of those sources. The students later built this writing into literary analysis essays. During Ms. McCormick’s visit, the students also discussed the book’s ending and responded to various quotes from the book with a free write. The students were curious about how Ms. McCormick wrote a book about a male soldier fighting in the Iraq War, seeing as how her lifestyle is not similar to that of her protagonist. In answering, Ms. McCormick talked about the other books she’s written and how she goes about writing fiction using her journalistic skills. This led to a discussion about writing as a craft. For the students’ final project, they perfected their literary analysis essays.

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