What kinds of and how much writing can students expect to do?
Daily writing ranges from reflective journals to stories, poems, and personal or reflective prose. The focus is on using informal, exploratory writing to generate drafts, define topics and questions for discussion, and make connections between what students already know and new ways of thinking. The workshop also focuses on ways of using writing as a learning tool, whether one is exploring history, art, one’s personal experience, or natural phenomena. Each week students present portfolios of writing to their workshop leaders, who respond by individually discussing them with students and by providing written suggestions and questions. The portfolios contain informal writing, works in progress, and finished pieces in various genres. Students who have attended other summer writing workshops typically tell us that at Simon’s Rock they’ve ended up producing much more writing and a much greater variety of writing than in previous summers.
