Living Life Twice

Last week I was asked to talk to parents at a local school about writing. I made the following points in my presentation. Writing (and  Reading ) is not just for School! It needs to easily move in and out the classroom. As teachers we want to pull down the classroom walls and spread the learning surrounding writing as far as possible.I urged parents to support these efforts and suggested some actions to aid writing development. Creating a bridge between school and home for young learners is always a great building project in which to be actively involved.                                                                                                                         ...

When we introduce poetry into our classrooms we need to present it as a celebration of language. We must let our students feel it has the potential to be a great thing for them to enjoy. Poetry is indeed special. Wallace Stevens, the American poet referred to poetry as ‘Simply one of the best things in life.’ Poetry invites the reader, or the receiver to share some of the imagination and wonder of the writer. For a young child, appreciation of poetry grows with exposure and a growing sense of familiarity with the form. There may not be immediate acceptance. An understanding of poetry develops when the child is invited to listen carefully to the language and to notice the patterns and structures used. Once an understanding is established, the inexperienced poet will more readily engage with poetry and begin to experiment with poetry in all its forms.  Drawing attention to patterns and structures, rhythms and rhymes means a greater likelihood young poets will embr...

Coming Soon! My next book is a poetry collection for kids. I look forward to  sharing it with you soon. Stay tuned. September 2014 Alan

I occasionally find myself talking to a teacher at pains to tell me how their students are struggling to think of suitable topics for their writing. ‘ They never seem to come up with much, so that’s why I have to give them sentence starters and topics.’  ‘Why can’t they think of  writing ideas?’ they ask. I always find myself wondering if those teachers have ever reflected on this same question? Demonstrating and modelling how we connect to the world around us is a vital consideration for our students. As teachers, we need to demonstrate how we harvest ideas, how we excavate memories and how we ruminate and wonder. Listing, brainstorming, discussing, questioning, wondering, sketching, mapping, musing, note making all form part of that critical pre-writing part of the process young writers need to see . If we teach in a manner that fails to account for such things,  writing ideas will continue to struggle for recognition with our student writers. ...

  My writer’s notebook   is a place where I frequently clip and copy artifacts to stimulate my collection of writing ideas. It is a collection zone. I am constantly recording passages and extracts from my reading. These are words I wish I had written. These are words that make my heart sing. They are words that stretch across the emotional spectrum. Loving, tender, insightful, biting and honest words speak to me.   I add my responses to these words. They evoke reaction. My eyes, my ears, and my heart are engaged in this ongoing search. I copy down poetic lines. I paste images from newspapers, magazines and my own photographic experiences. These images inspire more ideas. I combine images and words. I eagerly embrace the rich possibilities that present when text and image connect. I clip powerful descriptive passages into my notebook. I want these words to soak into me. I am inspired to greater effort by the words of fellow writers. If I tap into t...

Remember when?    We hear it frequently. The nostalgic question. It brings on instant reflection. Well, today I began thinking about the number one. My thoughts quickly became a little nostalgic upon spotting the three mobile phones that are part of home communication system. They were all resting silently on the kitchen bench-top.    I found myself thinking about those long ago times when homes had just one phone and it was either attached to a wall, or positioned in a fixed location somewhere in the house. This set me to thinking about how other aspects of our lives have expanded from one. There was a time when homes generally had one bathroom, and one toilet. There was one television and one radio that the entire family shared. One refrigerator was ample for a family's needs. The family had one car, with a one car garage to put it in.  In many households, one person worked in paid employment outside the home. People worked...

Some weeks  in my writing life result in a large number of notebook entries. Entries varied and holding great personal satisfaction for me as writer, as a collector.  This last week has provided quite a harvest of potential writing ideas. I began the week writing about a brief encounter. I had been talking to teachers about assisting students to write about small moments and found myself thinking about a personal experience. An experience from my teenage years. ‘Sometimes you find yourself in the right place at the right time. I recall standing beside a creek not far from my childhood home. The forest around me was briefly quiet allowing the flow of the creek to be clearly heard. It flowed by, murmuring a soft flub-flub as it cornered the bank. Suddenly a mid –sized fish, a trout, I suspect, broke the surface of the stream, heaving its body upwards as if shot from a cannon. It disappeared with a watery slap of bubbles and foam. The surface of the water quickly...

In my eternal quest for poetry mentor texts that will support the sometimes tentative writing efforts of emerging student poets (and their teachers), I came across this poem by John Rice. It was part of a collection ‘ Poems to Perform: A Classic Collection Chosen by the Children's Laureate,’ Julia Donaldson. The poem has a simple repetitive structure that provides a safe scaffold for the less experience poet. Students immediately note the please do - please do not pattern and the way the poet finishes with a line that breaks the pattern, yet neatly ties the poet’s thoughts together. It’s as if he has an afterthought. They also noted the element of humour the poet had injected into the poem. For young poets, the presence of humour heightens engagement. Instructions For Giants Please do not step on swings parks, youth clubs, cinemas and discos Please flatten all schools Please do not eat children, pop stars, TV soap operas, kind grannies who give us 50cents ...

During our professional lives there are moments that are profound and memorable. Last week I had one such experience, when I finally got to spend time in the company of an educator  and writer I have greatly admired for more than a decade. I attended the annual national conference of ALEA (Australian Literacy Educators Association) in Darwin as both a presenter and a willing participant. In 2001 when I first traveled to the US to work as a Literacy Consultant, I became aware of the work being undertaken by Ralph Fletcher. I began to read Ralph’s published works starting with ‘Breathing In, Breathing Out- Keeping A Writer’s notebook.’  My personal library now brims with an extensive list of  Ralph Fletcher titles. There are enough to start the Fletcher Wing. My own professional work has benefited enormously from Ralph’s extensive knowledge as a writer and an educator.  His words, his voice are indelibly etched in my conscious mind when...

Before presenting my own workshop on 'Creating Voice and Choice Through The Writer's Notebook' I again had the pleasure of  sitting in on Ralph Fletcher's session on 'Boy Writers.' at ALEA Darwin today. Ralph drew on the research that formed the basis of his book, Boy Writers.' During his presentation. Some of the matters raised in this workshop included: Writing for boys is frequently painful if it is writing to a prompt. They feel limited and don't do as well as a consequence. They feel constrained. This only reinforces the importance of choice and ownership in writing. Handwriting for boys is sometimes hard. Teachers need to go below the surface of their chicken scratch in order to discover the message and it's intent. Boys like to have choices in writing topics and like to employ humour as a device in their writing. Many boy writers are attracted to an element of violence and action in their writing. In the buffet of writing  p...