I’ve spent a good portion of this year helping teachers unpack and design some pretty powerful writing experiences around this particular standard. I’ll admit that it’s my favorite. Sure, research and information writing teach us about the world, and stories help us learn how to live in it. Poets accomplish both of those things and more, but this is the standard that challenges young people to distinguish fact from fallacy and evidence from high emotion. This is…
“What is this?” Ava asked, pulling a fuzzy bit of string out of the tray that greeted the writers at her table. “I’m not sure,” I replied, teasing her a bit. “What could it be?” She considered this carefully, tilting her head a bit and pushing her glasses up with one finger. A tiny smile played across her lips. “I’ll bet we get to invent things with all of this stuff,” she guessed, scampering back…
I’ve spent much of this school year designing writing curricula with primary, elementary, and middle school teachers in different schools throughout western New York. Our process is iterative: We don’t design to deliver units to students. We are prototyping, piloting, and redesigning as we go, in response to what we learn from our clients: The young writers we serve. There is much to be gained by rethinking our roles as curriculum designers and the way…
I spent much of last week curled up on my couch designing writer’s workshop units while nursing a killer cold. One gorgeous silver lining: I’ve discovered lemon ginger tea. Another? I’ve had some time to think about how we do workshop a bit differently at the WNY Young Writer’s Studio. Over the years, we’ve become a community that is truly writer-centered. Shifting away from traditional workshop structures and leading from behind was more than a…
Over the last five years, I’ve had the good fortune to meet and write with a whole lot of kindergarteners, and when I ask them if they love to write, the majority tell me that they do. Enthusiastically. I’ve also had the good fortunate to meet and write with a whole lot of middle school students as well. But when I ask them if they love to write? The numbers are much lower, and their…
Adult writers are often judged by their abilities to sell their work to the masses. In most schools, children are taught to pursue high grades. Both groups are conditioned to value the product they create over the processes they pursue, and while one can certainly understand how this reasoning is influenced by reality, it’s also significantly flawed. I’m thinking of two writers that I used to work with closely: one seemed to write at the…
Name of the Game: Synesthesia Timing: This game is best played once writers have drafted a text that rich and lengthy enough for review. Goal: Adapted from a Gamestorming game by the same name (say that three times fast), this game challenges writers to examine character, plot, setting, theme, or any other element of a selected piece through their senses, enabling a more somatic experience of the text. The intent is to surface new insights…
Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, tells us that, “Nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. Some people find this idea depressing, but it fills me with hope. As the French writer Andre Gide put it, ‘Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.’” He reminds us that, “If we’re free…
Being a writer and living a writer’s life is not all about publication. It’s not all about creating the perfect final product, either. In fact, I know some incredible writers who have never achieved that particular dream. And that’s okay. They have a different (and some would argue, bigger) contribution to make. Beyond publication, being a writer and living a writer’s life is all about sharing the things we make along the way with those…
“I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how to say it,” she sighed, sitting back and sinking deep into her chair. “It’s like I have too many ideas. They’re all little bits and pieces and fragments of thoughts, swirling around in my head. I don’t even know where to begin.” If you’re a writing teacher, I’m sure that you’re no stranger to this frustration. It’s one that I’ve always found particularly…