SAL/ON
A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Category: Youth Programs
WITS Voices: Tall Tales for Short Writers
December 17, 2015
By Karen Finneyfrock, WITS Writer-in-Residence In researching lesson ideas for a new WITS residency focused on tall tales, I Googled, “exaggeration for kids.” The top hits all advertised tips on getting your child to stop exaggerating. What better indication that tall tales would be perfect stories for fourth graders? Kids love to exaggerate! Tall tales […]
“Black,” by WITS Student Anisa Rae Robinson
December 14, 2015
Black My color is the color of absence, silence. The memory of something you thought was there, but now it’s gone. The color of your mind when you’re in a deep rest. The color of shadows that follow you everywhere you go. My color tastes bitter and icky. My color is lovely. My color is […]
WITS Voices: The Persona Poem and Fourth Graders
December 10, 2015
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence One of the most important attributes of art, and especially poetry, is the way it opens a door into another person’s life experience. A poem—a mere few lines sometimes—can create a more empathetic reader for life. My fourth grade students at View Ridge Elementary had the chance to “pretend” to […]
Perfect Pairings: Creative Forces Combine in the WITS Broadsides Tour
December 9, 2015
By Laura Burgher, Writers in the Schools & Broadsides Project Intern I placed the final broadside up on the bookstand and took a step back. Patrons at Seattle Public Library’s Northgate Branch were already starting to show interest, craning their necks to take in the twenty-two framed artworks I just set atop the bookshelves, their […]
“Paris, Le Canal Saint-Martin,” by WITS Student Graeme Richards
December 7, 2015
Paris, Le Canal Saint-Martin Dark and silver clouds rule the sky over the dark winter city. The black bare trees reach for nothing and the murky water under the rusty iron bridge has no inhabitants. The streets have no wanderers and through the dark windows letting in the so-little sun into the dark rooms like […]
Linda Pastan’s Breathless Words at The Center School
December 2, 2015
By Erin Langner, WITS Program Associate & Sonder Editor When Linda Pastan and I approached a classroom of The Center School, where she was about to speak, we were three minutes early. A teacher inside, in the gentlest, quietest whisper, asked if we wouldn’t mind waiting outside, for just two of those minutes. The students inside […]
WITS Voices: Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow!
November 30, 2015
By Emily Bedard, WITS Writer-in-Residence On a recent day when the trees flashed a hundred hues against a cloudy Seattle sky, I entered a fourth grade WITS class, planning to play with color. We began by reading Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski, with its saturated, leaping language and its intricate, dreamlike […]
“The Sea,” by WITS Student Annabelle Bachhuber
November 23, 2015
The Sea I kept deep-sea secrets in a little black bag. I carried boats through the toughest storms. I asked the fish where the shark lived. I was rough but calm. I was tired. I knew when the storm would come. I tried to keep the boats away with waterspouts. I tried to keep the […]
“The Hymnal,” by WITS Student Lily Trinneer
November 19, 2015
The Hymnal I am the hymnal and I have heard prayers. You call them prayers, I call them hopes Of a mother who drank away her youth. I call them music of a man with smoke in his lungs And magic in his hands I catch the tears of the desperate, I hear the skepticism […]