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Learn by Writing

5/17/2016

7 Comments

 
“Learn as much by writing as by reading.” ~Lord Acton

What did Lord Acton mean? I think I know because I learn so much from writing. I learn things about myself – the things that I am thinking subconsciously are often brought to the surface and explored when I put pen to paper. My feelings about people, places, objects, and events can be described, explained, rediscovered.

When I was in elementary school and junior high, I was often in trouble with my mom. My punishment was time spent alone in my room and privileges revoked. I didn’t really mind because my grandparents had bought me a guitar.  I taught myself how to play, and then I began to write lyrics and put them to music. I was crazy about all the folk singers such as Carole King, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Cat Stevens, Carly Simon, and James Taylor. I knew every Peter, Paul, and Mary song. My favorite lyricist was Bob Dylan, although my parents complained that he sounded like a cat in heat and on the prowl. They always shouted up the stairs, “Turn the music – if you can call it that – down!”

Although my song-writing days ended by high school, I continued to enjoy writing stories and poems.  One thing about writing – you are always growing and changing as a writer. You are always in the process of arriving, but never really there. I’ve learned so much about the way I organize my thinking and what I’m most passionate about from looking at my writer’s notebooks and my published pieces. I’ve learned so much about the past, recalling bits and pieces of my life as I write about memories – the members of my family and favorite places.

My favorite thing to do is to write about family secrets  and family members. I guess all families have secrets.  My father’s cousin Ruth spilled the beans one day when she told me about my father’s first wife. First wife!?  I thought in sheer disbelief. Wasn’t my mother the only one? Did Mom know that Dad had been married before?   My dad married Mom at the age of forty-one. He had served in the army during World War II and apparently had taken a young wife just before he left for boot camp.  The marriage didn’t last very long. She was pretty, young, and willing to date other men while Dad was across the Atlantic. His buddies told him all about it when he returned, and that was the end to a very short marriage.
 
At this point in my life, writing is almost essential – a little like breathing in and out.  It is a catharsis, but largely speaks of my existence in this world and a need to share with others.  Writing is a big part of my life. I try to communicate the joy of writing with colleagues and the young writers I continue to observe and work with in my role as literacy consultant and Co-director of the Pennsylvania Writing & Literature Project.  Writing is a way for me to re-energize or relax. It is a joy to write every day. I feel I am living the life of a writer when I rise in the morning between five and six so I can have at least 40 minutes  of writing time to start my days.


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Lies A Fun Poem/Story Format

5/10/2016

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Lies is a fun story format that challenges students to include certain items or words in the text they create. You can also give them a genre or let them choose. My story is written as a poem. It is fantasy and includes the following:  three color words, two holidays, a season, Disneyland, two book characters, a food item, and a familiar quote from a classic or well-known tale.

Another way to do something like this is “Story in a Bag.” Place four to eight items in a bag and write a lead sentence on the board or chart. Let everyone get started writing off that lead. Then pull out one of the items such as a flashlight. Students have to work that item into the story in a way that makes sense. Place the item on a table in plain view. Then pull out the next item after a few items. It could be a pliers, eggbeater, plate, or notebook.   You can also occasionally write a word on the board or pull out a photo from the bag (such as the moon, a rainbow, a screen door). I liked to do this activity on a Friday afternoon to challenge my students to think on their feet and problem solve.  Believe it or not, it helped to develop writing fluency.  After three or four Fridays, I asked students to volunteer in partners to create a “Story in the Bag” and I joined the class to write.

“Book in a Bag” is a little different. Students give a book talk about a book they’ve read by finding four to five items (they can take photos or draw pictures or make sculptures out of clay as well) to tell about their book.  These items are placed in a paper bag. The students must include characters, setting, problem and genre.  Of course, they should not reveal how the story ends. Nonfiction books are also doable in this format.  

               “Under My Pillow: A Message”


Last winter when it snowed purple JELL-O
And hailstones fell as perfectly shaped diamonds,
The Easter Bunny appeared at Christmas time
And placed beautiful painted eggs
under the tree instead of presents.
Time ticked backwards and Winter became fall.
All the leaves changed blue and pink and silver.
Suddenly, Santa appeared in a sleigh
Pulled by eight plant-eating dinosaurs.
Santa handed out reindeer antler swim trunks
And free passes to Disneyland.
I closed my eyes for just one moment
And found myself falling down a long tunnel
Where I met Alice, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter.
They were looking for the Tooth Fairy because
Alice had lost a tooth and wasn’t at home
to place it under her pillow.
I blinked, and when I opened my eye
I was back again in my own bed
in my own bedroom….What a relief!
And then I had a strange feeling
That I should peek under my pillow
And to my surprise,
I found four quarters
and a note from the Queen of Hearts
that read, “Off with her head!”
 
 
 

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My Welsh Corgis

5/3/2016

1 Comment

 
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If you have grown up in a home where dogs are part of your family, you want them in your life as an adult. I fought to have a dog, even though my allergies to dust, ragweed, and animals with hair kept my mother battling with me for many years before giving in. For the past thirty years or more, I’ve had Welsh Corgis.

My dogs, Merri and Rhonda, are a mother-daughter pair. They are both beautiful dogs, read and whites, with personalities that match their spirit.  Always on the go, the Corgis team to greet guests rather enthusiastically, barking until the “new” people have been seated. Merri often runs to get a toy. She thinks everyone must engage in play with her, usually a game of tug-of-war.  Merri plays to keep a human interested in continuing her game. Rhonda plays to win!

The two of them are meet-and-greeters, and I cannot think of a better way to come home each day. There they are, waiting at the door for me because they’ve been curled up in the entranceway since the time I walked out the front door.  They do the same for my husband Ralph, coming into the den or kitchen occasionally to check up on me – then back to their post.

When either of us enter, there are cries of joy and much bouncing up and down. For Ralph, Merri runs to get a toy. If Ralph does not immediately grab onto the toy and tug, Merri looks around to find another one. Perhaps her human will be interested in that one!  I never feel lonely with my dogs in the house to keep me company.  They both love to cuddle, and Merri loves particularly to flip herself over so I can tickle her tummy. What a life!



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The Pact

5/1/2016

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When I was fourteen, I remember my love affair with horses bloomed. I dearly wanted one and had attended summer riding camp since I had turned nine, but my parents could not even begin to afford it. Horseback riding is an expensive sport with the cost of reading gear, boarding bills each month, blacksmith and vet bills, and horse show transportation and entry fees.

I was old enough to understand, but I did not want to give up my passion. The solution: I started working at the stables on weekends. My mom got up extra early to drive me to the barn on Sheaff Lane, up the gravel driveway, long and bumpy, in our faithful Rambler.  She handed me a paperbag lunch – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off.  I’d see her again at precisely five – Mom was always on time.

My parents and I had a deal: I would keep up my grades (by that they meant that I would receive an “A” in every subject – or no less than an occasional “B”), and I would be rewarded with stable time. It seemed fair to me, and I knew I could hold up my end of the bargain. I made every minute in school count, paying attention and doing all the assignments on time and sometimes ahead of time. In high school, I studied until wee morning hours for exams to maintain my “A” average each year, but it was always more than a grade.  I needed horses like I needed air.
 
Each Saturday and Sunday I mucked stalls, groomed horses, cleaned tack, and led ponies around and around the ring on a lead shank to teach young children how to post to the trot. My favorite ponies were Oswald and Jungle Juice – they were the best teachers ever!  By summer of my fourteenth year, my riding instructor made me a junior counselor at summer camp, and I helped to give lessons. My expertise was getting new riders started. Throughout the seasons, I taught students from the age of four to the age of sixty-four!

Sometimes, I got a free riding lesson for my efforts. Sometimes, I took people on the trails through Whitemarsh. Each time, I got to be with horses and breathe it all in.  I loved every moment of it. The weekends were something to look forward to – my sisters were inside playing with paper dolls or watching television – but I was outside with magnificent beauties.  I was learning how to be a riding instructor, learning how to work hard, learning about the kind of person I wanted to become.


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If You Want to Find Brown...

4/26/2016

10 Comments

 
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If you want to find brown,
look for it in the dirt of a country road.
Feel brown in the warmth of a piece of toast or a friend’s hand.
Smell brown in the soft, rich earth of a spring garden. 
Follow the sound of brown in the flapping of a sparrow’s wings and
laughter of children clapping out rhymes in a Mt. Airy neighborhood.
Find brown in the taste of my grandma’s Sunday roast or her shoo-fly pie.
Search the vast Sonoran Desert in summer
where tossed sands create dust devils.
Find brown in the color of love on a warm winter’s night. 
Search the woodlands and swamps,
 the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains,
Or catch the notes flying from a fiddler’s fiddle
On a whiskey-soaked summer evening
If you want to find brown.
 

*My poem was written from the mentor text, If You Want to Find Golden by Eileen Spinnelli.  This book was recommended to me a long time ago by Chris Coyne Kehan, now a librarian in Central Bucks School District. I just rediscovered it when I observed Brenda Krupp’s students writing color poems after Brenda shared this text.  Brenda, a Co-director of the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project, has all her students totally immersed in writing poetry.  What an incredible writing community!  I am learning so much from Brenda and her young authors!  For more suggestions about mentor texts for writing color poems, see Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature K-6 by Lynne Dorfman & Rose Cappelli. Chapter 7 Poetry: Everybody Can be a Writer on poetry has many student examples and Your Turn lessons on writing color poems, pantoums, and haiku.


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Color Poems as Mentor Texts

4/22/2016

1 Comment

 
May turns everything to pink:
Pink dresses, pink blossoms, pink cheeks from playing hard outside.
Pink scarves are wrapped with a pink bow,
waiting to be draped around a beautiful Mom or Grandmom
on a pink and perfectly perfect Mother’s Day this year.
 
June turns everything to blue:
Blue sailboats, blue rivers, blue fields.
Blue flowers dot the meadows,
Bobbing their blooms in the tender breeze
And drinking up sweet blue rain.
 
These poems were written by studying a mentor text, “February,” by Charlotte Otten (appears in January Rides the Wind).  Rose Cappelli, co-author of Mentor Texts and this blog site, first tried out this imitation. It was so inviting, I had to try it out myself. I’ve used this poem to notice what an author does, and then try to walk around in the syntax of that particular writer. I believe it encourages student writers to take risks and try out new things.

As I read picture books, magazine and newspaper articles, and novels - I always try to find something new - a craft move, a scaffold, or a use of punctuation - that I want to study and try to embed in my own writing. First, I try it out in my writer's notebook. I think about the author's purpose.  Why was this craft move or organizational structure so effective here?  Then I imagine where it might fit into my own writing. Of course, I am forever grateful to Katie Wood Ray and her body of work. Particularly, Wondrous Words changed the way I think about writing and reading.  Now, I read a text as both a reader and a writer. It has made all the difference in my writing and in my confidence as a writer.

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Looking at Graphics

4/21/2016

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Here is a quick look at one way to introduce graphics, how to read and interpret them, and how they fit into a piece of nonfiction - the job they do (purpose). Encourage students to use graphics when they write nonfiction text whenever it's appropriate.
  • Display only the graphics of the piece of nonfiction text on an overhead, PowerPoint, poster, or chart paper.
  • Model how to read the graphics, noting the key words and phrases.
  • Ask students to list the ideas they anticipate the author will cover in the text (predictions).
  • Read the text of the piece together – aloud.
  • Using the students’ list of anticipated ideas, abandon those that are not found or answered within the body of the text.
  • Assimilate or accommodate ideas the author does address into the list.
  • Review the list of revised information found in the text.
  • Point out to students that these ideas are the essential information or main ideas presented.
  • Review the steps of this strategy minilesson: Anticipate, Actively read, Abandon, Assimilate and Accommodate.
 


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Observations on Writing Workshop

4/19/2016

6 Comments

 
“The longer I worked, the more certain I felt that as impossible as it might seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that could keep a world from falling.”  ~Arthur Miller

                It is not an easy thing to run a writing workshop, but it is well worth the effort. Our student writers should write with a purpose in mind and an audience that they value.  The more knowledgeable you become, the less program dependent you become. To that end, I believe it is important to read professional books on the teaching of writing – as many as you can possibly get your hands on – and attend conferences and courses where the teaching of writing is one of the topics.

                Writing truly has the power to transform what is going on in classrooms. Our writers will develop and refine their thought processes as they think aloud on paper in workshop and across their day. Writing makes their thinking visible, allowing them to organize their ideas, share them with others, and revise them. Students can learn from each other if their thoughts are written down. That way, they don’t have to worry about remembering what they were going to say – they can listen to other people’s thinking until it is their time to share. Students rise to meet a challenging curriculum, and writing workshop should nudge them to take risks in order to write differently tomorrow than they are writing today.

                There are certain conditions that must be in place in order for high achievement and self-directed learning. Students (and teachers) must be willing to try new things and have confidence that they will succeed. There must be a high level of teacher knowledge (we are always learning, too).  High expectations are in place for all students.
 
               Primary and intermediate cultures should not be separate – communication between these teachers should be ongoing and frequent.  Weekly professional conversations are important. These conversations are necessary to push students forward.  School communities must find the time for colleagues to discuss what is happening inside their classrooms and problem solve together. Many heads are better than one!  There is a huge reading-writing connection that we often do not pay attention to.  For young children, their writing is often a way into their reading.

                  Finally (for today anyway), focus on the praise so that your students have the confidence to continue to write and perhaps, even the desire to write. In the end, students learn as much by writing as by reading – about themselves, the people they care about, and the world around them.  Write often, write daily, write!

                             The desire to write grows with writing. ~Erasmus

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Top Ten Lists for Writing Workshop

4/15/2016

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Summer will soon be here! It’s a time to travel, read and write, take long walks, and plan.   It is the time to start to reflect on goals and what you will need to do next year – an action plan.  How will your writing workshop look next year?  What will you do differently?  What will look the same?  Here are two “Top Ten” lists for you and your students – some things to consider. Can you write your top ten list for your students and for yourself?  What would you include?
 
 
Fundamentals of Writing Workshop:
Suggestions and  Goals for Your Students
 
  1.  Work independently and together with peers to solve a wide range of writing problems.
  2.  Learn skills, strategies, and craft moves through a range of mentor texts and authors.
  3. Communicate your skills through multiple means, exploring various forms, writing types (including poetry), and media.
  4. Connect what you learn today with the work you have done in the past and what you know about yourself and the world.
  5. Know what a successful performance looks like and sounds like – set goals you can accomplish if you work hard!
  6. Read, read, and read!
  7. Develop and use knowledge in everyday classroom discussions.
  8. Question, question, question!
  9.  Write in your writer’s notebook on a daily basis.
  10.   Take risks and try something new as often as possible!


Fundamentals of Writing Workshop:
Suggestions and Goals for Teachers
 
  1. Process your observations of students on multiple levels and various ways.
  2. Monitor and evaluate your students’ performances and progress toward goals.
  3. Provide choice, challenge, and make time for conferring and feedback daily.
  4. Foster opportunities for cognitive collaboration.
  5. Provide opportunities for students to write daily and reflect on their learning.
  6. Write daily in your writer’s notebook and reflect on your learning.
  7. Read, read, read – a variety of professional texts on writing workshop and a variety of children’s books to use as mentor texts and read alouds.
  8. Use strategies and tools to help your students solve a wide range of writing problems.
  9. Use the knowledge you gather from listening to conversations about reading and writing to inform your instruction.
  10.   Question, question, question your practices in order to improve and grow!


 
 
 


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Share Time in Writing Workshop

4/14/2016

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How do you build in share time during writing workshop?  It is often just as effective to share a piece of the text rather than to share a text in its entirety. It also allows more student writers to get a chance to receive some feedback.  Sometimes, they have tried out a strategy or craft move that worked well. Give them a chance to explain how that strategy use or craft move helped them to effectively communicate their ideas and keep their potential readers reading!  Other times, your writers may share a valuable response received during a conference with you or one of their peers.


Students sometimes find their most powerful or delightful sentence and explain why they chose it – what they like about it. Have you ever written a sentence, and upon rereading, you think to yourself, “Wow! I wrote this!”  Sometimes it comes down to a word – sharing a gem word – perhaps, the perfect word in the perfect place! Finding gem words in writing pieces and talking about them is one way to grow vocabulary in a meaningful way. Writers love words!


Students may also share what they have learned from their favorite authors – they are, in fact, the most influential writing teachers our students have!  Students can talk about what they have noticed while reading books (nonfiction and fiction) and poems written by these authors. Of course, middle school and high school students may share noticings from newspapers, essays, plays, advertisements, and magazines.  All writers benefit from reading widely and studying authors who are writing in the format and/or genre that they will use in their current or future writing.

Conferences can occur every day in order to give all your student writers a voice and an opportunity to share. Roving conferences, a few one-on-one conferences, and peer conferences (peer response groups) are ways to share writing each day. Younger students can use a read-retell-respond structure and older students can offer praise and polish. Sometimes, students will hold an "ear" conference for revision purposes, while other times an "eye" conference (editing) is most needed!


Reflection at the end of writing workshop may only take three or four minutes. In that time, writers can offer their thoughts about the work they are doing, what has proved to be the most helpful, problem-solving strategies they have used, or what they are noticing about how their writing is changing. At first this reflection may not come easily, but with practice at a designated time in workshop (and tucked in to other places throughout the day), students will become skillful reviewers of their own writing and process.   


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    Lynne loves to write in the early morning hours, especially in warm weather when she can sit outside on the patio.  After a walk with her three Welsh Corgis, her mind is cleared and her spirit is inspired by the choir of birds in nearby bushes and trrees. 

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