Author: BBCo

This month my daughter Hannah turned 25, and my youngest son Søren turned 15. Once upon a time Reading Rainbow was a happy part of our literacy routine. Recently Sara came to visit and we stood in my kitchen humming the theme song, laptop in hand, anticipating LeVar. Surprisingly, what we gleaned from this little stroll down memory lane transcended sentimentality. The treasure struck us in the first four words of the episode: “Hi, behold the egg.” LeVar Burton looked us straight in the eye and took the better part of a minute (55 seconds to be exact) to enunciate four words.

Like Mr. Rogers before him, LeVar knew how to settle us into slow motion and slow motion is just what our children need to learn well.

Let’s face it. Overexposure to electronics is over stimulating, diverting precious brain space from creative thought. Letting the mind engage in the stillness of imagining utilizes areas of the brain that will be left inactive while engaging in electronics.

Children should not have difficulty sitting with a book for a long time.

Children should not have difficulty sitting with a pad of paper and colored pencils.

And children should not have difficulty sitting, without implements, enjoying their imagination in silence.

Our world is cluttered with all sorts of noise—auditory and visual. We are saturated. And the outcomes are disturbing. Rampant distraction is diminishing the capacity for contemplation and creativity. The din is overwhelming.

Let’s change the atmosphere. This fall, why not create a tradition of reading? Engaging with books helps children settle into slow motion so that imagination might thrive. And slow motion is stress sapping!

Back away from the vortex of fast-forward-too-muchness.

Sillness is a form of silence. And everyone knows that silence is golden, “Behold the egg.”

Think scavenger hunt.

Found poems are snips of non-poetic language gathered from unexpected places collaged into verse.

Think scraps of newspaper, snippets of conversation.

Think clipped magazine phrases woven to phrases you've invented.

Think scramble, unscramble.

Keep your eyes open, you never know where a sliver of poem might be lurking. 

The ability to read and write is complex and involves the integration of numerous foundational skills. Learning to read and write, children must wade through the landscape of phonology (word sounds), orthography (word patterns), morphology (word classifications) and then tackle the more treacherous path through the land of syntax (word patterning) and semantics (grammar) to gather tools that enable them to practice the art of reading and writing. But that’s not all, not at all! We must not discount the child’s EQ when it comes to literacy. Soft skills such as emotional insight, curiosity, and attitude all contribute to motivation and motivation impacts learning. Exposing children to a vast array of language arts experiences in an environment that is brimming with opportunities to enact language from a young age cultivates natural curiosity  and promotes peaceful acquisition of skill over time. This is the magic of the tortoise versus the hare in action! And, just to complicate matters just a tiny bit more, literacy is much more than being able to read and write. True literacy is not just the ability to decode and encode language, true literacy occurs when the child moves from the foundational to the realm of creation, the realm of original communication.

Providing prepared opportunities for children to independently discover the tools of literacy across all domains of learning promotes the ability to enact language. It is vitally important that children not lose heart or become discouraged when mistakes occur. Self-correcting materials allow children to learn through their own errors to make the correct decision without having the teacher point it out to them. When encouraged to discover, children are simultaneously empowered to practice such complex skills as:

scrutinizing to make confident decisions

self-critiquing to assert thoughtful opinions

hypothesizing to draw informed conclusions

When Nelson chose the “Bones of the Body” work during our Discovery session, not only did he work through identifying the Latin names for a selection the election of the human skeleton, he was intrigued and invested in the work and, consequently, rewarded intrinsically. This child, while hard at work, was calm, confidently focused, and enthusiastic about learning. I have no doubt that this little exercise had less to do with learning the names of bones and more about strengthening the backbone of literacy. Discovery provides opportunities for children to, not only gather tools, but to encounter and practice the processes through which great ideas are conceived and forged.

—Kim

E. Nesbit, storyteller extraordinaire, weaves quite a yarn. The Book of Beasts is a favorite of my
three sons. Why? Not because the protagonist is a small boy, but because that
small boy becomes king! What boy doesn’t dream of being king at one point or
another during childhood? But the adventure for Lionel does not begin at the
coronation. No, the adventure begins in the library when Lionel dares to open a
book.

And so the lesson begins.

And while the lesson can easily be accomplished without E.
Nesbit’s book, it’s the spark for the lesson in the first place and highly
recommended.

To begin, I asked my writing apprentices to consider the
things that we struggle with as humans. While they were contemplating on paper,
I wrote Latin on the whiteboard without explanation:

HC SVNT DRACONES

We generated our list below the Latin——greed, laziness,
gossip, gluttony. After we were sufficiently steeped in considering the flaws
of our flesh, we began a discussion of what shape these “fleshly foes”
might take. We started with thumbnail metaphors. Each child began sketching his
or her mythical beast, animating its beastly qualities.

From here we began to write the Beast Tale. They were to
describe the character of their beast in detail, to create a situation in which
the beast might feed, and, of course, they were instructed to concoct a way to
slay the beast. All this in 500 words or less!

The writers eagerly worked to draft idea to paper. I was
amazed by the depth of engagement I witnessed as they crafted minute details
about beasts that they encounter in the real world.

As drafts were completed I saw pencils released and
re-reading begin. I saw little hands making red marks—scritch, scratch—then
more re-reading until the stage of polish began.

Sufficiently satisfied with the stories, each writer then
moved back to the visual realm and began animating their thumbnail beasts to a
form that was ready for canvas—light pencil traced with Sharpee was then hand
painted with fabric ink. Beasts were hand-stitched to felt and felt was machine
stitched to calico.

But there was one more piece of fabric to deal with once the
visual project was accomplished a few weeks later. And so I asked the
apprentices to read, once more, their polished Beast Tales. To their surprise,
they stumbled on little errors, or bumps in the story. Everyone found a little
something to refine, which proved to them without me lecturing, that writing
needs to incubate, that writing is a process.

And so, after this final polish, the tales were written by
hand on the remaining scrap of canvas. And the stories were machine stitched to
felt and the back was stitched to the front and the pillows were stuffed. And
that’s how the Beast Tales came to be.

When it comes to writing… show don’t tell.

So the next time any child grumbles or complains about
engaging in the art of writing simply remind them that writing is an adventure,
lift an imaginary sword and cry, “Beyond Here be Dragons,” and let the
adventure begin.