Non-magical thinking

Non-Magical Thinking
By Janet Emig

I love the idea that writing is something that we are just hard-wired to do, a logical extension of spoken language. I have often thought of the creative genius of children in regards to their ability to play with language and sound. It is a system that young children, even though they are still learning the intricacies explicitly, have a natural ability to manipulate in pleasing, surprising, thoughtful ways. When and why do we begin to lose this ‘natural’ ability as we grow? Does our environment change as our age does? As children age, what used to be cute, creative word play is often corrected or considered wrong and corrected. How do we teach students the rules of our language while still allowing them to play with words? I know that my classroom encourages wordplay, but I often find myself steering students away from the silly. Maybe I shouldn’t. As I add this article into my thinking about writing, I will continue to examine the environment that I set up for my writers. I will try to add more playful encounters with words to my approach to teaching writing. In the land of Direct Writing Assessment, writing often becomes a very serious matter. It is a ironic idea that if I approach writing a little less seriously with my students, they may just go further, faster.