Bob Kronbauer Is Awesome

04/27/2012

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Last week, Bob Kronbauer, awesome editor-in-chief of Vancouver Is Awesome, dropped by the Wednesday/Thursday Crew to chat about their blog; answer questions about his own über-positive, über-popular site; and give them tips for how to improve the Wednesday/Thursday Crew blog.

What resulted was an internet show-and-tell, the kids showing Bob their favourite online past-times, and Bob sharing his own.

As a thank you, the kids wrote about Bob’s visit on their blog. Here's an excerpt:
[Bob] said that he chose to become a blogger because he likes Vancouver. He meets famous people and he interviews them. He checked out our own Wednesday/Thursday Crew Blog and had read it. That was pretty cool. We showed him Epic Rap Battles of History. We watched the videos and talked about how cool it was. We thought that the best one was Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking. Bob is such a nice guy because he donated us a camera, and we are so excited to use it and take pictures around our school. . . Thanks Bob! Vancouver is awesome and so are you!

Bob also wrote about his visit on his own site. Then the kids started posting some of the photos they took with the camera Bob donated, including this amazing stop-motion video! Then Bob wrote about that. So they’re pretty much blogging pen pals now. Which is truly awesome. Thanks so much for being a part of the Writers’ Room experience, Bob!
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Food Writing (and Eating) with Alexandra Gill

04/23/2012

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The Writers’ Room has been lucky that our friend Alexandra Gill, the food critic at the Globe and Mail who generously donated her time to our Art of Food Writing fundraiser in October, has now visited the Writers’ Room twice. 

She easily wound her way into the primary kids’ hearts through food, letting them sample a food that represented each taste—they even liked the sour lemons!

After talking about the different tastes, each child received an apple, and, before discussing the flavour, they described the look, feel and smell—and the sound of an apple? On the count of three, everyone took a bite at once. The sound of an apple is a resounding crunch followed by a room-full of mmms. Finally, the kids wrote about the apple-eating experience. Here's just one of the great works:

I Ate an Apple!
It looked like a heart.
It felt smooth.
It smelled like a rainbow.
It sounded like a nice cracking sound.
It tasted like sushi.
It reminded me of my dog, my house, candy, worms.
—Ana, grade 4

After spring break, Alexandra returned, this time to chat with the grade 6 and 7 students about food. Whereas the primary workshop was packed with kids and energy, the grade 6/7 workshop was a chance for the eight students who attended to spend some quality time with Alexandra, tasting, food writing, and sharing their thoughts with her on restaurants that the kids and the critic had all been to. That workshop resulted in some great writing, too, like this review by Taran, grade 6:

My favourite restaurant is Top’s on Kingsway. I had the sweet and sour chicken wings. It was very awesome! It wasn’t awesome after I ate the wings! I got more on me than in me. For dessert I had banana cream pie. It was very fluffy.

Alexandra promised to return again for more fun with food, and we can’t wait! Thanks so much for being an ongoing part of our writing (and eating) lives, Alexandra!
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Deborah Willis, Time Traveller

03/23/2012

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Over spring break, the KidSafe kids and Writers’ Room tutors had the pleasure of working with Deborah Willis, Governor-General’s Award–nominated author and the Writer in Residence at the Joy Kogawa House.

She ran a whimsical workshop called Postcards from the Future, where the kids imagined that they had travelled to the future and then wrote a postcard back home to 2012 about what they saw in the future. They also drew the world of the future on the front of the postcards.

These fantastic, futuristic works were displayed at the KidSafe Pancake Breakfast, where three brave writers stood up and shared their visions of the future with a group of their peers, friends, family, KidSafe staff and supporters, and TV crews. Here’s just one of the creative notes from the future:
To see more postcards, check out our Spring Break Postcards from the Future Facebook album.

Thanks so much for spending time with us over spring break, Deborah. We hope to see you again in the future (get it? future?).
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Ode to Fiona Tinwei Lam

02/03/2012

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The very first guest author to run a writing workshop in the Writers’ Room was the courageous and poetic Fiona Tinwei Lam. In Fiona’s poetry workshop, the primary kids (and one brave tutor) donned brightly coloured socks on their hands and acted out Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks,” which inspired us to write odes of our own. 

Here’s one ode written by Angelo, grade 1:

Ode to the Moon
The moon is cool and the moon looks like games.
The moon looks like TV. I love the moon.
The moon is awesome.

Fiona not only enthralled us with one day of poetry, but she also left a batch of fantastic ideas for working poetry into our Writers’ Room lives. Thanks so much, Fiona!
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An Inspiring Visit from Claudia Cusano of NUVO magazine

01/03/2012

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Claudia Cusano shows the girls pictures of Tyra Banks.
During the Writers’ Room’s winter break program, Claudia Cusano, editor of NUVO magazine, spoke to a group of girls about the ways that magazines portray women. She showed shocking images of celebrities pre- and post-PhotoShopping, and the girls played “spot the difference,” pointing out the many, many changes that women’s appearances undergo before they show up in a magazine. At one point, one of the girls said, “I like the ‘before’ Mariah better.” We all agreed. 

Claudia and NUVO magazine are part of a new movement of media moguls who portray women as they really are. She showed fashion spreads that she’d marked up using her red pen (which, the girls noted, is kind of like a teacher’s pen), and her suggested changes focused on things like shadows and composition, never the models’ bodies.

Thanks to Clauida’s presentation, the girls gained the knowledge that when you look at magazines, you have to remember that—although the people in the pictures are real—the images are not real. 

Early in the afternoon, one of the girls had said that she looks at magazines to be inspired, and Claudia said that she wants her work and her magazine to inspire people, too—but for the right reasons. Her strong values, positive outlook and natural beauty definitely inspired our group of young women.
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