I went into the Harmony School this afternoon for the first of my now-to-be-weekly revision workshops with the combined fourth- and fifth-grade class. This age group is among my favorite to teach: most of the students have a fair amount of writing fluency, but they still retain their wacky little-kid imagination, and they absolutely love visitors. I am always fervently embraced, which is an unfailing charm.

So after we hugged and kissed, we sat around in our little groups and carefully listened to the reader's journal entry or story or whatever that person had chosen to read: "Mr. Bobcat Talks to Me" or "I Met an Elephant in a Candy Shop in the Forest" or "Sarah's Goosebumps Adventure." And it took about thirty seconds' worth of modeling before these kids caught on to the "what if?" strategy of civil critical discourse. That phrase is magical. By the end of forty-five minutes they were asking each other questions such as "What if the writer tries to think more carefully about the personality differences between the 'I' she's inventing and the 'I' she really is herself?"

I mean, these are nine- and ten-year-olds! In their first revision workshop ever! I came home in such a good mood that I immediately had to make brownies. Plus, I've found a hook for a new essay, which so far is jumping quite enthusiastically onto the page. 

Dinner tonight: tomato and bread soup (much better than the name might indicate), cheese wafers, some kind of salad-green mixture I'll have to slog out into the rain to pick. Blah.