SAL/ON

A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures

Category: WITS Voices

WITS Voices: The Circle in the Room

By Daemond Arrindell, WITS Writer-in-Residence It was my first day returning to a high school on the south side of Seattle, where I have taught during residencies for the past three years. I hadn’t seen the kids for more than six months after working with them last winter, so I decided to teach a lesson […]

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WITS Voices: Tall Tales for Short Writers

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 […]

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WITS Voices: The Persona Poem and Fourth Graders

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 […]

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WITS Voices: Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow!

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 […]

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