Growing and Celebrating Writers

A writing life is a life 

with all the windows and doors open

* * * * * * *

-Julia Alvarez 

Ideas are all around

-Philip C. Stead 

These two quotations were an instrumental part of launching writing work in Opal 3 this year. We wanted to dispel the idea that the writers we know, admire, and love are people bestowed with super powers that we ordinary mortals could never attain. Instead, we wanted students to see that the writers we read are people just like us with a developed habit of living with their eyes wide open to the world who take time to capture what they notice and wonder about. We wanted students to see that these are habits they may already have and that they can develop them even further. In short, we wanted students to see themselves as writers.

Part of this work includes joyful celebration. It is a tradition in Opal 3 that our third grade students get their first official Writer’s Notebooks. Students play a role in designing their notebooks turning an ordinary composition notebook into something beautiful, into something to love.With this rite of passage, we want students to know you are a writer, you have ideas the world needs, and this notebook is a place for capturing your important ideas and thinking. The elements of ceremony and excitement are essential in inspiring students to use their notebooks as tools and to recognizing that they are writers.

This year, we were fortunate to have our celebration and first foray into the world with our notebooks captured on video:

We wonder:

How do you see students as writers?

How do you impart the idea that students are writers with ideas the world needs?

What do you see in the video that provokes curiosity, confusion, or interest?

Though we did not know it at the time, the experiences we had around introducing writer’s notebooks launched us into an even bigger exploration of big ideas, thinking, and understanding which will be shared in my next blog post. Stay tuned…