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.
 
 
 

 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!

What is found poetry?  Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.  A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.


Many poets have also chosen to incorporate snippets of found texts into larger poems, most significantly Ezra Pound. “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, is one of the most important poems of the 20th century.  Eliot uses many different texts, including Wagnerian opera, Shakespearian theatre, and Greek mythology. Another poet who combined found elements with his poetry is William Carlos Williams.


The found poem achieved prominence in the twentieth-century, sharing many traits with Pop Art, such as Andy Warhol’s soup cans. The writer Annie Dillard has said that turning a text into a poem doubles that poem’s context. “The original meaning remains intact," she writes, “but now it swings between two poles.”
Here are some tips to try out found poetry using your writer’s notebook material. I have included an example from my own notebook as a mentor text. Enjoy!


Focus Lesson: Strategy for Looking for Poems in Notebook Material:  (“Found Poems”)

• Look for entries that have vivid images in them – words that sound like poetry.
• Use my notebook entry on how to groom a horse to show how to do this and explain it or the entry on “The Gift We Give to Our Students.”  (This means you have to be a writer, too!)
• Be sure to emphasize that this is not an entry where I was trying to write something poetic – I just found poetry material in it. 
• Maybe mention Vinnie’s on campouts as an example of a good place to start looking for found poems. (If you are asking your students to bring their writer’s notebook with them each time they come to a writing conference, you will start to log noticings that will be helpful later on – like Vinnie has many descriptions of camping and how he feels about camping out with his family!)
• Ask my students to spend some of their writing time looking to see what they’ve got in their entries that might be used for poetry drafts. 

Here is part of one of my notebook entries (“The Gift We Give to Our Students” written at a Continuity Session of the PA Writing & Literature Project):

Every day, students enter the classroom with so many things they carry around inside their head and their heart.  Sometimes, these things are light and happy, yearning to be shared. Sometimes, they are heavy and weigh them down. For me, I think it is important to begin each new day with a mantra, “ I will paint a masterpiece today.”  I first heard teacher/author Frank Murphy speak about this idea, and it stuck with me.  Striving to make each day a joyful experience is just as important as making it an academic one.  And so we must listen – really listen – to their heartbeats, to our students as they talk to each other and to us.


After selecting some words, phrases, and sentences and deciding what I would like to repeat, I came up with this found poem from my own writing and added a line at the end that was not part of the original writing (I call this a choice of wildcard.):

Listen to their heartbeats, to their talk.
Students carry so much in their head,
Carry so much in their heart:
Happy things that must be shared,
Heavy things that weigh them down.
Strive to make each day joyful;
Paint a masterpiece today!
Listen, really listen to their heartbeats…
Can you hear them?
 

Give it a try!  Search for found poems within the entries of your own writer's notebook. Then try newspaper and magazine articles, read alouds, famous speeches,  and books the students choose for independent reading. Poetry is everywhere!

What are the necessary parts of writing workshop?  How can I be sure that I have a workshop model in place?   Today, I take a look at three of the major components with some helpful suggestions written as checklists. Tomorrow, I will talk about the place of the writer’s notebook in writing workshop.
 
Writing Workshop: The Mini-lesson
 

• Often whole class, but sometimes for small focus groups
• Demonstrates a craft move or writing convention that the class will work on that day or week
• Creates a community of learners
• Motivates and engages students (interactive parts)
• Poses a challenge they will work on in their own writing
• Presents the lessons that you want everyone to hear
• Demonstrations often arise from teacher/student conferences and observations of students’ writing

 
Writing Workshop: Independent Writing Time
 

• Focus on lesson just presented
• Focus on individual goals as writer identified during conferences
• Note where the students are in their writing – status of the class
• Invitational groups here – invite students with like needs to gather for help
• Teacher circulates around the room to observe (Who is getting the concept?  Craft move?  Skill? )
• Look at the information collected to determine the next teaching point
• Also, use the information to determine your invitational groups

 
Writing Workshop: Reflection and Response
 

• Sharing time for gathering on a rug  and talk about strategies that worked
• Share a craft move put into practice or sticky places where they stumbled
• Write a self-evaluation for the portfolio
• Recognize progress and set new goals
• Connect today’s lesson with another lesson(s)
• Use this time to solidify the new learning that has occurred
  

 
Literacy giant Donald Graves suggested that writing workshop occurs at least three times a week to be effective. I once heard him say that if you couldn't manage a minimum of three times a week, you shouldn't bother at all!  Of course, time for workshop every day is ideal. Graves was an advocate for writing workshop, and his statement was a way of driving home the importance of a writing routine for our students, particularly in elementary school when they are establishing their writing identity and developing the habits of a writer.  In Writing Essentials by Regie Routman, a plan to carve out  time for writing daily unfolds. 

Routman suggests that we try to keep everything as simple as possible(directions, routines, assignments). Most of the time, we can plan the mini-lesson to keep it short so that students can get to the writing. Sometimes, a lesson can be broken into two parts if more time is needed. When you are introducing something that is brand new to your students and important for them to grasp the concept or craft move and employ this strategy in their writing, you may need to really  slow down.  Rose and I talk about the Your Turn lesson and the gradual release of responsibility model that includes final reflections in all our books. These lessons are designed to teach important concepts that will move your students forward as writers. Routman refers to the Optimal Learning Model, a very similar design. 

Start with the whole. Focus first on meaningful content. Remember that content is the most important quality. Nothing about nothing still equals nothing!  It doesn’t matter if you spell every word correctly and use correct grammar or how you punctuate or organize it. You must imagine the possibilities and develop your best ideas.   Move on. In shared writing, accept any response and continue.

Believe in yourself as a teacher of writing and as a writer yourself! To that end, use your writer’s notebook to develop your confidence. A teacher of writers must be a teacher who writes. The more you write, the more comfortable you will feel teaching writing!  After the shared or guided writing, provide opportunities to meet with a small group of writers that are not ready to write independently. Sometimes, a little conversation with a gentle nudge is enough to get these writers ready to move on.

At the end of workshop, a few minutes can be designated for sharing and reflections on craft moves and how learning may be used at some future point in time. Before your writers move into independent writing, place one question on the board or chart paper for final reflection. That way, the students will know what the final discussion will be about, and they can be prepared to contribute. Here are some examples of reflection questions:

• What did you learn about writing a narrative?
• What craft move did you try? How did it go?
• When/where do you think you could use this strategy again?

 
Always end on a good note. When energy has peaked, that is a time to move on. Never wait until student enthusiasm and drive have diminished. Post options for writing workshop so students know what they can do when they are finished with a piece of writing. Writers can have a conference with you or a peer. They can write something new or add to their heart map or list of writing topics. Older students can try out a memory chain. Revisiting a writer’s notebook is always a good idea.
Use common sense in everything you do. Enjoy!  Learn to enjoy writing workshop, and perhaps you will find that you even grow to love writing!
 
                                         Source: Writing Essentials by Regie Routman, 2005
                                                        Adapted by Lynne R. Dorfman