- Volume 10, Issue 2, 2001

In the early grades, drawing is an important part of the literacy process. Children read pictures to understand, make pictures to tell what they mean, and write the pictures into words. Continuing to use drawing past those first developmental years not only helps students to make personal connections with their writing, but also results in more natural writing with a wider range.

As a writer, Olbrych uses her sketch journal not only to reflect on her own life but to inform her classroom practice. Here she gives us an account of the evolution of artists-writers workshop throughout the year in her fourth-grade class.

Art teacher Darcy Hicks reveals how she structures choice and integrates reading and writing in her art classroom so that children can experience thinking and learning in ways that are personally meaningful. Offering several choices of medium and activities allows children to explore concepts during artists workshop that are within the contexts of their own lives and work.

In her third-grade classroom, Sherriff helps her students “read their worlds” by incorporating poetry, picture books, and art into writers-artists workshop. Here she describes how she begins the school year with poetry, providing structures that allow children to experience and discover their own literacy connections through sketch journals.

Beginning to sense a disturbance in the balance between school and family, von Euler started a sketch journal to build a bridge between his personal and professional life. He describes how he writes and sketches in his own journal, and how he uses the technique in his fourth-grade classroom during writers-artists workshop.

.What are the structures that make writers-artists workshop work at Kings Highway School? Here, daSilva outlines the steps to success in recreating the process in your classroom.