Tom Newkirk on Donald Graves' Reseearch: 1975-2010

        Tom Newkirk, Professor of English at University of New Hampshire, was selected as the 2010 recipient of the Lindberg Award, the highest award in the College of Liberal Arts. He delivered the 2011 Lindberg Lecture: "Tale of the Tape: Donald Graves and the Revolution in Children's Writing."  This link will take you to the talk, itself.  If you skip the Dean's congratulatory blah-blah, it's around 50 minutes, and includes raw footage (about 5 minutes) of one of Graves' young research subjects learning to write, including an example of "scaffolding" in action.  The clip of Graves' film of John Massey, who had never held a pencil until first grade, begins at 22:37.  The next clip of Massey's writing shows him four months later, reading from a book that he wrote called "I Am Skating."  His progress is astounding.  Newkirk's research project re-examines the same videotapes Graves used in his study but applied 21st-century methods and concepts to the evidence.  You, too, can do this.