When we redesign our writing workshops in to order to invite the dynamic use of far more diverse tools, we honor the way that today’s writers often need to generate, develop, and test new ideas. We honor our noblest purposes for teaching writing as well: We didn’t become teachers to help students become proficient. We became teachers to help our students become influential. We became teachers to help them leave a mighty mark on this…
“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…
Over the last several years, my work at the WNY Young Writer’s Studio has helped me discover that serious play is the work of writers , and gaming the process is one of the more powerful approaches that teachers can invite writers to employ. Over the next few weeks, I’ll explore some of the greater challenges that writers typically face and detailed descriptions of specific games that have helped those I know meet those challenges…
Some of the best learning I enjoy emerges from my study of writers at play. In 1932, Mildred B. Parten was the first to distinguish one form of play from another, making a contribution to the field of education that has sustained the test of time. My awareness of these classifications often prompts me to consider the relationship between play and the development of writers. Many similarities appear to exist. Take a peek at the…
Let’s call her Nadia. I’ve been working with her one on one for a little over a year now. “I suck at reading,” she told me bluntly, when she approached me for help toward the end of her sophomore year. “I do too sometimes,” I admitted, inviting her to sit with me a while so that I could learn more. We’ve learned a lot together, Nadia and I. It all started with frank conversations like…
“The sticky note is one of the most useful tools for knowledge work because it allows you to break any complex topic into small, moveable artifacts—knowledge atoms or nodes—that you can distribute into physical space by attaching them to your desk, walls, doors, and so on without wreaking total havoc. This allows learners to quickly and easily explore all kinds of relationships between and among the atoms and to keep these various alternatives within your…
I like my laptop, but I love Post Its. iPads certainly support the professional learning that happens in my sessions, but Post Its contain that learning and make it transparent and immediately to accessible to everyone in the room. We can touch each other’s thoughts and hold them in our hands. We can move them around and break them apart. We can remix them, and when we do, they change. And then our thinking changes. This…