21st Century Learning and Teaching

This is particularly important for students with language learning differences--Lou

Excerpt:

"...“There’s something about writing that is a link to your brain,” said Marissa Moss, author of the popular children’s book series Amelia’s Notebook. In the books, Moss takes on the persona of a little girl expressing her ideas about the world and people around her. The books are a combination of words and drawings and look free form – as though Amelia sketched them herself.

Taking a cue from Moss, teachers from Oak Knoll Elementary School in Menlo Park, Calif., decided to have their students keep notebooks in a similar style. The notebooks aren’t graded; rather, they’re a place of private, free expression. Karen Clancy and Andrea Boatright presented the project at the Innovative Learning Conference hosted by the Nueva School recently.

“They’re not used to being given permission to write about whatever they want,” Clancy said. But once her students realized that they really weren’t being graded and that they had freedom of expression, they eventually came to demand time to write.

Moss says writing without fear of consequences is key to developing a writer’s voice. “If you’re perfect you are guaranteed to not write a thing,” Moss said. “It’s like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the break.” She has developed some guides to help teachers coax students into using art and writing in their journals at the same time, as a way of flexing their visual thinking along with literacy...."

Teachers and students already think this way. Audrey curating for homeschoolsource.co.uk