What happens when you give children total creative control?
In short? You get 10 brilliant books in 10 years.
Every year, 100 Story Building publishes a book. This book is written and edited entirely by children. We develop the book through a year-long program called Early Harvest, which gives upper-primary students an in-depth, real-world experience of creating a professionally published book from scratch. In this one-of-a-kind program, we assemble an editorial board of Grade 5 and 6 students who work together to curate, edit, and publish an original anthology of fiction written by their peers.
Our Early Harvest program is student-led, meaning that while 100 Story Building provides the framework for the programs, the participating children and young people drive them forward by deciding the themes, formats, creative processes or production pathways.
Early Harvest turns 10 this year, and we couldn’t be more proud and excited to share a decade’s worth of creativity and achievement by children and young people.
Students in the Early Harvest program show off some of our past publications.
Student agency sits at the heart of the Early Harvest program: whether they are contributing authors or young editors, students are given complete creative control and see their ideas manifested in a real-world outcome on the page. Over the years, we have developed a few key principles around student agency. These principles run through all of our creative programs, but as we kick off the Early Harvest program for the tenth time, we thought we’d give you a peek behind the curtain at a few of our guiding lights...
Give students real choices
“It was really hard to choose my absolute favourite part of the past few weeks, but it's definitely got to be the feeling of my own choice for an important job. Usually, most things like this are dependant on adults or more 'experienced' people, but we were actually given the choices and open decisions so that the book was really made by kids. That's not something you usually see around." - Abaigeal, 2020 editor
Often, children are given false choices that make it seem like they are taking control of their learning, but which are really a choice between two pre-selected options chosen by adults (“Would you like to read this book, or that one?” “Do you want free time now or later?” “Carrots or peas?”). Instead, we can give children and young people agency, by offering choices that have real-world outcomes, so that they can feel empowered, involved, and excited by their own learning.
Student agency isn’t about telling children and young people, “Do whatever you want.” It is about providing enough scaffolding that allows students to make targeted, informed choices that have impact and implications. This way, students are empowered to take control of their own creativity and creative decisions. Here are a few ways we do this in the Early Harvest program:
We introduce students to the professionals involved in the publication process (authors, illustrators, designers, etc) and allow them to make decisions about who they would like to commission for the few adult contributions to the book.
Students get full control over which stories are included in the final book, and which stories are rejected. They have to decide which pieces “belong in the book” and consider the audience’s experience, and then they give specific feedback to each author (even the professional adult authors who submit work, which in the past has included Andy Griffiths, Alice Pung, Maxine Beneba Clarke, and Sally Morgan).
Editors decide the title of the book, and its cover design: they work directly with a professional designer to develop concepts, provide feedback, and approve the final design.
Use iterative decision-making
"I've learned that I can’t take the books I read for granted as it is extremely hard to do and takes months to make but minutes to read" - Chloe, 2020 editor
"My favourite part of today's session was going into two breakout room and discussing our ideas." - Kshetra, 2020 editor
Throughout the Early Harvest publication process, students have to engage in two kinds of thinking: convergent thinking (brainstorming, idea generation, daydreaming…) and divergent thinking (narrowing down and refining ideas, and making decisions). This is an iterative decision-making process, and we purposefully make thinking visible to students so that they understand not only what decisions they are making, but why and how. Some ways we do this include:
Coming up with a huge list of potential themes for the book, and then working to assess all the ideas and form a shortlist, which is voted on by students across Victoria. This helps both writers and editors feel invested in the book and involved in the process from the very start.
Using brainstorming as a go-to idea generation tool, collaboratively ‘crowd-sourcing’ ideas from everyone and then discussing them together to refine, combine, and take action on ideas.
Establishing reflective practice (written evaluations) from each student as an integral part of the creative process, so that ideas can be built upon and refined from week to week.
Breaking into separate editor teams to develop extra book components (a jokes page, a Choose Your Own Adventure story, a reader’s quiz, and more!) and then presenting them to each other for feedback - then incorporating that feedback to improve these drafts each session.
Adults as creative collaborators
"I will always remember the kindness and commitment the facilitators and the other people on the editorial team had for us and each other." - Ava 2020 editor
Adults work as creative collaborators with children, allowing them space to make all the creative decisions.
From initial in-class workshops, through to the book launch, adults are not all-knowing authority figures in this process: they are students’ creative collaborators. Throughout the Early Harvest program, we treat children as the experts in their own creativity. They are given control over the theme of the book, its content, and its visual design, and encouraged to work with adults as supportive partners in the process. This looks like:
Workshop facilitators never having the ‘correct’ answers, but always look to students for their opinion, to help children uncover new information and make creative decisions.
Writing a letter to an author for a commission, and then providing written feedback.
Reviewing illustrators’ and designers’ portfolios, deciding on who to commission and working with them to develop artwork to accompany the editors’ selected stories.
The Early Harvest program (and its publication) holds student agency at its core because by giving students control over their own learning and creativity, they will also develop confidence and a sense of belonging.
We (and this year’s cohort of students) are already busy getting Early Harvest’s tenth-anniversary ready for publication. We’re busy finalising our theme for this year’s publication, and have whittled the list all the way down to two: Underwater & Ocean, or Magic & Fantasy! We can’t wait to see what the students create this year for Early Harvest: the tenth anniversary edition! Stay tuned…
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Ready to check out some previous editions of Early Harvest? Go ‘Unboring Exploring’ with last year’s book, and check out the rest of the collection here.
You can register your interest for Early Harvest 2022 here - but if you can’t wait that long to learn more, check out our other school workshops and professional learning offerings here.
