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Writerly Play Kit FOR EDUCATORS

Overcoming Perfectionism with Play

Writerly Play for Educators

Overcoming Perfectionism with Play

How might your year look if your students were willing to make mistakes and learn from them? As much as we want our students to approach learning with a growth mindset, perfectionism is a sneaky obstacle. Often, it lives just under the surface, popping up and blocking our students (and us!) in unexpected ways.

What if your students didn’t:

  • look for shortcuts and choose easy instead of challenging
  • use “I don’t know” to avoid making choices and taking action
  • use failed tries as proof of their inadequacy

In this WP Kit, we’ll explore how Writerly Play games can kick-start writer’s journal sessions, helping students bypass perfectionism and develop a growth mindset.

Featured RESOURCE

ACADEMIC SUCCESS MINI-SERIES

At SYI, we often use the doorway of creative writing to build academic writing skills. In this mini-series, we address the underlying cognitive and emotional skills that Writerly Play builds, as well.

We crafted this mini-course for parents and educators who wanted to learn more about how creative writing can help support the development of academic writing skills. Whether you share the course with parents, or view it yourself to gain practical tools for helping your students open up and play their way to the page, we promise you’ll find strategies and tools of value in many contexts.

The mini-series covers:

  • What emotional obstacles do all writers face?
  • How might we help writers build lateral thinking and growth mindset skills?
  • What specific tools and strategies support this growth?

Featured ACTIVITY

Writer’s Journal Games 

What if your students hurried to the page, filled with confidence and ideas?

Spark an air of possibility and play for your writers as you kick off their writer’s journals this year. Help them feel open to experimentation, excited about word play, and full of inspiration about moving the big ideas out of their hearts and heads onto the page. How? With games! Use these three games to tap into writers’ passion and unique voices.

“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success.”

J.K. Rowling

Bring active learning into your writing classroom.

Writerly Play offers an untraditional doorway into the writing process. Through a variety of games and activities, your writers will take action and tackle various genres of writing. Writerly Play utilizes games to facilitate creative and critical thinking at every stage of the process, from idea generation to idea development, to drafting and revision, and even through the sharing of work.

Try out Writerly Play in your classroom with our series of videos designed specifically for educators. Use one video to spark a story idea, try a poetry activity, or use the full series to support a creative writing unit.