April Mosaic

I'm 120 days into the Project 365 challenge on Flickr, and I'm still having fun! 

In June, when I'm halfway through the year, I think it will be fun to pull together some of the small themes that have emerged: the cat, blooms, pictures out my classroom window, food pics.

Carrying my camera with me at all times has continued to change the way I look at and interact with the world. We stopped and watched the geese with their nest in the median of a shopping center parking lot, and I took pictures until Papa Goose came at me with his neck out, hissing. I didn't get a shot of Lynn's wine glass at our book club dinner because the waiter brought our food and the moment was gone, but I lost myself in the red of the wine and the way it was sparkling in the afternoon sun.

It may or may not be related to this photo project, but I'm starting to use my writer's notebook again -- capturing "snapshots" in words -- and it's good to get back to that.

  

Poetry Friday -- 21st Century Thinking

Earbud
by Bill Holm

Earbud--a tiny marble sheathed in foam
to wear like an interior earring so you
can enjoy private noises wherever you go,
protected from any sudden silence.

(the rest of the poem is here)


This poem got me thinking about all of the 21st Century gadgets we can't live without, but which create barriers that separate us from other real, live human beings.

The round up this week is at Allegro.

(Photo credit: "Earbud love 2" by Dano)

Poetry Month -- Zorgamazoo

Zorgamazoo
by Robert Paul Weston
illustrated by Victor Rivas
Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

Yes, I know I already reviewed this book. That was before I read it aloud to my fourth graders. That was before it was selected for the short list of the E.B. White Read Aloud Awards. That was before I heard the author reading the first couple of chapters on his blog. (You can read the first chapter here, and the Zorgamazoo website is here.)

I'd like to end the 2009 National Poetry Month by encouraging the ABC Booksellers who are voting for the winner of the E.B. White Read Aloud Award to choose Zorgamazoo, and by encouraging every teacher of grades 3-6 to read this book aloud.

You've never read anything like it (283 pages of rhyming verse) but it won't take long at all for you to see how fun it is to read aloud (it positively lends itself to dramatic expression). Your students might start off as slightly reluctant listeners, but it won't take long at all for them to be drawn into the story, to notice the irony of Morty becoming a hero by winning the hero lottery rather than doing something heroic, to predict why all the creatures are imprisoned on the moon by Dullbert Hohummer, the Third, and to cheer when it's time for read aloud every day.

Happy Poetry Month 2009! It's been great fun!

Poetry Month -- all the small poems and fourteen more

all the small poems and fourteen more
by Valerie Worth
illustrated by Natalie Babbitt
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994

Are you ready for Poem in Your Pocket Day tomorrow? If not, grab this classic and open to any page to find a small poem just right for tucking in your pocket to share with anyone who will listen!

Here's a perfect one to celebrate those wildflowers which have been appearing in our lawn the last couple of weeks, and which so many of us have such a hard time loving:

dandelion

Out of
Green space,
A sun:
Bright for
A day, burning
Away to
A husk, a
Cratered moon:

Burst
In a week
To dust:
Seeding
The infinite
Lawn with
Its starry
Smithereens.

Poetry Month -- Basketball

Hoop Kings
by Charles R. Smith
Candlewick Press, 2004








Hoop Queens
by Charles R. Smith
Candlewick Press, 2003








I don't know much about basketball, but I do know that these two books pass the test with the sports fans (mostly boys) in my classroom. They are pulled in by the famous players, the bold colors, and the action photography. Once they're hooked, they find poems of many forms, including rhyming, free verse, acrostic, and rap.

Here's part of Sheryl Swoopes' poem, "All That:"

The Point Leader
Stat Line Feeder,
last-second
shot-making
OT Buzzer-Beater.
The Board Snatcher
Bullet Pass Catcher,
charging hard
through-the-lane
coming-right-at-ya.
The Lane Spinner
championship Winner,
coast to coast
off-the-glass
finger-roll finisher.

Poetry Month -- Imaginary Menagerie

Imaginary Menagerie: A Book of Curious Creatures
by Julie Larios
illustrated by Julie Paschkis
Harcourt, 2008

Sometimes you just have to be patient and know that the right books will find the right readers eventually. IMAGINARY MENAGERIE has been in my poetry collection the whole school year, but last Friday it was "discovered."

Two girls chose it for Poetry Friday and asked to read a poem without telling us the title to see if we could guess what it was about. Many of the students guessed. Can you?


How can a beast speak
with a stone tongue,
with a stone throat?
My mouth is a rainspout. I screech. I shout.
How can a beast fly
with stone wings?
I fly when the bells ring and the hunchback is home.
Does a stone beast sleep
in a stone nest?
I am on guard. I never rest.


Did you guess Gargoyle? If you did, you were right!

I think we'll come back to this poem next week. When we wrote acrostics, we made the rule that you couldn't use your "key word," your vertical word, anywhere in the poem. The poem had to be about that word without using it. That's exactly what Julie Larios does in each of these poems. That's exactly what we want our young writers to do when we ask them to, "Show; don't tell."

Poetry Month: What Can You Do With An Old Red Shoe?

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH AN OLD RED SHOE by Anna Alter is not a poetry book. But a poem introduces each page.  This book is "a green activity book about reuse".  Each 2 page spread starts out with a short poem--often a rhyming poem--one that tells the story of something that happened so that something can no longer be used for its original intent.  For example, one flip flop gets lost, a shirt gets tattered, and crayons get worn out from use.  

Following each poem is a question such as "What can you do with bits of old crayon?"

The rest of the two-page spread gives us instructions (with adorable illustrations) on something to make in order to reuse the item. We learn to make a planter from an old shoe, a pillow from an old t-shirt and more.

I love a lot about this book. It has great examples of how-to writing. Step by step instructions written with details and illustrated too. I also like the predictable format.  The idea that a poem can start each page by setting up the story is a fun one and I think kids could try this in their own writing.

A book that isn't quite a poetry book, but one that uses poems in an innovative way. And I love the message about reusing objects.  At the end of the book are more ways you can support reuse and recycling as well as hand-sewing tips.

Poetry Month -- Omnibeasts

Omnibeasts: Animal Poems and Paintings
by Douglas Florian
Harcourt, 2004

A. It wouldn't be National Poetry Month without Douglas Florian.

B. It's time to get ready for Poem in Your Pocket Day.

C. OMNIBEASTS has 44 short animal poems, each one perfect for carrying in your pocket.

My classroom copy of this book has no less than 6 sticky notes flagging student favorites. Here's one of my favorites, which, coincidentally, features a pocket:

The Kangaroo

The kangaroo loves to leap,
Into the air it zooms,
While baby's fast asleep
Inside its kangaroom.

Poetry Friday -- 15 Words or Less

The little orange fur-ball

stuck in a cage,

the little orange fur-ball

sleeping in a rage.

***

The cat is tiny

all bright and gold

while it lays in its 

cage.

***

The Game

The game 

where the

fluffy

cat stares

with 

vicious thoughts

and the dog

lies

relaxed...

***

I stare at you

you stare back.

When my 

owner comes

you get 

kicked out.

***

The cat looks at me.

I wag my 

tail.

I think he is

my friend.

***

Ruff Ruff

Meow Meow

Cat scratched --

"OW"

***

The cage is strong

and

tough it is

black like the 

black night sky

***

the cat is

small

while the dog is

huge

the cage is

big

the cage is 

open

***

Last Friday, when I told my students that I was going to hear both J. Patrick Lewis and Kay Ryan, the Poet Laureate of the U.S., speak, we had a great discussion about who the Poet Laureate is and what they do in that job. My students decided that they might like to grow up and become poets because, "poets get to break the rules and not use punctuation and capitalization if they don't want to (a discussion we had last week), and then you could become the "head poet" for all of the United States!!!"

We have Achievement tests this week and next. The schedule changes leave us with odd little scraps of time in the day that are perfect for introducing some short forms of poetry and starting our poetry writing unit. 

After I modeled writing a 15 Words or Less poem inspired by another photo and explained my choices of line breaks and repetition of phrases, I put this picture of our cat, Willie Morris, and our friends' dog, Ruby, up on the TV and turned the students loose to write without any explanation of the picture. The students whose poems I'm sharing today wrote them in about 5 minutes!! The variety in these poems is really fun -- the cat, the dog, even the cage!

The story behind the photo is that Willie Morris has taken over Ruby's den. (Ruby was spending the weekend with us.) In fact, when Ruby visits, she has to follow all of Willie's rules. Ruby really really wants to be friends with Will, but he thinks it's more fun to make a big dog do whatever he decides he wants the dog to do. Will has been known to back Ruby into the bedroom and onto her dog bed and refuse to even let her look at him until he was ready!  Isn't it amazing that some of the students captured that attitude in their poems without even knowing the story?!  

For the rest of the month, we'll explore more short forms of poetry -- haiku, limericks, couplets, and acrostics. I'll share some of the students' poems and the picture that was their prompt.

We still need just a couple of Poetry Friday hosts between now and August (see schedule in the sidebar). If you're interested, leave a note in the comments. The round up today is at Under the Covers.

Mentor Texts--My goals for summer

As I have been working with K-5 students, I have been thinking about what it means when we think about creating in a 21st Century world?

I have always been committed to a Reading/Writing Workshop and know the power of books and text for readers and writers to grow. I know that having mentor texts when writing is critical.  But, with the new tools and the new formats for creation, finding mentor pieces for our students becomes a little bit of a challenge.

One of the things I know is that before we can ask kids to create a slide show or a video or a Public Service Announcement, they need lots of experience watching these.  And they also need to learn how to "watch like a writer".  To look at mentor clips and think about what makes them effective. What things did this writer/creator do that you might try?

I remember avoiding PowerPoint when working with teachers for a long time. I loved the flexibility of my transparencies and hadn't seen anyone use it in a way that worked for me.  Then I watched Katie Wood Ray use a PowerPoint in a talk and I was inspired.  She had created something that could work for me.  I used her as a mentor--thinking about what she had done as a PowerPoint creator, that was different from the others I'd seen. What had she done that I could learn from?  I had a vision that made the move to PowerPoint worth it.

As a writing teacher, I know the power of mentors and mentor texts, of keeping a writers' notebook and of writing myself.  If I am going to invite students to create videos, slide shows, etc. I know that having gone through the process myself will be critical. And I know that helping students find mentors that match their needs will be key.

So, my summer goals are two-fold. First, I want to create my own "notebook" of creations. I feel like I need to play with these new tools and collect samples of things I do authentically with the newer tools--What do I photograph and why? When do I send a video of the kids to my parents? How do I use Keynote when I work with teachers?  What am I interested in and how do different tools help me collect, create and communicate?

Second, I want to keep my eye out for quality mentor pieces.  When we expand our definition of author, the questions are the same. I want a collection of clips and pieces that I can use with students as they begin to think about their own creations.  These clips and pieces seem a bit more difficult to find than the books and writing pieces I share with students.  As a teacher, it is the same thinking but different tools. 

Whether my kids are creating poetry or a video Public Service Announcements, the questions are the same--they all revolve around looking at quality work and asking yourself:

 What decisions did this author make in order to create this piece? What makes it effective?

The specifics might be different but I imagine we'll still look at solid leads, word choice, organization--those traits of writing that we know so well. But we will also look at the tech decisions-which might be considered the craft. Why did the author decide on the background music? How does the length of transitions impact the meaning?

When I look at clips with this lens, it is interesting what I find.  The kids are discovering so many things about creation just by watching quality clips and thinking about the decisions made in the creation.

These are two clips I've found this week to begin my collection.  I don't know if I'll ever use them but they'll be in my toolbox:

In this Public Service Announcement encouraging people to get a flu shot, the camera work and the slow motion works to create the drama needed to get the message across. I can envision lots of talk about timing, persuasion, etc. after students watch this.

And I love this clip from Wesley Fryer--"Go Green! Go Electric!". A great clip to show kids that informs viewers--done by kids. The combination of narration and visuals works well and I want to make sure I have lots of examples of pieces by kids.  

I imagine, as with any inquiry, once I share a few of these, the students will find many in their worlds and begin to watch with the eyes of a creator.  These will just begin the conversation. As I continue to reflect on the goals for our students and the definitions of 21st Century Literacies, looking critically and learning from mentor pieces seems key in the process of creation.