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 …

Story Workshop: A confluence of meaning-making, play, and the arts

We hope you enjoy this presentation, offered as part of The Early Childhood Assembly‘s Virtual Day of Early Childhood. We’re honored to be a part of the event. For those of you interested in diving more deeply into Story Workshop, we encourage you to explore Developing Your Story Workshop course, view the Equity and Access …

Setting the Table: Loose Parts

How might materials support young authors and thinkers? Teacher-researchers Lauren Adams and Kathryn Ann Myers explore how processes of growing and and revising big ideas are catalyzed by working with loose parts collage. Setting the Table with Watercolor Black Line Drawing and Perspective-Taking Not Just Filling the Space Tempera Paint

Materials In All Phases of The Writing Process

The kindergarten and first grade children in Cottonwood have been preparing to publish stories about characters that they invented and developed over time. These characters include hummingbirds, snapping turtles, crabs, ladybugs, deer, a peach, many different kinds of owls, and even a hiker named “Mikey Hikey.” In the early stages of writing, the children were …

Finding stories; finding each other

About once a week in the Alder community of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, we split the group in two, carefully considering friendships we want to support or stretch. We affectionately call this structure “half-sies.” The smaller groups  give each person (children and adults) a chance to see, hear, and know one another in new ways. …

Love, Play, and Mail

“In play, children begin with their own set of premises and learn to follow through, step-by-step, scene by scene in the complex process of creating a logical and literary dramatic project of their own.” – Vivian Paley, The Importance of Fantasy, Fairness, and Friendship in Children’s Play The Cottonwood community of kindergarteners and first-graders has …

Why Put Our Ideas Into the World?

The Cottonwood Community of kindergartners and first-graders has spent the last several weeks preparing to publish small moment stories that children have written from their lives. The children have taken care to slow down and zoom in on the small details inside these moments. After writing a first draft, the children received their first editing …

Exploring the “We That I Am” Through Character

“A child’s most sought after goal is to recognize himself in others, and to find in others parts of himself.” -Loris Malaguzzi At the beginning of the school year, the primary team identified the overarching idea of our work to be exploration of “the we that I am.” Lauren and I have continued to observe …