I have almost come to love my insomniac habits-the hours I spend reading, writing, thinking and just enjoying the quiet. There is something quite exotic about being the only one awake in my street-possibly the whole suburb-after all it’s past 3am on a sunday night!
I have spent the weekend catching up on lesson plans for our licence programs as well as our Students at Risk (STAR) program. Now the words won’t stop and I have become a word machine!
Somehow I want to get the kids we teach to experience a bit of this-not to this extent of course-but to know the joy of words flying around the brain and then SPLAT onto the paper where they can be captured, tamed, changed and crafted!
I am still amazed by the power of visualisations on children’s writing-seems to open up the right brain and the words tumble out. They still don’t like the editing too much but they really groan when we ring the gong to stop the 7 mins “rave-on” writing. Is it because the gong compels them to start-no wondering WHAT to write etc-no sorting through ideas-just BANG-off you go?Seems to work!
I think the pictures they form in their heads from the visualisation stop the mind-chatter and promote imaginative writing-whatever-it seems to work and has now for many years!
This week I will write up some more visualisations for our website-teachers are enjoying downloading them and I want this approach to spread!
