Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies That Turn Writer's Workshop Into a Maker Space

by Angela Stockman

Overview

What happens when creative writing meets the maker space?

Easy! Writing and making collide, revealing the genius inside of even the most reluctant writers.

In Make Writing, teacher, author, writing coach, Angela Stockman, turns teaching strategies and practice upside down. She spills you out of your chair, shreds your lined paper, and launches you and your writer's workshop into the maker space! Who even knew this was possible? In classic Hack Learning style, Stockman provides five right-now writing strategies that reinvent instruction and inspire both young and adult writers to express ideas with tools and in ways that have rarely, if ever, been considered.

Combining Making and Writing

Many schools are converting classrooms to maker spaces--vibrant places where students demonstrate learning by constructing things, applying newly-learned skills and concepts. With inspired creativity and ingenuity, Stockman shows you how to bring modern maker moves into your writer's workshop, giving birth to a new environment that rockets writers to places that were previously unimaginable. Make Writing is a fast-paced journey inside Stockman's Young Writer's Studio, alongside students who learn how to write and how to make, employing Stockman's unique teaching methods.

Learn How to Enrich Writing Skills by Coaching Maker Moves:

• Shake them out of their seats
• Play through the process
• Tinker with text
• Draft bit by bit
• Make words moveable and mixable
• Connect to real audiences
• Hack the writing process and repurpose your tools

Inspire Creative Writing by Remaking Your Space and Rethinking Your Place

• Redesign your classroom environment incrementally and economically
• Embrace empty spaces and interactive boards and charts
• Make writing a physical, collaborative endeavor
• Design with gaming in mind
• Coach creative theft
• Host an exhibition
• Unearth your own best teaching methods
• Reimagine writers workshop

The secret sauce

You may get caught up in the stories about young writers, but you won't get lost, as each chapter is neatly wrapped in the formula that thousands of Hack Learning Series readers have grown love:

• The Problem (a single writing issue that needs a Hacker's mentality)
• The Hack (a ridiculously easy solution that you've likely never considered)
• What You Can Do Tomorrow (no waiting necessary; you can make writing immediately)
• Blueprint for Full Implementation (a step-by-step action plan for capacity building)
• The Hack in Action (yes, people have actually done this)

Are you ready to Make Writing?

Scroll up and grab a copy today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780986104930
Publisher:	Times 10 Publications
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Series:	Hack Learning Series , #2
Pages:	126
Sales rank:	1,129,460
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Angela Stockman taught ELA and writers workshop in New York State public schools for twelve years, where she was named a Christa McAuliffe fellow and received a citation for Excellence in Teaching from the New York State Board of Regents. A proud Buffalonian, she continues writing and learning beside students and teachers inside of the WNY Young Writers Studio, a learning community that she founded in 2008. Angela is also a professional learning service provider who has worked with thousands of New York State educators. She has extensive expertise in curriculum and assessment design and spends the majority of her work day coaching promising instructional practices in classrooms throughout her region.

Table of Contents

Introduction:
Hacking the writing process

Hack 1: Make Writing
Write Physically and Collaboratively

Hack 2: Remake Your Space
Design with Making in Mind

Hack 3: Teach Them to Tinker
Play Through the Process

Hack 4: Keep It Real
Connect Writers to Authentic Audiences

Hack 5: Hack Your Curriculum
Make Writing with the Common Core

Conclusion: Making Writing; Making Writers

Editorial Reviews

"What are you making?" Guided by her own listening and curiosity, Stockman honors the maker-in-the-writer, offering specific ways teachers can invite young writers more deeply and fully into their own writing process and into greater writing communities as well. Offering suggestions for using new materials in old ways, thoughtful questions, and specific tips for tinkering and finding new audiences, this refreshing book is inspiring and practical in equal measure.
---Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, Author and Teacher

Make Writing should be a part of all professional libraries, primarily because it keeps students at the heart of practice. It is much more than a collection of strategies - Angela Stockman's work can help writing teachers to make the critical shift from focusing on the writing to focusing on the writer. Make Writing can help to counter major misconceptions about the writing process that exist in our schools and could help to eliminate the formulaic writing approaches that plague instruction. By re-thinking writing as making, Angela also provides specific strategies to foster creative thinking and collaboration. With each "hack" Angela provides specific and implementable first steps and guidelines that can engage children in meaningful and innovative thinking. This book is for the courageous and curious teacher. Throughout, Angela encourages teachers to investigate their students and their practice - she supports action research and places teachers in a powerful position to take ownership of classroom practices and make change beside their students.
---Diane Cunningham, Senior Consultant, Learner-Centered Initiatives, Ltd.

From the Publisher