Announcing Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers

It is with great excitement that we share the cover of our forthcoming book — Story Workshop: New Possibilities for Young Writers— available for pre-order from Heinemann next month!

This book is the result of big questions, years of research, layers and layers of collaboration with colleagues, with children, and with families, and the imagination and support of Heinemann.

Over the years, it has been an honor to watch interest in Story Workshop grow from seeds cast around the world. Taking root in varied soils, Story Workshop has invited members of classroom communities to build creative and meaningful thought partnership grounded in the stories children bring to school – real and imagined. Story Workshop has encouraged writing from those stories – supporting children to develop an authentic relationship between their experiences and the way they choose to craft the telling of them. Those tellings, in a variety of forms, nurture listening. And through that reciprocity, those involved know better who they are, both as individuals and as a community. They learn how much they need each other, and how story helps us find one another. They learn that writing is a powerful tool for connection — and a powerful tool for making the world you want to live in.

Too often, when we ask children, Does that make sense?, we mean it as corrective. We already know the answer. Story Workshop invites children to show and to tell us what makes sense to them. Story Workshop supports teachers to put literacy learning in service of meaning-making rather than the other way around. It rests on the assumption that we are all making meaning, all of the time — that we can count on that no matter what — and that literacy is a powerful tool to take us where we want to go — alongside others who want those same things: to make meaning in the company of others. Story Workshop gives us a structure to arrive together at new meanings – at a place that might surprise us. Story Workshop creates an opportunity for children to learn that they matter to that journey because it could not happen without them.

We are thrilled to have the support of Heinemann to expand the reach of these powerful findings. The book will also include new video and other online resources to support your Story Workshop. We’re looking forward to providing a range of opportunities to engage with you around the content of the book!