Bates language-arts launches website

LEWISTON — For more than a decade, the Thousand Words Project has been the flagship educational outreach program of the Bates College Museum of Art. Now the museum has launched an educational website for the program, complete with instructional video, at www.thousandwordsproject.org.

Designed for middle-school language arts teachers and students, but adaptable to all grades, the TWP uses artworks from the Bates College Museum of Art collection to explore the creative processes in writing and the making of visual art. The new website centers on specifics of this process, including research, editing and revising, ideas, symbols and metaphors, lines and more.

Lessons, along with ideas for going deeper, accompany the video, affording a valuable curriculum resource for teachers and homeschooling parents. By focusing on process, students gain skills through direct practice. Sequential sets of exercises build upon each other to allow students to write complete essays, enabling them to see the creative process through to fruition.

The development of the curriculum resources and website was made possible by generous support from private foundations. "Teachers who saw the video at a stakeholders' meeting last fall were simply ecstatic over the quality and potential," says Shostak. "The newest evolution of our program caught the attention of educators statewide, and we hadn't even formally launched the video yet."

The video was produced by Leighton Images of Durham.

To learn more about the TWP contact Shostak at 786-8302 or ashostak@bates.edu.