126: 5 Ways to Use your Writing Makerspace

In Episode 125, we talked about how to get started with a writing makerspace, and I promised I’d be back soon to give you ideas for how to use it. So here we are! In today’s show, we’re diving into five writing projects you can use your maker materials for, and I’m excited to show you just how doable they are.

Before we begin, I want to invite you to sign up for the free (and fun) summer PD I’m working on for you right now. We’ll be diving into hexagonal thinking, and you’ll walk away confident in your ability to use this great strategy to ignite discussion in your class come fall. I’ll teach you how to introduce the concept, build great hexagonal thinking decks for different types of texts, teach your students how to make deeper connections with their cards, give you options for how to have your students write about and/or present their work, and provide help with assessment. It’s going to be a great week! And don’t worry, the “camp” is completely asynchronous. Each day you’ll get an email inviting you to check out the ideas and free resource for the day, and you can catch up when your busy summer relaxation schedule allows!

#1 Setting the Scene

#2 Creating Characters

#3 Building Ideas

#4 Defining the Mood

#5 Playing around with Concepts

Sometimes it’s helpful before writing to just get all the ideas out and start moving them around. This is another great way to use your writing makerspace. Let students chalk all over your board, combining ideas with arrows and numbers and eventually starting to see a structure emerge for a paper. Or let them cover a wall in post-its, adding quotes and main ideas all over the place and then moving them around until they see the order that makes sense to them. Let them brainstorm sensory images for a poem on mini whiteboards, cramming them in every which way and then erasing the ones they don’t like before beginning to piece them together on paper.

I hope these five options are helping you see the many fun ways you can use your writing makerspace. Once you have a few materials gathered, you can play around with this strategy and see what ways work best for you. Like one-pagers, hexagonal thinking, silent discussions, Harkness discussions, slam poetry, and all the other creative strategies we talk about here, the makerspace is another strategy to pull out of your teacher toolkit when the time is right.

Hey, by the way, are we hanging out together on Instagram yet? I’m loving this visual platform so much lately, and I’d love to share ideas with you there too.