Jo Phenix Quote, 1999

Jo Phenix Quote, 1999

I remember the first time I read this quote, from her 1999 book,  Teaching Writing.  I literally gasped out loud, because the students I worked were doing 'real' writing (using the alphabet) rarely if ever.  Pati King-DeBaun had completed our book, Emergent Literacy Success, and were really pushing writing.  But this quote threw down the gauntlet, showing me that we were simply not writing enough. 

For our emergent writers who are scribbling with the alphabet, and getting informative feedback either live or through a video that they can watch over and over . . . here's how I would re-write this quote.  If you can give informative feedback to everything they're writing . . . they're not writing enough.

Hey, I think I feel a new Visual Quote coming on!!