Budding Artists Alert!
Illustrate your favorite recent story or poem on www.kidswrite4kids.com and email it to storymaker@aol.com!
Your illustration could be picked to be in the third issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse!
Include your first and last name, your age, and where you live. If your illustration is chosen for publication, you will recieve notice by the end of summer.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Second Issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse
My good friend Whimsey is working on the illustrations for the next (only the second)issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse. We have some great new stories and poems on offer from contributors to www.kidswrite4kids.com. I think you'll like the writing.
In the meantime, Whimsey struggles, poor fellow.
Our head editor, Pierre, is working to make this issue useful for classroom teachers. His vision is that teachers can download the issue as a PDF and project it in front of the class for discussion. It can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed out, of course, for quiet reading in a corner. Hard copy as a book mailed to your home or classroom will also be avaiable once that old slowpoke Whimsey finishes his work.
In the meantime, Whimsey struggles, poor fellow.
Our head editor, Pierre, is working to make this issue useful for classroom teachers. His vision is that teachers can download the issue as a PDF and project it in front of the class for discussion. It can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed out, of course, for quiet reading in a corner. Hard copy as a book mailed to your home or classroom will also be avaiable once that old slowpoke Whimsey finishes his work.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Yes, It's Been Ages!
It does seem like forever since I've posted anything here, though I have promised myself more than once that I would keep a steady stream of thoughts coming. Well, it just doesn't strike me that every thought I have is worthy of being shared with the world!
On the other hand, I have continued to ride herd on www.kidswrite4kids.com and am working on the second edition of Brainiac's TreeHouse, our showcase journal. A shout-out to teachers: Send your ideas for how to make Brainiac's TreeHouse useful for your classrooms.
Check out "The Alphabet," "No More Photos!" "The Rubber Duck Escape," "Into the Corn," and "The Mysteries on the Fourth Floor" on www.kidswrite4kids.com.
A special hello to Ms. Metz and her students in Alberta!
On the other hand, I have continued to ride herd on www.kidswrite4kids.com and am working on the second edition of Brainiac's TreeHouse, our showcase journal. A shout-out to teachers: Send your ideas for how to make Brainiac's TreeHouse useful for your classrooms.
Check out "The Alphabet," "No More Photos!" "The Rubber Duck Escape," "Into the Corn," and "The Mysteries on the Fourth Floor" on www.kidswrite4kids.com.
A special hello to Ms. Metz and her students in Alberta!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Check Out Garrett!
Eight-year-old Garrett from Waconia, Minnesota, is on fire to write! Check out his recent poems on www.kidswrite4kids.com: "The Sea," "Flowers," and "The Moon."
We want to encourage him to continue exercising his imagination with rhymed poetry.
We want to encourage him to continue exercising his imagination with rhymed poetry.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Download the TreeHouse Today!
Well, okay. Finally Brainiac's TreeHouse is now available as a POD (print-on-demand). We are off to a slow start, but the important thing is that we are indeed started. I'll be looking for a better POD company as I get the next issue together. That's good news. Other good news is that we have many very good stories and poems from kids in the pipeline from Kids Write 4 Kids.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Teaching Storywriting to Kids: What’s In It for Me?
Well, first of all, I’m a sucker for making a difference in people’s lives. I figure that if I turn a kid on to reading and writing I’ve made a difference. Certainly the teacher who got me going, Mrs. Helen Brandt back at New Hope-Solebury Elementary School, made a huge difference in my life. She saved me and I’ll never forget her.
Another reason I enjoy doing this work so much is that it’s actually fun. Sure, going over the stories and trying to write something reasonably coherent and helpful on each one is drudgery—or can be drudgery, anyway. After a few weeks, it does get to be a grind, but I work through it. I find ways to make it stimulating.
Putting my comments in a speech bubble for a cartoon figure has been a huge help in two ways. One, it’s meant that I’ve had to develop cartooning skills, opening up a whole new creative world. Two, the kids love the cartoons and are much more motivated to work hard after having received them. Forget stickers and simple happy faces! Give them something hand made and unique and they will respond!
Long before I began cartooning, though, I turned myself into a storyteller. Like the drawing, storytelling came about as a way of meeting the kids where they were. It’s magic, pure and simple. Now each time I’m doing a character’s voice or making the sound effects of a fishing line flying out, plopping into the water, and then being pulled in on a squeaky reel, I marvel that they actually pay me to have so much fun!
Oh, not incidentally, storytelling jacks the kids up to write with real energy. Take my word, and 25 years experience, it works. That’s an awful lot of anecdotal evidence.
Then there’s this thing about working with kids. Think of all that kids have to have rattling around in their heads to write a story: Fine motor skills to actually make the words on the page, attention to spelling, punctuation, sequencing, dialogue, scene, setting, cause and effect, problem solving, description, etc., etc. For some kids, this is totally overwhelming.
Forgive me if I get a bit misty-eyed. The world is a tough place. It beats us up and often starts early. To be sensitive to this as we work with kids on a complex task like writing is an opportunity for our own growth. When I’ve got 25 kids to lead, with maybe ten of them struggling painfully under the natural pressure of the task, I’m looking at an optimal time to become desperate and grouchy myself. Maybe I’ve not gotten enough sleep the night before or maybe I’ve over caffeinated myself.
Frustration builds.
What a great time to choose kindness and humor. It’s good for the kids and it’s good for me.
Another reason I enjoy doing this work so much is that it’s actually fun. Sure, going over the stories and trying to write something reasonably coherent and helpful on each one is drudgery—or can be drudgery, anyway. After a few weeks, it does get to be a grind, but I work through it. I find ways to make it stimulating.
Putting my comments in a speech bubble for a cartoon figure has been a huge help in two ways. One, it’s meant that I’ve had to develop cartooning skills, opening up a whole new creative world. Two, the kids love the cartoons and are much more motivated to work hard after having received them. Forget stickers and simple happy faces! Give them something hand made and unique and they will respond!
Long before I began cartooning, though, I turned myself into a storyteller. Like the drawing, storytelling came about as a way of meeting the kids where they were. It’s magic, pure and simple. Now each time I’m doing a character’s voice or making the sound effects of a fishing line flying out, plopping into the water, and then being pulled in on a squeaky reel, I marvel that they actually pay me to have so much fun!
Oh, not incidentally, storytelling jacks the kids up to write with real energy. Take my word, and 25 years experience, it works. That’s an awful lot of anecdotal evidence.
Then there’s this thing about working with kids. Think of all that kids have to have rattling around in their heads to write a story: Fine motor skills to actually make the words on the page, attention to spelling, punctuation, sequencing, dialogue, scene, setting, cause and effect, problem solving, description, etc., etc. For some kids, this is totally overwhelming.
Forgive me if I get a bit misty-eyed. The world is a tough place. It beats us up and often starts early. To be sensitive to this as we work with kids on a complex task like writing is an opportunity for our own growth. When I’ve got 25 kids to lead, with maybe ten of them struggling painfully under the natural pressure of the task, I’m looking at an optimal time to become desperate and grouchy myself. Maybe I’ve not gotten enough sleep the night before or maybe I’ve over caffeinated myself.
Frustration builds.
What a great time to choose kindness and humor. It’s good for the kids and it’s good for me.
Friday, September 18, 2009
More on the Spirit of Play
It’s all well and good, you say, to want to “inspire” young writers. To “play.” Blah, blah, blah.
But we have standards to meet. Tests to prepare for. Parents, politicians, experts to answer to. We have to create lesson plans and then we have to show them to, have them approved by our bosses. And teachers have lots and lots of bosses. Did I mention parents, politicians, and experts?
These objections are of course well taken. I have no comfortable response to them. But doesn’t it seem that educational
“accountability” has become a tad like the quarterly reports corporations put out and seem to live by? They, the corporations, have stockholders to answer to, and stockholders are impatient. They get nervous if the stock is not “earning.”
Schools have “stakeholders,” a not coincidental choice of terms in our present environment. These stakeholders are an impatient lot. They are caught up in the competition-in-the-world-marketplace obsession that seems to hold the whole country in its grip. They get nervous if students are not “learning.”
And how do we measure that learning? Empirically, of course. By the metrics. By matching the rubrics. By looking at the bottom line numbers delivered by the tests. This looks more and more like a quarterly report of earnings.
It would be silly to argue against measuring student learning, but most thoughtful classroom teachers would tell you that we have gone overboard. Given the present testing environment, it is less and less possible for teachers to teach their passions, the areas where they are most likely to inspire their students.
If we were less hysterical, less concerned with stepping from high school to college to high paying job to comfortable life in a safe neighborhood—all perfectly fine steps—but if we were less hysterical, we might begin making a habit of having dinner together and talking. We might take our time. Read a book together. Talk. Not zone out in front of the new plasma screen as often or as long. Talk. We might then know how our kids were doing without the intensity of testing they now endure and that, frankly, is warping the system.
We are obsessed with having more and have taken the traditional, valid idea that education is the path to a better life and conflated it with business and the false idol of physical and financial security. For some time now, chasing this illusion, our universities have become trade schools for managers, accountants, and marketers, crowding out the liberal arts in prestige and resources. This is a profound mistake.
What we need as a culture and as a polity are fewer expert test takers and many, many more lifelong learners, people who can think creatively and independently. People who will push back—and push us all forward.
A 2006 report by the National Governors Association found that readers of literature—poetry, plays, short stories, and novels—were more engaged in social and civic activities and enhanced community life significantly. This is just one of many studies coming to the same conclusion.
So, yes, let’s inspire kids to love reading and writing. We've long ago proven that going about this with a long face doesn't work. Being joyful, playing, does not equal lazy, so let's keep that spirit of play alive through and then long after elementary school.
But we have standards to meet. Tests to prepare for. Parents, politicians, experts to answer to. We have to create lesson plans and then we have to show them to, have them approved by our bosses. And teachers have lots and lots of bosses. Did I mention parents, politicians, and experts?
These objections are of course well taken. I have no comfortable response to them. But doesn’t it seem that educational
“accountability” has become a tad like the quarterly reports corporations put out and seem to live by? They, the corporations, have stockholders to answer to, and stockholders are impatient. They get nervous if the stock is not “earning.”
Schools have “stakeholders,” a not coincidental choice of terms in our present environment. These stakeholders are an impatient lot. They are caught up in the competition-in-the-world-marketplace obsession that seems to hold the whole country in its grip. They get nervous if students are not “learning.”
And how do we measure that learning? Empirically, of course. By the metrics. By matching the rubrics. By looking at the bottom line numbers delivered by the tests. This looks more and more like a quarterly report of earnings.
It would be silly to argue against measuring student learning, but most thoughtful classroom teachers would tell you that we have gone overboard. Given the present testing environment, it is less and less possible for teachers to teach their passions, the areas where they are most likely to inspire their students.
If we were less hysterical, less concerned with stepping from high school to college to high paying job to comfortable life in a safe neighborhood—all perfectly fine steps—but if we were less hysterical, we might begin making a habit of having dinner together and talking. We might take our time. Read a book together. Talk. Not zone out in front of the new plasma screen as often or as long. Talk. We might then know how our kids were doing without the intensity of testing they now endure and that, frankly, is warping the system.
We are obsessed with having more and have taken the traditional, valid idea that education is the path to a better life and conflated it with business and the false idol of physical and financial security. For some time now, chasing this illusion, our universities have become trade schools for managers, accountants, and marketers, crowding out the liberal arts in prestige and resources. This is a profound mistake.
What we need as a culture and as a polity are fewer expert test takers and many, many more lifelong learners, people who can think creatively and independently. People who will push back—and push us all forward.
A 2006 report by the National Governors Association found that readers of literature—poetry, plays, short stories, and novels—were more engaged in social and civic activities and enhanced community life significantly. This is just one of many studies coming to the same conclusion.
So, yes, let’s inspire kids to love reading and writing. We've long ago proven that going about this with a long face doesn't work. Being joyful, playing, does not equal lazy, so let's keep that spirit of play alive through and then long after elementary school.
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