Poetry Friday -- Choosing Teams

Flickr Creative Commons photo by VirtualEyeSee

Choosing Teams

There are owls in the neighborhood now.
Two barred owls wondering,

“Who cooks for you?”

They wake us in the middle of the night.
We worry about the littlest skunk.

The one with white angel wings.

The silent puff of scent who cleans up dropped seed
beneath our bird feeders each dusk.

We are simply spectators in this backyard drama.

Is it bad form to cheer equally
for predator and for prey?

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Howdy! It's good to be back!

I wrote this poem in response to Naomi Shihab Nye's challenge in her Spotlight on Today's Little Ditty. It contains a question I don't need to answer.

Jone has this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Deowriter.

Questions for a Joyful, Kind and Reflective Classroom

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Over the summer I read a post by a teacher who asked her students in the morning class meeting what he/she was most looking forward to that day. I loved that question and the stage it set for each day in a classroom. I decided we'd use that in our morning meetings this school year.  As I continued to plan over the summer, I started to think about how all of our workshops have share times that could connect in some way. I wondered if we could connect learning across content with reflective questions that set the stage for joyful learning as well as reflection. With the help of Gretchen, our new literacy coach, I came up with a list of 10 questions to focus our conversations.  

I I wasn't sure how it would go but I created a sign for each question and posted the 10 questions in our meeting area. Before I even mentioned the question, kids were talking around them. They had noticed the questions and started thinking about them. So it has been easy to use these for general conversations and the kids have been amazing in the ways they are thinking about themselves in our classroom.  We use them throughout the day when we are gathered together for conversations.

I I have the questions posted and I plan to give them a copy of the questions on a single sheet for their notebooks.  These questions were a great way to kick off our school year and to help kids begin to think about what our year will be like. 

    What are you most looking forward to today as a   learner?

·         What do you have to celebrate today?

·         What did you learn about yourself as a learner today?

·         How were you kind today?

·        How did you get through something challenging today?

·        What do you understand today that you didn’t   understand before today?

·        What are you excited to share with someone today?

·        What did someone do to help you today?

·        How were you brave as a learner today?

·        How did your thinking change today?

Ask The Right Questions

On the way back to our classrooms after dismissal yesterday, my colleague asked me, "Is it really quiet on your morning walks?"

At lunch, a whole table of us had been talking about how hard it is to preserve time for ourselves once school starts. There had been the usual surface level amazement that I continue to get up at 5:00 a.m. and walk for a half an hour at 5:30, even though there is no longer a dog to make such an activity mandatory.

My colleague's after school follow-up question was far from a surface level question. She came at my morning walk from an unexpected and thoughtful direction. And she got more of an answer than perhaps she expected, because when you walk in the dark, you pay closer attention to the sounds around you. My walks right now are loud with insect sounds -- crickets and tree crickets, buzzing, chirping and whirring. As winter comes, my walks will be more and more silent, until I have the chance to listen to the different sounds of snow underfoot. Late in February or early in March, I will hear the first robin singing in the dark, and my spring and summer walks will be loud with birds singing territory-marking songs.

Her question felt like the metaphorical unplugging of a dam of talk in me. I felt myself light up when I knew I had a great answer to her question. After I shared, her affirmation of my day-to-day scientific way of living in the world made me feel really really good.

And now I'm wondering, how can I do this for my students? How can I find the right questions to ask each one of them?

• I know the lists of possible writing topics we are making and sharing in early writers' workshop will help me. I need to model listing in a way that gets beyond, "I love pizza. I play soccer."
• I need to listen carefully. Then I will hear two boys singing songs from "baby TV shows" on the way to the buses, I can ask about this, and learn that when they go home, they have to watch Barney and Teletubbies with their young cousins.
• I need to watch. I need to notice how my fourth grade siblings interact in such kind and thoughtful ways with their kindergarten brothers and sisters when they see them in the hallway.
• And I need to learn to ask questions that go beyond the obvious or the surface, questions that dig into a topic, or approach it at a slant, or come in the back door so that my students can have the feeling I had of the dam breaking and the light coming on when they answer me.