Finley and Grace took on the making of a movie today, in order to help understand the writing process for themselves, and to help others. We won’t say it was easy but they are super proud of the final version. There was some frustration, disagreement, laughter, and of course much learning in the process. The penny started to drop later, as they made the parallel between the process for making the movie to the writing cycle that they were explaining.

They shared ideas and asked me to contact Lisa Stone, who they remembered from their Colegio Maya days, as she came in to help teachers learn about the writer’s workshop. A quick Whats App and we were off and rolling with both process examples and a link to the types of writing grade 3’s and 5’s would be expected to master and make progress on. Here is a good example for both reading and writing from Oakland Schools. We feel fairly confident with the numeracy, inquiry and other aspects of their learning, but this was a big step forward for us with respect to literacy.

They mapped it out , created cards and talked about what to say to explain to others. At the same time I was speaking with one of my professors from my Doctoral studies, who encouraged me to write a chapter for a publication on systemic change in education. I asked him where to begin and Gary said “at the beginning”. We laughed and talked about how I will go through the same process that the kids were mapping out downstairs. Time to practice what I preach and take on something very challenging in trying to write this chapter. We will all take on writing challenges together and share as we do.

Finley and Grace have uploaded their movie to youtube, you can find it here. Please do comment on this post so they can receive feedback and they also hope their video may be useful for other writers out there. The learning, the journey and the laughter continue…