| The
N-A•M•T-A
NAMTA
Journal
Nature, Creativity, and the Adolescent
Volume 36 Number 3
Summer 2011
Guadalupe Borbolla… |
| WHAT Is NAMTA?
The '\:orth American ~1onte,,ori Teachers· As,ocia1ion
prmidc, a medium of study. intcrprc1a1ion. and im… |
| THE NAMTA JOURNAL
VoL. 36, No. 3 • SuMMER 2011
NATURE, CREATIVITY, AND THE ADOLESCENT
In ofliliaiion wi1h the Associaiion… |
| N ATIJRE, CREATIVITY, AND THE ADOLESCENT
SECTION I
ABOUT NATURE, STORYTELLING, AND CREATrV[TY… |
| Eouc :rno:-.; \S THE PRH'\R,\TION FOR ADULT Lu,: A-:--0\ i.R\ 11 \\ ......
by Laurie Eiccrt-KroLkcr
PER50~Al ExrRfSs(O… |
| SECTION I
ABOUT NATURE, STORYTELLING,
AND CREATIVITY
by David Kahn
This journal is certainly a mixed assemblage of articles… |
| Elise Huneke-Stone
2
The NAlv!TA Journal • Vol. 36, No. 3 • Summer 201 I |
| STORY AND SELF-CONSTRUCTION
by Elise Huneke-Stone
Elise Hu11eke-Stone's definition of story and its f111Zctions arises… |
| Here'smyhouse,analmost-hundred-year-oldbungalowinPortland,
Oregon. I don't live in my house in Portland right now.… |
| in. I started a quest to better understand storytelling, particularly
the storytelling that we do about ourselves. My heart-… |
| husband Dave would stuff with cheese and herbs and then saute as
a late summer appetizer. And for a third thing, one year we… |
| This keynote today is a collection of zumpkins. In the two
and a half years since l had my own class, I've had time to… |
| So I've started with a story, and this story does many things for
us in this relationship we have here today as… |
| We want to do a good job with this storytelling, and we want it to
be colorful, a metaphor we'll look at more closely… |
| One of the things that I hope the zumpkin story did for us was
to establish me as a narrator with some likable qualities. In… |
| three-year-old can. So when we speak to children, we need to keep
in our minds their exquisite sensitivity to our voices. We… |
| of human speech. The baby babbles the full range of human speech
sounds then further classifies those sounds into the ones… |
| • We narrate. According toGopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl,
in their book The Scientist in the Crib, "When babies
are about… |
| Now let's look more closely at that narration starting at twelve
months. The researchers found that this kind of parental… |
| almost always include nouns, and English speaking parents spend a
lot of time pointing out objects and giving them names. So… |
| tion, and singing. We'd also learned about grace and courtesy and
about the Sound Game. We had presentations on all of… |
| complete sentences whatever the children said to her upon arrival. It
was a dance of attunement and connection and belonging,… |
| the later attachment to the words we use for those actions. "Never
give more to the mind than you do to the hand,… |
| Look at any Montessori primary presentation and you'll see ele-
ments of that first narration with a child. In a… |
| The child in the Cnsn spends three years absorbing up all those
nouns and verbs and adjectives, all that mode led language,… |
| these new powers of mind? We begin to tell lots and lots of stories.
And the children begin to tell and write lots and lots of… |
| tive, that we use narrative structures to think with. The wonder-
fully dense book describes how we collect and classify all… |
| Incidentally, I mentioned that we start using metaphor once we
have enough practice with the concrete use of language to… |
| common culture. And yet, because of the way that we each process
stories in our own brains, nobody is hearing the exact same… |
| initiating and responding and put on a still face. What happens is
that babies make more efforts to engage the parent, and… |
| or to "know" something. Of course, Dr. Montessori didn't need to
know which neurons were firing in the… |
| about storytelling, we're on solid ground to say that when engaged
in storytelling, children are processing at many… |
| ence. It gives the patients a way to share who they are when other
ways of communicating that sense of self are compromised by… |
| Counter-narrative
interventions are being developed for reha-
bilitation of terrorists.
Ad11/t Attnc/1ment Interview
At a… |
| And here's another zumpkin. There's a similar understand-
ing of the importance of words to process emotion at work… |
| The thing about the elements of Dangerous Writing is that because
they're expressed and used by writers, they themselves… |
| These items sell better. According to Chris Speed4, principle researcher
at Totem, the organization running some of these&… |
| reveal so much more. How he flung open the door, how he lingered
on the threshold or leapt off the porch steps, whether or not… |
| Thank you for listening to me today. We have looked at many
zumpkins, seemingly unrelated things that can come together into… |
| were building the foundation for a just, harmonious society. This
truth was brought to me very powerfully in my primary… |
| REFERENCES
Bronson, Po & Ashley Merryman. N11r/11res!tock: New
TJ,i11ki11g About CJ,i/dre11. New York: Hatchette Book… |
| Pink, Daniel. A Wl,o/e New Mind. New York: Riverhead
Books, 2005.
Ramachandran, V.S. A Brief Tour of Humnn Co11scio11s11ess… |
| Georgia Heard
38
The NA MTA Journal • Vol. 36, No. 3 • Summer 20 I I |
| A PLACE FOR WONDER:
READING AND WRITING NONFICTION
by Georgia Heard
Georgia Henrd's intuitive knowledge about wonder… |
| When I set up these centers, I
want young learners to explore
materials with all their senses, to
ask questions, to use… |
| anything and not exclaim about the world. I realized that a lot of the
primary schools that I was visiting had a different… |
| This experience, typical of some of the schools that I was looking
at (but not the Montessori schools), amazed me. When I… |
| the day they can go to this place and write a question down. J also
want to encourage them to use writing to speculate, to… |
| day so that children can explore these centers when they first ar-
rive. These centers take place throughout the school year,… |
| One of the values of the wonder of the week is giving kids time
to ponder. Kids love this word ponder, which means to think… |
| her heart wonder about how to make friends because she just did
not know how to do it.
I wonder about how do you make friends… |
| kids were gravitating toward, what excited them, and what excited
their learning: animals, nature, and pets.
Someone had… |
| I also work a lot with poetry. So much of poetry is observational.
This is a poem by a boy who wrote about his turtle. What l… |
| used, they could have spent all day talking about these objects
they brought in. A lot of them were personal. "I… |
| transform it into poetry. Jn this particular class we had read a lot
of poetry and a boy wrote:
The shells make life come… |
| how does that change it? Here's another example using your eyes
and then using a magnifying glass. This is Kate and her… |
| Wonder Boxes
For slightly older children I found some wonder boxes at a dol-
lar store, all shiny and beautiful, the size… |
| In Florida, zoysia is an incredibly hardy grass with a root system
designed to keep it moist during the hot summer days. When… |
| bark of trees. Essentially we were putting a frame around different
sensory images and helping the children to translate them… |
| them T always ask open-ended questions. What do you know about
snakes? What do you notice about that? Their conversations with… |
| way now. Fiction has truth in it, obviously, and nonfiction has story
in it. There are similarities and blending between… |
| teresting to you? I want to know what they are responding to. There
are some books they really didn't like. It's… |
| enjoyment. An efferent book would answer your questions about
how to take care of your new puppy. Traditionally we think of… |
| watched movies about them .... " Lastly, writing from personal
experience, a lot of nonfiction books have a personal… |
| Many states have adopted core standards. Some of the lessons
are very good and they make sense, such as teaching what is a… |
| they thought it was a heart question and a symbol of an eye if it
was a research question. Some questions were both. When we… |
| answer. Heart wonders can have many different answers just like
Wilfrid Gordon got many different answers.
A lot of kids will… |
| Some people use a planning sheet to explore their wonder. What
other questions do you have about your topic? You should have a… |
| write down some of the facts that they have learned they can go to
the writing station.
You can also send letters home to… |