Writing With Wonder
Have you heard your learner mention the Acton curriculum of Writer’s Workshop? This session both Discovery and Spark Studios have been exploring the beauty of writing. Each studio’s lens is different but the wonder of the writing process is equally inspiring!
The approach for each studio is much like their name. In Spark learners are exploring the process of handwriting, researching, and imagining stories in order to create a spark to light the fire for a love of literacy. Discovery learners discover how best to communicate their ideas through the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, editing, and publishing their work. Writing illuminates wonder! On Monday and Friday’s learners are intently focused, joyful, and don’t want to stop. Here’s this session’s journey so far.
In Spark, on the first day of Session 5 each learner received a Writer’s Workshop 3 ring binder adorned with their beautiful name. Who doesn’t like a binder, especially all those colorful tabs begging for hard work and organization?! Every day learners have options, each a category of their binder. Learners can practice writing their name, they can create their unique stories and short story books with illustrations, they can copy Bob books on lined paper or with the moveable alphabet in the picture shown, or they can research an animal, insect, or universal phenomenon and create a Draw Write Now. Your next question is probably, what is a Draw Write Now. Simply, a learner finds an animal in the Zoology Encyclopedia, perhaps the popular Axolotl, and copies one sentence in the research description on lined paper. On the back blank side of the paper a learner draws and colors their axolotl. Why is this special? Animals are fascinating but the process of researching, identifying the clues of a full sentence, and then writing a fact is deep and meaningful work. Spark learners can’t get enough and groan when the chime dings to clean up. This is the magic of the Writer’s Workshop!
During Session 4 Discovery learners began their Writer’s Workshop journey with creative poems and the exploration of metaphors and adjectives. We enjoyed their cleverness, especially poems about dogs, siblings, soccer, and bodily functions. This session learners are applying their writing skills to the real-world. Their task is to Pitch a Field Trip for when the studio completes the 30 book challenge. There are parameters of travel but all is minimal, it is up to the learner’s to research and create an argument that is convincing. The process of writing is where the Writer’s Workshop shines, learners must draft up their argument, edit and review work by peers. Once learners create a written argument the final step is to deliver a convincing speech. Writing is useful! For those learners more quiet during socratic discussions this Pitch a Field Trip project equips them with tools to create perfectly prepared words. Great ideas sometimes need to be crafted and Writer’s Workshop is the path to create master communicators.
Our Acton philosophy is inspired by Maria Montessori and she shares “A child does not read until he receives ideas from the written word.” Writing in the Montessori method comes before reading as children discover reading through the wonder of creating words on their own. Writing is beautiful and a full sensory experience. Hearing and touch create magic. If your learner is younger, remember the amazement and pride they had when writing their name for the first time. If you have an older learner remember the wonder they glowed with as they wrote their first short story or journal entry. Just imagine their first novel…
Writing is wondrous and what makes humans unique! If you’re looking to support writing at home consider help with thank you notes, grocery shopping lists, a family to-do list, or creating your own restaurant menu! If you’re also wondering about the hot topic of cursive…we believe this lost art is alive and well…it’s coming!