The Power of Choice During this Online/Pandemic Learning

**Mary Lee, Franki and Julie have been talking and thinking about choice during this time of Online/Pandemic Learning.  We decided to share our current thinking about choice and writing today and would love to hear from others on what is working when it comes to choice, writing and online learning. You can find Julie's post here.


From Franki
Writing Workshop is the heart of our classrooms and we believe student choice is so important for authenticity. Typically during the school year, we do 3-4 genre-based units of study and then between those, I do other units of study that cross genres. I want my readers to know there are so many ways to study and grow as a writer and although there are specifics for particular genres, there are also skills writers have that cross genres. Learning from Other Writers, Revising, Expanding Important Ideas in a Text, and Word Choice to Improve Writing are all units we've done across the year.

With this new online/pandemic teaching, it's been a challenge to stay grounded in what we believe about writing and writers.

I thought long and hard about what this time means for writers and I realized that this stay-at-home time is a perfect time for writers to do authentic work, to commit to a project with lots of time to work, to play around and to grow, to build a stronger identity as a writer.  So I decided that choice would be the most important thing over the next few weeks.

After talking with Julie Johnson on how she was providing her 3rd graders choice, I created this board for students.  Last week, students spent time thinking about the possibilities for their writing over the next several weeks and they committed to one of the ideas on this Choice Board.

Link to Writing Choice Board for 5th Graders

Having a writing workshop with very little live time together has been tricky so I built this board with this in mind. I knew I wanted students to have choice in genre, but I also knew that my focus for teaching as they were working on their writing would span genre. I knew I wanted them to find mentor texts and I knew revision would be important.  So I built some mentor texts into the slides so that as students explored options, they could see writers who they might learn from in each project.

This week, we will have small groups meeting to share and discuss their writing. And I am thinking about how to incorporate this brilliant idea from Clare Landrigan from Tuesday's blog.  My main goal is to support writers in lots of ways, to invite those writers who have lots of time to give to this, some options to dig  (working hours each day if they'd like) in in a way that isn't possible when school is in session.  I want them to know what that feels like they have a project they love and are committed to. I also want to give writers who don't have as much time or space for this the option to create and learn something--something they want to learn. It seems like an easy time during the year to do this as routines are set, students have goals as writers, they have learned from mentors all year and they have lots of writing ideas. 

I am already amazed at the ideas kids have shared and the work they are doing.  I am hoping this choice board meets the needs of all of my writers during this challenging time.

From Mary Lee

In our first full week of online learning, we had a very successful Flipgrid Science Symposium on Friday, where students shared their learning about food chains, food webs, energy pyramids, and the biome of their choice in a short video on Flipgrid. They loved having a project to work towards, and seeing how all of their work in reading, writing, and science could come together. In our "more of this/less of that" conversation on that first Friday, they definitely wanted more projects, and one student requested work with biographies, so I made a mental note to somehow work that in for our next project.

Last week and this week we have done some activities that are building towards an in-depth opinion piece. I wanted to weave together life science, biographies, and opinion writing. This is what I will present to the students next week. I hope I built in enough choice so that every student can find an entry point.

Link to Choose Your Own Adventure Opinion Writing

Students will be able to choose by person, by the person's area of science, or by the person's action -- what they're famous for. All of the links (except Julia Hill) go to our school's subscription (via Infohio) to WorldBook Student. 

Some of my students will be able to chose a topic and run with the research and the writing, but many will need scaffolding. We will brainstorm ways to make this an opinion piece. It will be very different than a "fuzzy socks are the best" opinion piece. They will need to make a claim about the importance of the person, the area of science, or the work. While they will start in WorldBook Student, they will need to do online searches and find information in unlikely places like BrainPOP.

I am struggling to get my students to keep their commitment to the small group session they signed up for, but in my dreams, those small groups will become writing support groups where we can discuss their progress and they can share their writing for peer feedback.

I envision this project lasting several weeks, and I have my fingers crossed that my students will be up for the stamina of this. Perhaps I'll have to drastically modify my expectations, or even toss the whole thing out as a spectacular failure. Time will tell, but I think it's worth a try!

Poetry Friday--Student Poems

photo via Unsplash

Helping My Mom Cook

I let my hands go on an adventure with cooking,

chopping away the evil monsters.
My cooking is like an adventure,
Turning the stove on,
and seeing the boiling water,
like lava.

When it boils,
the lava
is letting out all the smoke.
Turning the stove off,
and seeing the boiling water stop,
like the lava
stopped letting out smoke.

Then grabbing the plate,
like finding a map for the loot.
Finally eating the food,
like finding the loot.

by Sarkees K.

photo via unsplash

Snow

The white clouds
the frosty air the dazzling
snowflakes that fall from the skies

You can do all kinds of things
in the dazzling snow

You can make a snowman a snowball
you can also watch it snow

Don’t you feel the frosty air
don’t you feel how cold it is
don’t you feel how cold the snow is

It’s all because of the axis pointed
away from the sun, the indirect
sunlight.

by Shadman M.

In our pacing guide for 5th grade writing instruction, we've come back around to narrative writing. When I looked at what I'm expected to teach ("Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences precisely; use a variety of transitional words, phrases, and clauses to manage the sequence of events") it seemed like this work could definitely be done using the story telling medium of poetry. 

We began by brainstorming ordinary daily events. Even though video games are likely the most ordinary thing most of my students do on a daily basis, we didn't use those examples for our writing topics. We've also begun doing 5 minute quick writes at the beginning of most writing workshop times. This has seeded their writer's notebooks with lots of good material for their poems.

I was thrilled with Sarkees' poem about cooking with his mom. Without ever being taught about extended metaphors, he brought his adventure metaphor all the way through his poem. Sarkees wants more than anything to be a chef when he grows up. It is fun to see students' passions coming through in their writing.

Shadman's poem is so like him. He worked hard to be very poetic in his first stanzas, even including some repetition. But the logical, scientific side of him gets the last word in the conclusion, an echo of what he learned about the seasons in science earlier in the year.

Thank you, Sarkees and Shadman for sharing your poems!

Robyn has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Life on the Deckle Edge.

Poetry Friday -- Metaphor Dice

My Teacher

Mornings are rough sometimes.
I fight with my mom,
arrive at school in a shroud of scowl.

Teacher expects me to write a poem.

"Choose an ordinary experience.
Use concrete words and phrases.
Use sensory details.
Convey the experience precisely."

I've got sense enough to know
that the sharp-edged concrete of my experience
is far from ordinary.

I stare out the window,
inventing a precisely-worded fiction
to scrawl onto my paper.

Luckily,
my teacher is a last-minute midwife,
holding out welcoming arms,
gently cradling my newborn lies.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019



My Taylor Mali Metaphor Dice came. The words the teacher speaks in this poem are my own, quoting the bit of the standard we are working on in writing workshop.

"W.5.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

• d. Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events precisely."

Doesn't that seem like a fairly good working definition of poetry? Hopefully by next week I'll have some student poems to share.

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at The Opposite of Indifference.

Picture Book 10 for 10 -- David Wiesner

I had the opportunity to hear David Wiesner speak at the Whole Language Umbrella conference this past summer, and when I saw that he has ten picture books, it just seemed like a ready-made 10 for 10!

But there's more than that. His message about picture book design and his mission to "show as much visually as possible with as little text as possible" resonated because my first read aloud will be a graphic novel (via Kindle on the big screen). I decided that along with the work we'll do with the visuals in the read aloud, a beginning-of-the-year mini-unit spent closely studying David Wiesner's picture books will be time well spent, as well as an inviting entry point for all readers. We can dig into the way he represents multiple realities and the world off the page (The Three Little Pigs and Flotsam are great ones for that). We can study beginnings and endings. And we can look at the ways he sets up patterns and breaks them. (I'm sure there will be more -- I want to remain open to what my students find interesting and want to study). I'm hoping to see the benefits of this work echoing not just through reading workshop for the rest of the year, but also in our narrative writing unit in writing workshop.

I Got It!

2018

Mr. Wuffles!

2013

Tuesday

2011

Art & Max

2010

Flotsam

2006

The Three Pigs

2001

Sector 7

1999

June 29, 1999

1995

Hurricane

1992

Free Fall

1991

Big thanks to Cathy Mere and Mandy Robek for cooking up this fabulous yearly event! Check out all the posts on the Google+ community. Open a tab for your public library and hide your credit card!!

Poetry Friday: One Topic Many Ways

I was so inspired by the 30 poems Amy wrote about Orion for her NPM18 project. I thought, "What a perfect way to end the year--with an engaging, choice-filled writing workshop!"

We're studying the similarities and differences between first- and second-hand accounts of immigrants, so I put the names of about 15 countries whose people have emigrated to the US in one bag, and, knowing that countries and people wouldn't be everyone's first choice, the names of about 15 animals that migrate into another bag. After the choosing (and liberal numbers of trades), we spent some time gathering information from the encyclopedias. (It's what you do when all of the computer carts are being used for MAP testing.)

Tuesday we started our digital collections in either Google Docs or Google Slides. On Tuesday, the anchor poems/strategies we looked at from Poems Are Teachers were write from first person, start with a question, and use repetition. On Wednesday, the anchors/strategies were write from facts, write from a photo, and ask What if?.

A new poetry form was invented on Tuesday. Harmony attempted a haiku, but counted words instead of syllables, so we named this form the Harmoniku. On Wednesday, Monta reversed the word count to 7-5-7, inventing the Montaiku.

Here is a selection of poems from my students:


Why We Left

When I asked my mother why we left,

she said, “ We couldn't worship freely.”

When I asked my father why we left, 

he said, “ It was the government’s will.”

When I asked my sister why we left, 

she said, “ For a chance.”

by Jawaher

Harmoniku

I was in WWII, FIGHT!!
I had a terrible leader, Adolf Hitler.
I am strong, proud, GERMANY! 

by Harmony

Storks

Why is this baby so heavy! I am flying at 60 mph because I’m late.
Why is this baby so heavy? I betcha her parents are worried.

Why is this baby so heavy! I’m almost there!
Why is this baby so heavy? I’m getting tired!
Why is this-AHHHHHHH!!!
BONK!
Why is this baby so----HEAVY!
At least the baby made it when I threw her!
Wait.
I ate that big bass for lunch
So that means…..
I’m the heavy one!

by Juan

Spain. Especially
Spain. Immigrants all over earth.
Some come, some leave. Why?

by Rayan

Montaiku--Bats

Millions a night fly in the sky
Hunting thousands in the dark
Hunting moths, mosquitoes every night then rest

by Monta

Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

Advice to Writers

Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins. ~Sharon Creech (Walk Two Moons)

Advice to Writers

Writing well is more than just words on a page. Don’t

be satisfied with your first draft. Be the one to judge

your own writing with a

critical eye. Man

up (or woman up) -- work on revising and editing until

you’ve

walked

through your piece at least two

times. If you’re writing about stars and moons,

get your facts straight. Don’t write “in

his

shoes” if what you really mean is moccasins.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Poetry Friday -- Mentor Texts

You've heard about it, you've marked it "To Read" in GoodReads, maybe you've even ordered it and have it on your stack. Move it to the top of your stack, make some time, and dig in! Once I started reading, I was hooked. I wanted to keep reading, but more than that, I was anxious to start writing and try some of her ideas with my classroom of writers.

With a short week this week, I decided to ease my writers into informational writing with some of the strategies from Poems are Teachers, and definitely by using the mentor text poems (one from a professional poet and two from students accompany each section). My goal was for them to develop fluency in generating ideas and drafts, and to show them that a minimal amount of "research" is needed in order to jot a draft. I was also hoping that all of our work thus far in the year with "Unpacking Poems" (hat tip to Tara for the idea) would evidence itself in the students' poems...and it DID! Alliteration, similes, thoughtful stanzas, repetition, and more! Finally, a future goal is that my students will transfer both the fluency of ideas and drafting, as well as the use of rich and creative language to their informational writing. Once you dig in and start reading Amy's book, you'll see how your students' work writing poetry will do what the subtitle says and "Strengthen Writing in All Genres."

On the first day, I spread my "Activists and Trail Blazers" shelf of picture book biographies on the meeting area carpet. We browsed the books, jotting notes about what we read, about what we noticed in the illustrations, or about connections we were making. Midway through our time, we looked at the mentor poems in the section "Listen to History" (p. 18 and 21) and I sent students off to try a draft. Here are a couple of the more polished first draft poems and the book that inspired each poem:

"In America, You Can Achieve Anything"

Discrimination is "whites only."
Discrimination is no prom.
Discrimination is closed doors.
Discrimination is skin deep.

Honor is head held high.
Honor is good grades.
Honor is medical school.
Honor is Olympic gold.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017

Try Hard

Two trainers one passion

Try hard

Train hard

Stolen bike

Fight for rights

Try hard

Try to fight

Rare in light

Try hard

©M., 2017

MLK's Dream Day

Not everyone is treated the same.
Not everyone had the same things we have now.
Who is to blame?

One man stepped forward.
On August 18, 1963,
he said his famous speech
"I have a dream."

©J., 2017



On the second day, we tried the same thing, but I put out a shelf full of animal books from my nature nonfiction section. The mentor poems in Amy's book were from the "Find Ideas in Science" section (p. 32 and 35). Here are a few more first drafts and the books that inspired them. You can probably tell that writing a mask poem was one of the suggestions!

Creepy Crawlers

I have 8 eyes
I can be small
I can be big

I can crawl
Jump and bite

I love bugs
I have more than
One leg or two or three

What can I be?
What am I?

(jumping spider)

©A., 2017

Hello, my little prey!
I see you came to the luminous light.

But you shouldn't have.

As the people say,
"Don't go to the light."

I can be 1 or 2 or 3, *
but can you guess me?

Who am I?

(Anglerfish)

©M., 2017

*"Smaller males join their bodies to mine, latching on with their teeth until their skin fuses into mine. I eat for all of us, sharing the nutrients from my bloodstream."

Mr. Tree

I, Mr. Tree, have been here
longer than you, I've been here longer
than your mother and father.

I, Mr. Tree, give you oxygen
and in return you give me water and food.
I will help you until I go TIMBER!!

I, Mr. Tree, live in your back yard
with Miss Flower and Sir Grass.

I, Mr. Tree, am still here as a seedling
after I pass on.

©H., 2017


(H's poem shows that your writing might wind up taking you in a very different direction than you expected!)



Brenda has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Friendly Fairy Tales.

Setting Writing Goals

The first few weeks of writing workshop has gone well. We are keeping writers' notebooks and beginning to learn from other writers.  I feel like our workshop runs well when kids have as much choice as possible. As a community, when kids are doing different things in their notebooks, we learn from everyone and I find it easier to teach into that than a workshop with no choice. The challenge is always giving choice while also making sure kids are growing and learning the things they are supposed to learn in 5th grade.  So early in the year, there are a few things that I want my 5th graders to know.  I want them to see writing workshop as a time for them to learn new things/try new things/grow as a writer. I want them to see the things they learn in mini lessons as a kind of menu--as options to help them grow as writers. And I want them to have a voice in how they grow as writers--which things that we are learning are things that they need as writers?

Lots of the mini lesson work we've done is about what is possible in a writer's notebook. So we've read various pieces and learned from each. I didn't go in knowing what kids would notice from each piece--I just trusted that if I pulled a variety of pieces, kids would notice things that we could then build on. I wanted to give them lots of opportunities to think about what writers do and how they might use that in their own writing. So I chose lots of different pieces and after each one, we talked about what they noticed about the writing--what did the writers do that they liked?  I used many pieces from these books.  I imagine these beginning-of-the-year conversations will be anchors throughout the entire year.

So after a few mini lessons I started a board in the room to scaffold kids' learning a bit. The board had covers of the books we'd read and a reminder of the ideas we talked about in each--what we noticed the writer had done. As we added more mini lessons, the board grew. Then I added a few copies of student work--samples of things they'd tried using something from a mini lesson--and those went in the appropriate spots on the board.  The board continues to grow and it is a great way for kids to remember what we've learned, the books we learned from, and the idea that they may want to use these ideas to grow as writers.

This week we used the board to start conversations around goal setting. Our minilesson focused on really looking at the list of the things we'd learned (adding dialogue, stretching out a moment, similes to describe something, describing someone you know in a unique way, setting the scene with a strong paragraph, etc.).  We quickly went over the list and thought about what one thing we might focus on-one thing we wanted to try out in our writing over the next few days, one thing that might take us out of our comfort zone. Kids took a sticky note, added their name and a specific idea and then placed it where it belonged on the board--making public their goal for the next few days. This allowed me to have quick conversations with kids as I bopped around the room. It also allowed me to see across the class and to see where kids were focusing their work.  Most importantly, this gave kids a low-stress way to look at the list of mini lessons as a menu that will grow with the year. A way to think about the ways they can use what we learned to make their writing better while still having control over their own writing.

We'll continue to think in this way for a few weeks--thinking in short bursts of goals and practicing using the minilesson work that will most help our writing. Then we'll move on to goal setting within a unit of study and beyond. I am excited to see how this group of writers grows!

Mentor Texts for Launching Writers' Notebooks

Launching Writers' Workshop is one of my favorite things about the beginning of a new school year.  The possibilities are endless and giving kids time and choice for writing is (I believe) one of the best things we can do for them as learners. I've had a stack of tried and true books that I go to at the start of the year--books that serve as mentors for anyone starting a writer's notebook.

Some of my favorites include:

• Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher
• Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka
• A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You by Ralph Fletcher
• Hey World, Here I Am by Jean Little
• Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss

In our notebook writing this time of year, we are learning to live our lives as writers,  try new things, play as writers and attempt things that might make our writing better.This year, I am excited to add a few new mentor texts to my collection. I've already used several of these with my 5th graders and they seem like. perfect additions.

Comics Confidential: Thirteen Graphic Novelists Talk Story, Craft and Life Outside the Box is a newish book that is filled with insights from several graphic novelists. Each interview shares insights into not only the writing lives of these authors but also tips about craft. There are samples to demonstrate these things.  I find that there isn't a lot out there for kids who are playing around with comics/graphic novels (in and out of their notebooks) so this is a great place to help them think more deeply when they are creating these,

Another new collection from writers is Our Story Begins:Your Favorite Authors and Illustrators Share Fun, Inspiring and Occasionally Ridiculous Things they Wrote and Drew as Kids. This book shares stories from several popular children's authors --stories about some of their earliest writing.  Again many include great samples,

Last week, I shared Olivia Van Ledtje (@Livbits) latest blog post-- #ForCharLove --a letter to her younger sister's Kindergarten teacher.  This was a great piece with love and voice. It was a great mentor for kids to think about ways to write about people close to them.  I paired this with Not Enough Emilys in Hey World, Here I Am,  I am so glad that Liv is blogging--I find that sharing writing from same-age peers is so powerful for both message and craft.

Amy Vanderwater's Sharing Our Notebooks site is growing and is packed with so many great ideas for notebook writing.  The section we have visited most often is the "Try This!-Notebooking Ideas" section that is packed with things for writers to try. We've used a few of these as mini lessons and they are very accessible to kids.

And I was SOOO happy to see a new edition of Lois Lowry's Looking Back: A Book of Memories earlier this month. I LOVED this book when I read it years ago and this new edition has even more insights from Lois Lowry. It is packed with short pieces and memories that can be read as part of the whole book or independently.

And even though we have to wait a few more months for Colby Sharp's upcoming The Creativity Project: No Rules, Anything Goes, Awesometastic Storybuilding, I know this is one I'll add to my stack of great mentors for young writers. (I'd suggest pre-ordering this one now:-)

We'll definitely read these books and learn from them as writers throughout the year but they are especially helpful as we launch our workshop as a new community of writers.

#DigiLitSunday -- Conferring

My fifth graders did lots and lots of work on their narratives of "imagined experiences or events" in their writer's notebooks before we ever brought a draft into their Google Apps for Education account. While we were in the notebooks phase of these pieces, I conferred with writers on an as-needed basis. When we were planning, I could listen in on small group conversations or I could take a pulse during share time to get a sense of who was struggling and needed one-on-one help. I could borrow all of the notebooks for an evening and do a quick read-through of their possible leads to sift for those who needed help and those I could use for minilessons under the document camera.

When it came time for a handwritten draft outside their notebook, I didn't give my students much time to pull together all the bits and pieces of planning, leads, and snippets of dialogue. They had a tight deadline and I was brutal -- meet the deadline or forego Genius Hour. I wanted these drafts to be rough because I wanted them to understand that their work on the computer would be to create a new and better draft, not just type up what they had written on paper and call it good. By having every draft on paper, I could easily carry them all home, read carefully through each draft, and make +/- notes for each child on my clipboard chart. Once they began their drafts on the computer, I would gain the ability to have a quick conference with each student by leaving digital comments on their work.

I made sure the initial session on the computer was a short one. All they had time to do was log into their Google account, go to Drive, open a new Doc, name it with the conventions I gave them, and share it with me.

After that first quick computer session, I used my notes from their handwritten draft and left a comment for each student that might guide their work on this next draft.

Every day or two, I read through each student's work, taking notes on what they've improved and what they still need to work on. I have a little digital conference with every student in the comments, and I know exactly which students need my personal attention, and for what. I can group students who have the same needs and do small group work, and I have digital examples of exemplary writing, along with pieces that (with student permission) I can use in minilessons for craft, revision, and editing.

Conferring is the heart of writing instruction. It's what makes the teaching personal to the words the writer has put on paper or screen. Technology has given us another very powerful way to confer with our student writers.

Poetry Friday -- Gratitude List

Gratitude List

Praise be this morning for waking early,
tree crickets buzzing, the humid air,
the puffy clouds lined with pink first light.
Praise be my morning tea, steaming hot,
the cat underneath my feet,
the caterpillar on the sprig of dill
in a juice glass on the kitchen table.
Praise be these blueberries from Michigan,
this yogurt, thick and creamy,
from a local farm co-op. Praise be the basil,
sturdy and fragrant in the morning light,
and for the tall purple ironweed and the
goldenrod, both on the verge of blooming.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016




When the poem Gratitude List by Laura Foley showed up in my inbox via The Writer's Almanac, I knew I wanted to use it as a mentor text and paint a picture of a midwestern morning to mirror her ocean beach morning. It was a fun exercise and a good reminder that borrowing from another writer sometimes makes my own writing not just better, but possible on a day when I'm not sure I have anything to write about! Yes, this will for sure be a writing workshop minilesson in my 5th grade classroom!


Gratitude List

Praise be this morning for sleeping late,
the sandy sheets, the ocean air,
the midnight storm that blew its waters in.
Praise be the morning swim, mid-tide,
the clear sands underneath our feet,
the dogs who leap into the waves,
their fur, sticky with salt,
the ball we throw again and again.
Praise be the green tea with honey,
the bread we dip in finest olive oil,
the eggs we fry. Praise be the reeds,
gold and pink in the summer light,
the sand between our toes,
our swimsuits, flapping in the breeze.


by Laura Foley (used with permission of the author)



Tara has today's Poetry Friday roundup at A Teaching Life.

Launching Writing Writer's Notebooks

One of my favorite parts of the new school year is launching writer's notebooks. Anything seems possible as we list our A-Z of Me, sketch each of our roles ("new food tryer" is a favorite from one of my students this year), map our favorite places, and web the things we're curious about.

Let's Paint! by Gabriel Alborozo (Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2013) offers the same kind of encouragement to artists that I want to offer to my writers -- trust your ideas, no matter what shape they come in, find your own style, and above all HAVE FUN!

My Pen by Christopher Myers (Disney Hyperion, 2015) reminds us

"There are a million pens in the world
and each one has a million worlds inside it.

So if you have a pen, see what you can do--
let those worlds inside your pen out!"

Tulip and Rex Write a Story by Sarah Massini (Katherine Tegen Books, 2015) takes young writers all the way through the writing process. In the beginning, Tulip gets a new notebook in the mail from her grandmother, and Rex gets a new leash, so the two of them go out for a walk. At first, Tulip just gathers words in her notebook. Then, after Rex rescues her when she falls in the stream, Tulip uses her words to write a story about King Rex and Queen Tulip. Her story is interrupted by a call to lunch, but she realizes,

"Who knows what will happen next? Still, I'm sure there will be many more words and stories to come for this king and queen."

These are my hopes for my writers: that they will have fun, discover new worlds, and come to know that the possibilities are endless for their writing!

Making Comics with Bitstrips

Near the end of the school year, I introduced my students to Bitstrips. "Introduced" means I showed them where to find all the tools, gave them the login code and got out of the way.

After spending a ton of time creating their avatars, they got down to the (funny) business of making comics. You can imagine that with an available background of a bathroom, there were plenty of cartoons that would appeal mostly to a 10 year-old sense of humor. What surprised me the most were the comics that captured a moment in our classroom

or a moment in their lives

or something completely random that shows they were playing with the tools and wound up making something that made some kind of sense!

Every year, I have students who read graphic novels and want to make their own in writing workshop. I've never had success supporting these students because of the limitations of students to draw their own stories, the limitations of the digital tools I had tried in the past, and the lack of an accessible mentor text for beginning graphic novelists.

I think this coming year might be the year of the student-created graphic novel. Instead of renewing the three subscriptions to magazines no students in my classroom have read for the past two years, I am going to pay for a subscription to Bitstrips (digital tool -- √).

And I'm going to share this book (mentor text -- √) with my writers as a graphic novel/comic strip mentor text:

G-Man: Learning to Fly

by Chris Giarrusso

Image Comics, 2012

The book starts with a longer story, but the ones I really want to share with/study with my students are the 1-2 page "Comic Bits" and the two-panel "Mean Brother/Idiot Bother" strips. Every budding Kazu Kibuishi has to start somewhere, right?

How to Fit it All In -- Writing Workshop Edition

"Stack of Thinly Sliced Trees" by Tom Woodward, Flickr Creative Commons photo

The reports my students finished before Christmas break have been waiting patiently to get back into the hands of their authors. I spent hours assessing them with our district's rubric/feedback form, and then I spent more hours writing comments. I didn't want to just hand them back without a conversation about what they did well and what they can work on next time, but I also didn't want to take current writing workshop conference time to talk about something other than current writing.

So I decided I would utilize indoor recess season to its fullest and do conferences then. Great plan...except the first two weeks back after break I had recess duty.

Now it's the third week back, my duty-free week, and what happens? Good weather and outdoor recess! I'm not complaining about outdoor recess; don't get me wrong! I just had to invent plan C. I asked one of my writer girls to invite 4 other friends to eat lunch in the classroom, and as they ate and chatted, I called them to the back table one at a time to talk about their writing. They still had plenty of time for recess.

It was fabulous for a couple of reasons. First, it was fun to be a fly-on-the-wall and listen to the girls giggle and chatter. More importantly, there was enough distance between themselves and that piece of writing that they were able to talk very objectively about what went well and what they absolutely know they need to work on next time they write informational text.

Joy in repurposing delay!

Joy in utilizing every moment of the day!

Joy in shrinking the to-do list!

In the Classroom: Responding to Writing

Last week, in writing workshop, we started a short cycle on response groups in writing.  This is the beginning of our work with responding in peer groups so a few lessons are helping us get started.

I began the lessons by sharing my own experiences as a writer.  I shared this photo with my students. It was taken at the Choice Literacy Writing Retreat this summer. It is a photo of the group of us who got together to write and share and respond. I talked to them about the experience and about how twice a day we would share our writing and get feedback on it to help us make our writing better. I explained that sometimes I was the writer and sometimes I was the responder and I shared a few specific examples of pieces I worked on while I was there and the ways in which the other helped me to make my writing better.

Then we revisited a video we watched earlier in the year as part of a minilesson cycle on community.  The video shows the power of peer response and we talked about how the responses from Austin's classmates were what helped him create a better drawing. The same was true for writing.  Response matters.

We started a chart early in the week that we will build together over the course of the minilessons.  Then we'll clean it up a bit to synthesize our learning about response groups.

The first experience with response was whole group and it was a piece of writing that I shared with the students. I wrote a piece that I was hoping to put on Kidblogs about my younger brother. Sibling stories are popular in the classroom right now, and I wanted my kids to see that I got ideas from their writing.  I also wanted to practice together. So I told my students that as a writer, I had to prepare for the response group.  I had chosen a piece of writing that I wanted help with, made copies for everyone, and thought of a few specific things I wanted help with.  I read the piece aloud.  Their job was to read the piece and write thoughts that came to them as they read--things that might help make my writing better. They each marked a piece up.

The next day I fishbowled with 3 students about my writing.  I asked them specifics ( a few questions about word choice and some advice on the lead.).  They shared confidently and kindly and I got some great advice. We processed the things that made the response group positive.

Then kids went off and chose a piece of writing from their writers' notebooks that they wanted feedback on.  They were very excited about doing this once we got to this point in the cycle. Getting feedback on their writing was something they were excited about!  They marked the piece, jotted down specific feedback they were looking for and we copied those pieces so that everyone in the response group would have his/her own copy.

Then we started to get ready. Students were put in groups of 4 with one writer and 3 responders each day.  The WRITER of the day met with me about things they were hoping to learn from the responders while responders read and marked up the writers' texts.

Then response groups met, focusing on one writer each day.

Writers took notes on the things they needed to remember when they went back to revise.

By the end of the cycle, we will have a chart that reminds us how we get ready for a response group (writers and responders) and the kinds of things we might say/hear in a response group (as a writer or responder).

As we continue to build, our feedback will get more detailed and specific but my goal with this first cycle was for kids to see the power of response groups--for both the writer and the responder. 

Henry's Map by David Elliot

Last week, when we visited the Dublin Library, Miss Val shared a stack of new books.  One that caught my eye was Henry's Map by David Elliot.

This is a great book. In the story, Henry is a great character:

"Henry was a very organized sort of pig. He liked knowing 

exactly where everything was in his tidy little sty."  

But once looks out his window and notices what a mess the farm is, he decides to make a map so that everyone would know what belongs where:-)

Henry goes onto make his map, walking around the farm and adding the animals on the map.  The animals are thrilled to be included on his map and the final hand-drawn map is a good one for kids who are just learning about maps.

I love lots about this book. I love Henry. He is a great character who makes me smile. I also love the illustrations as they bring the farm to life in a happy way.  Mostly, I love the humor--you will have to read the book to find out the amusing part in the book. It is sweet humor (nothing like the wicked humor or I Want My Hat Back or Carnivores!).

For primary kids learning about maps, this is a fun read.  I thought it would be great for my 3rd graders as an invitation to map writing in Writing Workshop. Creating a map to trigger stories from your life is one I learned from Ralph Fletcher and I love to share the map in the front of Marshfield Dreams. This will be another one to share in those minilessons.

This book is great fun and has lots of possibilities!