This is the third in a series of reflections made upon my return from a study tour of Reggio Emilia schools. You may find the other posts here, as I complete them. Print is one language, but there are so many others, and when we offer children the option to learn and communicate with them, the understandings and theories they share expand far beyond the boundaries that print creates. And it does. I can’t tell…
It’s launch time in most of the schools that I support. Teachers are welcoming writers into new spaces, establishing routines, and filling their hearts and minds with renewed promise: This year, we will become writers. We’re always becoming, aren’t we? We’re always beginning again. This year, I’m celebrating twenty five years of launching writing workshop. Of course, twenty five years ago, no one was using the word launch to describe the beginning of a new…
When I wrote Make Writing in 2015, I’d just finished a lengthy action research project that focused on engagement in the writing workshops that I led. That project began long before the maker movement took the education world by storm, but by the time I was culminating the findings, the connection was clear: inviting kids to make in workshop was a powerful game changer. More than mere distraction or a path away from the writing process,…
This post is my fifth and last in a series about organizational story writing. In the first post, I described the form and spoke about why organizational story writing matters. In the second post, I shared my approach for facilitating a listening session. The third post defined story writing as more than a mere marketing tool. It’s a process that leads to individual growth and organizational improvement. The fourth post focused on the importance of…
“What’s a break it box?” Kevin asked, calling my attention to an overflowing black bin on the bottom shelf of our mobile makerspace. This five tier structure on wheels serves as a catch-all for recyclables, loose parts, and whatever craft supplies we currently have on hand. “It’s a box full of stuff you can rip apart and repurpose,” I told him. “People donate the things inside. I think there’s an old toaster and a broken…
When Writers Make Integrating making with writing at the WNY Young Writers’ Studio has completely transformed our learning and work. Whether we’re writing about the things that we make or making our way around writer’s block, each time kids put down their pens and back away from their devices long enough to build, unexpected and incredibly rewarding things happen. For instance, those who claim to hate writing often find promising pathways toward it. When kids…
“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…
As teachers prepare to help students make learning visible and document what is revealed, I’ve noticed that the pace of our preparation work typically stalls in the same places over and over again: we struggle to define a focus for our studies, and we struggle to understand how learning is made visible. Until these tensions are resolved, it’s almost impossible to move forward. Recently, I shared a design sprint that can help teachers refine…
During conversations with teachers last week, one mentioned how overwhelming it is to move writers through the revision process and how, all too often, what comes from the effort is more a reflection of the teacher’s thinking and work rather than the writer’s. “If I don’t do the work for them, their revisions are never deep enough. Their final drafts are still pretty weak,” she said. Truer words are rarely spoken, and this is why…
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…