Chapter 11: Purple Crayons, Wild Things, And Dots: Getting Lost in Children's Literature and Curriculum

While the idea of getting lost in reading is known to many readers, the traditional writing structure that is privileged in academia may limit creativity and innovation. Traditional structures of a classroom can have similar effects. Elementary students frequently read the same types of chapter and picture books over and over again. As a third-grade teacher, I find it a joy to see the look on a child's face when she is presented with an atypical piece of writing.

Curriculum and classroom teaching methods can fall into this same realm of uniformity, which can be both frustrating and disengaging to teachers and students. This piece hopes to provide a nonconforming arrangement of text that might allow the reader to wander through its ideas with an open mind toward the benefit of diversity, in both curriculum and writing.