Quick Classroom Activity about Authors

Here’s an inter­est­ing idea for a quick class­room activ­ity that has poten­tial for many dis­cus­sions. This could cer­tainly be applied in many dif­fer­ent ways to stu­dents at all levels.

Begin by tak­ing kids to this site: http://​wherei​write​.org. It is a small site with one pur­pose: to show­case por­traits of authors (they all hap­pen to be in the sci­ence fic­tion genre) in the spaces where they do their writing.

A few thoughts come to my mind as I scan through the pictures:

• Nearly every space is a work space. Cre­ativ­ity isn’t about flashes of inspi­ra­tion. It’s about doing. And effort.
• Almost every writer sur­rounds him– or her­self with books. Dozens or hun­dreds of them. Writ­ers read. A lot.
• Writ­ers are ordi­nary peo­ple. They have pets. They even have stained glass thin­gies hang­ing in their windows.

I think there’s a great les­son for stu­dents, espe­cially reluc­tant writers.

Some other ideas for fol­low up activities:

• Have stu­dents share pho­tos of their writ­ing spaces and talk about them
• If you could cre­ate a bet­ter space to write, what would it look like? Why not cre­ate it?
• How could we design our class­room space to make it bet­ter for doing our work?

What do you see in these pho­tos? What ques­tions would you ask of your stu­dents about these pic­tures? What else do they tell you about what writ­ers do and how to be one?