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If You Want to Find Brown...

4/26/2016

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

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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

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“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

Work independently and together with peers to solve a wide range of writing problems.
Learn skills, strategies, and craft moves through a range of mentor texts and authors.
Communicate your skills through multiple means, exploring various forms, writing types (including poetry), and media.
Connect what you learn today with the work you have done in the past and what you know about yourself and the world.
Know what a successful performance looks like and sounds like – set goals you can accomplish if you work hard!
Read, read, and read!
Develop and use knowledge in everyday classroom discussions.
Question, question, question!
Write in your writer’s notebook on a daily basis.
Take risks and try something new as often as possible!

Fundamentals of Writing Workshop:
Suggestions and Goals for Teachers

Process your observations of students on multiple levels and various ways.
Monitor and evaluate your students’ performances and progress toward goals.
Provide choice, challenge, and make time for conferring and feedback daily.
Foster opportunities for cognitive collaboration.
Provide opportunities for students to write daily and reflect on their learning.
Write daily in your writer’s notebook and reflect on your learning.
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.
Use strategies and tools to help your students solve a wide range of writing problems.
Use the knowledge you gather from listening to conversations about reading and writing to inform your instruction.
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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Writer's Block

4/13/2016

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My pen rides
like a stranger
in my hand,
cloaked and
shielded from the sun,
And I cannot find
An oasis
to drink up
the nourishing words
that run before me
like the tumbleweeds
of another desert.

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Tea Kettle Song

4/12/2016

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I am shiny and silver,
I feel best when I’m full.
As I’m warmed, my water boils
And I have to let go!
Steam rises evenly in streams!

Then suddenly,
I burst into my song!
Just a few soft notes at first,
But then I grow louder and louder
In a solo that fills the kitchen.

Everyone gathers to listen to me.
The dogs begin to howl and whine,
But they cannot carry my tune.
The father says, “The tea kettle must sing.
Then you know the water is ready!”

Suddenly, I am lifted
From my warm nest,
Then tipped once, twice
Until my spout
Pours the life out of me.

It splashes into mugs with teabags
That sit on a granite counter.
I am light-headed,
Losing my warmth
And feeling empty inside.

My song is over for today,
But I will sing again tomorrow!

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Fun With Alliteration

4/11/2016

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Q is for Queen Conch

I have a queen conch whose name is Quintella. She comes from a quarry in Quebec. Sometimes she is quiet, and sometimes she is quick. She eats queer sea animals, quintuplets, and quartered apples. She is quite well known for her quirky habits. I love Qunitella the Queen Conch.

Here is a fun writing session to experiment with alliteration and celebrate language. Be sure to have plenty of atlases, maps, globes, thesauruses, and dictionaries on hand. Ask students to create a paragraph about a plant or animal. If you want to center it around a science unit such as ocean life, that will make it even more challenging.

Students choose a letter of the alphabet and do some research, looking for words beginning with the same sound (so if they choose the letter "c" they must decide on "s" sounds or "k" sounds). Another challenge: some students can use blends or digraphs for every word they place in the scaffold. Then, they use this template (I always encourage variations):

I have a(n)_________________________(animal) who comes from__________________(city, state, country, continent, etc.). Sometimes he/she is __________________(character trait) and sometimes he/she is __________________(character trait). He/she eats _____________________(three things - can be imaginary and funny). He/she is well known for ___________.
I love ______________________(your animal).

Place them in a class book, on a paper quilt, or in a PowerPoint. Add sound - record your students reading their pieces and place images in a movie, animoto presentation, etc. to make it even more interesting.

Encourage your student writers to find places where alliteration makes their writing sing!

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I am My Father's Daughter

4/9/2016

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I am my father’s daughter:
With olive complexion
And perfectly straight toes,
A deep hearty laugh
And a love for animals.

I am my father’s daughter:
Often too sensitive for my own good,
Trusting what people tell me,
Making time to help others,
Spending little time at home.

I am my father’s daughter:
Running back inside to check the stove,
Running upstairs for something I’d forgotten,
Running the clock to the last possible second,
Running out of time to do all I want to do.

I am my father’s daughter:
Always singing in the car,
Always watching the movie classics,
Happy to get my hands dirty in the garden,
Happy to visit the shore to inhale the ocean.

I am my father’s daughter:
Surely I know I was his favorite,
He leaned heavily on me, counted on me,
He never worried that I wouldn’t come through,
Surely, I worried that I could not be so perfect…

I am my father’s daughter

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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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