If you were the Supreme Ruler in your house, what rules would you make?
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Image by Rob Briscoe (cc cropped, tinted)
“A group where I fit in.”
by Brave Writer student and intern, Finlay Worrallo
On a cold January evening, I stood outside the studio door. Thirteen years old, gawky and nervous, I’d been gently pushed by my mother into signing up to the local Youth Theatre, as she thought it would be a “great opportunity to meet new people” in a county three hundred miles away from my previous home. I took a deep breath and stepped into a room full of noisy teenagers. Within two minutes, I’d been warmly welcomed by half-a-dozen potential friends, and told, “We’re all mad here.”
That first term was a gentle introduction to the world of theatre. The first play we studied in depth was called Hope Springs, and set in an obscene correctional facility. After a month or two of exploring character and motivation, we performed several scenes in the theatre itself to an audience of our parents. It was as amateur a production as we ever did, but it was a revelation for me. Standing on a stage, reciting someone else’s words and feeling the whole audience listening, enraptured — it was incredible.
I moved up to the next group the following term, during which we focused on more mature drama. We jumped straight in with workshops on the Holocaust, where we acted out scenes we’d devised together by listening to real-life stories and interviewing each other while acting as Jews and Nazis. This all culminated in an unforgettable evening of large-scale improvisation. Some of us played Jews, some of us played civilians hiding the Jews, and the teachers played Nazi officers who kept searching the building. Inevitably, the fugitives were discovered and we were all driven away to Auschwitz. But because we’d been acting our characters solidly for an hour and a half, it felt completely real to us. I’ve never believed in fictional characters or a fictional setting more.
After that, we moved on to work on another play: a comedy version of Romeo and Juliet, set in modern-day Britain, called Rain on Me. This was a complex experience for me. I learned a lot of useful techniques, like the funniest ways to deliver funny lines, but I struggled with my character for ages. I played an angry, violent snob, as far from my own personality as you could get (I hope). Plus, the fight scenes made me uncomfortable, as I hate throwing myself all over the place in front of people. But when we returned to the play after the Christmas holidays, I was more comfortable with my part, and I enjoyed the play more and more as we went on. We finally performed in May and had a fantastic time. By the end, I’d learned about realistic stage combat and how to play a character totally unlike myself; and most importantly I’d forged bonds with the rest of the cast.
The rest of that term, our work veered from the serious (exploring the emotions around bullying and how to act it) and the silly (a crazy Power Rangers game where we all joined together to form a giant robot), and we finished off with a massive lip-syncing competition. Happy days.
Next term, we began on our next production — The Three Musketeers. Easily the most complex play I’d been in, it had a cast of seventeen, a running time of over two hours, and seven different sword-fights. I was cast as a sadistic villain, with an eye patch and a snarl. It was great fun! However, it was a long production. Autumn, winter and spring had all passed before we were ready. We had pages of lines to memorize and intricate scenes to block, and that was before we started the stage-fighting itself, which took ages to perfect. A further challenge was the mixture of ages in the group, with some young as fourteen and others as old as eighteen, and the range of maturity that entails. But ready we were, and our epic, sexy play burst onto the stage on two baking hot evenings in June, without too many mistakes.
I’m sixteen now and drama is an integral part of my life. Not just the acting; but the sense of belonging in a mad and lovable group, who drive me nuts most days, but are capable of so much when we work together. It took me a while, but I’ve finally found a group where I fit in.
Image by The Magic Tuba Pixie (cc cropped, paint daub, text added)
Easing Our Way Back
Brave Writer mom, Kristen, writes:
We’re easing our way back into Brave Writer, and have been enjoying [Brave Learner Home] (though I am behind again). We’re using [Building Confidence] with my 5th grade 10yo daughter, with my older son tagging along for the ride, and also reading some of the Arrow books (started with “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”). It’s been a great way to start the year gently, and the kids have been collecting words, though wondering what for.
Today we got to visit our Botanical Gardens and watch a woman extracting the honey from the bee frames. It was awesome, as she even let the kids taste the honeycomb and feel the weight of the full frames. Of course, we had to buy some honey after that!
Then we came home to re-read an old Five in a Row favorite, “The Bee Tree.” I had my kids start gluing and writing on their word tickets as I read, and when we were ready, I set out the book and the bottle of honey and let them find words that went with the story and our honey experience. We had a lot of fun with it. I was proud of the work and thankful for the gentle guidance that tied in perfectly to a field trip day for us. Thank you for the activities you create that lead to success!
You might get amused by this result from our word lists … I’m keeping a list too, as an example, and one of my favorite words is ‘dodecahedron’. (Yes, we’ll be reading “The Phantom Tollbooth” later this year!) Then we started talking about the number prefixes, and the kids loved duodecahedron (20), and I started making up other ones and having them call out what object it would fit.
My daughter was very thoughtful. “You can’t really have a tetrahedron,” she said. Then I reminded her that her dad has one … and has them all the way up to duodecahedrons. (He’s a gamer.) It took her a minute, but she finally realized that his 4-sided die was the tetrahedron … and now we’ve been driving Dad nuts by talking about rolling a duodecahedron for a critical hit! (He knows what they are, but he prefers the gamer talk of d20 or d4 and so on.) Love word play around here!
The colorful paper is just bright index cards, cut to fit the words. (We’re still copying all the words from our written lists, but I thought the magazine words would help them ‘see’ the fun of the word play best for the first go-around.)
Thanks for being such a great support!
Kristen
Poetry Teatime: Smashing success
Over the last year I have been incorporating the Brave Writer Lifestyle into not only our writing, but our home. The one thing I could not get on board with was Poetry Tea Time. I have two VERY busy little boys and the idea of having formal tea just seemed absurd to me. I just KNEW that the boys would not be interested. I also KNEW that Julie Bogart must be a little crazy for even suggesting it! Sorry Julie!
Fast forward a year and I am still loving Brave Writer and then I stumble across the Read Aloud Revival. The girls over there LOVE Poetry Tea Time! I caught the enthusiasm and decided to try it out for myself, fully expecting it to flop. Remember, I have two busy boys. I just can’t imagine them sitting nicely around a table enjoying tea and cookies while reading beautiful poetry. No way. But, I’ll try nearly anything once, so we gave it a shot.
I was blown away. Those antsy little boys loved every minute of it. They ate up not only the cookies, but the tea, the fancy tea service, the poetry. They ate it all up in one big gulp and then asked for more. It was a smashing success.
So, Julie, I’m sorry for ever doubting you! Thank you!!
Cassie
Read more about Cassie’s Poetry Teatime on her blog, refashion Mom.
Visit our NEW Poetry Teatime website!
Becoming Comfortable with Language
Think of teaching writing to your children in the same way you taught them to speak. You didn’t tell them to conjugate verbs or to use articles. Sometimes they even made attempts to get the right plural and “missed.” But over time, through exposure, modeling, and a little intentionality, they “got the hang” of speech.
Instruction after they were comfortable with spoken language created opportunities to teach your kids etiquette, how to introduce people, how to answer the phone (maybe!), and more.
Written language can work the same way. For instance, each of our Darts focuses on language inductively—the passage suggesting the focus. You can certainly ask your children questions:
- What is the dot at the end of the sentence?
- Do you know its name?
- What do you think it does?
- What do you see in the word after every period?
Your kids’ answers may even surprise you and yield new ways of “seeing” what the sentence markings do.
The point is you don’t have to follow a systematic approach to written language any more than you did with speech. The goal of the entire Brave Writer language arts programs (Dart, Arrow, Boomerang, and Slingshot) is to help you immerse—with your kids—noticing, commenting, exploring, playing with.
Over time, your children will develop a sense of how it works through copying, dictation, and practice that is intuitively fluent (which is easier to sustain than memorizing rules).
Also, allow yourself to be led by your own curiosity and understanding. Some of the writing in our products IS for the parent—to help you grow in your own understanding of how language works and what are literary devices—to keep you aware and present to possibilities within the text. But if something doesn’t yet feel comfortable, you’ve got years with each child ahead of you. You’ll be circling back over these ideas again and again.
Sips—take sips.
Image by Africa Studio / Fotolia (text added)
