Dive Brief:

• Each November, eighth-graders in teacher Laura Bradley's English class complete full, original novels in just 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month. 
• The exercise — which many students find scary at first — is Bradley's attempt to get students to take more ownership of their writing, according to a video from Edutopia.
• Bradley says her students often surprise her with their dedication to character development and carefully-scripted plots, which have centered on everything from corrupt governments to escaping off an island and dealing with a sick relative.

Dive Insight:

Bradley's novel-writing challenge draws from a number of established pedagogical concepts, including project-based learning — an approach seeking to bring in more real-world experiences for students and often operating under deadline pressure, the way tasks in one's job might. Ideal project-based learning assignments also hit the upper tiers of researcher Reuben Puentedura's SAMR model, where students are given the chance to disseminate their work to a wider, global audience (in this case by publishing their novels on Amazon). 

The daunting breadth of the assignment also calls to mind the concept of grit and the work of the University of Pennsylvania's Angela Duckworth, which posits that perseverance and sticking with difficult goals is a crucial 21st century skill that must be developed in students.

The ultimate goal of getting students to complete an entire novel in such a short timeframe is to get students thinking like writers and to take more ownership of their writing at an early age. Such an approach aligns well with standards such as Common Core that seek to elevate the rigor of literacy instruction beyond grammar and simple writing prompts. National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo for short, has even developed its own Young Writer's Program, and education-related resources tailored by grade level to help schools (and students) prepare.