Caldeoctt Voting and Newbery Club Reflections

This morning, as they are announcing the Caldecott and Newbery Awards at ALA Midwinter. As much as I would LOVE to be at the Youth Media Awards announcements, I won't be there.  But we will be having our own fun as our school's Newbery Club will be enjoying donuts while we watch the live webcast.  We are all excited to see which book will win the award and I am sure the follow-up conversations will be amazing.

As a school, we spent this week looking at many of the Caldecott contenders.  All students in grades 1-5 voted and here are our results:

Mock  Caldecott Winner:
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Mock Caldecott Honors:

Bone Dog by Eric Rohmann
I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
Where's Walrus by Stephen Savage

Our  Riverside Mock Newbery Club has been meeting for a year. This week, the kids voted from the short list we had created.  The winner of our vote was:  INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai.

Riverside's Mock Newbery Honors:
BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX by Laurel Snyder
HIDDEN by Helen Frost.

My reason for starting the Newbery Club at our school was to build a group of older readers who had stamina to read really great books.  I had noticed that other than THE LIGHTNING THIEF, CITY OF EMBER and a few other titles, many our older kids needed a push to expand their lives as readers. Our kids are readers. The teachers run amazing Reading Workshops and I felt like I could support the work they were doing by supporting great book choice with a group of kids that was interested.

Our club has about 25ish members.  We meet on Mondays and we average about twice a month.  The members are all 5th graders and we started meeting a year ago--in January of 2011. They were 4th graders at the time and we continued the group in the fall as 5th graders (with a few new members:-)  It has been a pretty simple club.  Kids come in, eat lunch in the library and chat about books. Or they chatted about 5th grade stuff and then moved onto books. My plan was to have a more structured club and months where we were all reading the same book, etc.  But it didn't turn out that way.

This group did not like "assigned" reading so a whole group book never took off.  They were clear that they were in charge of their reading lives. So, I handled it differently than I had planned. It was very unstructured and because of that, it ended up surpassing any goals I had set for it.

I started the club with a pile of 2011 arcs and added to the pile with new books and arcs as they were released.  For a while, our meetings were merely about picking books. Members were just trying to read lots of 2011 books. Kids would share informally about the books they read and decide on their next read. As time went on and buzz around books picked up, books started circulating between meetings so book swapping was no longer the focus of our meetings.

As we began this school year, we started to look at some Mock sites and I started to share books that were being talked about as possible Newbery winners. I created this JOG THE WEB highlighting books that were highly reviewed. Members explored this during a few meetings this fall and continued to revisit it as needed.  I began to house the 2011books on a specific shelf near the checkout desk.  Kids came in and out of the library every day to pick a book.

Then in November, we created our own Short List. Kids voted and as we chatted, I was amazed at how many great books the group had read.  The books on the shortlist were INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN, BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX, TUESDAYS AT THE CASTLE, ROMEO AND JULIET CODE, HIDDEN, SMALL AS AN ELEPHANT, THE UNWANTEDS and A DOG'S WAY HOME. They really were talking ONLY about amazing books. Talk is always good when the book is good and the books being discussed, shared and passed around the group were amazing. Even though we had never had a formal conversation, it was clear to me that just sharing the experience, sharing books they loved, having time to read and tools to support great book choice, this group grew as a community. The informal chat was powerful.

When I think back to the year, I am amazed at how these kids grew as readers. They tried new genres, discovered new authors, fell in love with great books and shared those books with others. Many of them experienced ebook reading -- some liked it and some did not.  They grew as readers in so many areas over the year.   I know this growth wasn't solely because of the club, but I think it was a way to put new quality books in their hands. They learned about stamina, quality book choice, talk, community.  And it was a great way for me, as the librarian, to get to know a group of readers at a different level.

My plan was to end the group after the ALA announcement and start a new 4th grade group this month, but I hate to end this group. They are reading and talking about books like crazy. And I can really just sit back and listen.  My thinking now is to keep them together as a group that keeps up with new books.  Or to start them off on their own Newbery Club that they might continue on their own into middle school.   They seem the perfect group to spread the word about great new books.

For me, this is such an exciting day!  I have so many books that I loved from 2011. So many titles that I'd love to see win these award.  So many deserving authors and illustrators. I am crossing my fingers for a few favorites!

Poetry Friday: The First

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Paul Lowry

The First

Jackie Robinson

First African American baseball 

player in the modern era

January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972

I run down 

the line, eight feet, 

nine. . .and feint to feel 

the rush between the third 

baseman’s brush back and home.

Whitey Ford stares through me, a sneak thief 

playing on his disbelief, a phantom blackbird hopping 

on and off 

the dare, flinching,

inching along the ledge

to legend. I time the windup, 

my pistons primed to shovel under

Yogi’s glove. Yankee Stadium is stunned!

But you can hear the cheering all the way from Harlem. 


© J. Patrick Lewis

[This poem will appear in When Thunder Comes: 

Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, Chronicle Books, 2012, 
and is used with the permission of the author.]

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Thank you, Mr. Poetry Ambassador, sir, for sending this poem for us to feature on our blog for Poetry Friday today!


I poked around the Internet a bit to find out some more information about Jackie Robinson, seeing as I'm not any kind of baseball fan.


I found the official Jackie Robinson website.
Here's more about Whitey Ford, pitcher for the Yankees, and Yogi Berra, catcher for the Yankees.
And here's Jackie Robinson stealing home, an amazing and daring move. Yogi Berra's not too happy about it!

Elaine has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Wild Rose Reader. Steal on over and check out the poetry offerings for today!

Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking

Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking
A Toon Book
by Philippe Coudray
Candlewick/Toon Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher



I love Toon Books. Their catch-phrase is "TOON BOOKS: Bringing new readers to the pleasure of COMICS!"

Benjamin Bear is identified as a Level Two: "easy-to-read comics for beginning readers." However, the sophistication of the humor makes it a fun book for readers of all ages and all levels.

Each page is a story. A short story, but a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end. They are funny stories -- almost sight gags, since there is so little text. One of my favorites is a three-panel story, "The Biggest Fish." Bear says to Rabbit, "A shark takes up as much room as a whale." In the next panel, Rabbit asks, "How?" In the bottom panel (2/3 of the page) Bear and Rabbit stand at the shore looking down into the ocean, where all the fish have retreated to the edges of the panel, leaving a whale-sized empty space around a shark. Another favorite is "The Maze." Bear gets lost in a maze, but luckily, he has an apple with him. If you're wondering, "How could an apple help him?" you have a sense of the quirky humor in these stories. (Sorry. You'll have to read it to find out how the apple gets him out of the maze. Make your prediction. Then go get the book!)

Because they are single-page stories, this book would make a great mentor text for kids working with Comic Life or the Comic Book app to create their own single-page stories. Courdray uses a variety of panel sizes and combinations in each of his comics, and it would benefit young writers to study his panel choices and think hard about why he made his choices.


Also reviewed at No Flying, No Tights: A Graphic Novel Review Website

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred

The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred
by Samantha R. Vamos
illustrated by Rafael López
Charlesbridge, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher







This book is The Happy Nappy Bookseller's pick for the Pura Belpré Award.*

I agree.

First of all, the illustrations are gorgeous. They pop with the happy bright colors you can see on the cover.

And the story is fun, fun, fun. It's a cumulative tale with a nod to "The House That Jack Built." In this case, though, arroz con leche is cooked. The story is told primarily in English, but the Spanish is included in a way that makes the reader pay attention and use context and story pattern clues. (There's a glossary in back if you really get stuck.)

The book starts, "This is the pot that the farm maiden stirred." On the next page, "This is the butter that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred." So, you see, cazuela is pot.  On the next page, "This is the goat that churned the cream to make the MANTEQUILLA that went into the CAZUELA that the farm maiden stirred." So, mantequilla is butter, and you can see how the story accumulates not only ingredients and animals but Spanish words.

Maybe I won't have read the Newbery this year, but I'm pretty sure I've read the Pura Belpré!


Fuse #8 also liked this book a lot.
An interview with the author here.


*This award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. It is co-sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, an ALA affiliate.

Dublin Literacy Conference: February 25, 2012

Dublin Literacy Conference 1995

From Left: Karen Szymusiak, Louise Borden, Franki Sibberson, Georgia Heard, Ralph Fletcher

The Dublin Literacy Conference has been a constant in my life as a teacher.  It is one of my favorite times of year.  The conference is run by a committee of teachers.  Mary Lee and I have somehow been involved in the planning of this for a very long time.  (The photo above is one from the 1995 Dublin Literacy Conference--it looks more like the 80s with my hair, but whatever...). The Dublin Literacy Conference is a highlight for many of us.  I love it every year and each year I look at the list of upcoming speakers and think, "WOW! This is the best conference yet." We are so lucky to get amazing speakers each year, great book sales, and lunch. It is always a great day of literacy and learning. The conference is a deal--a one day Saturday conference for only $100 ($75 for Dublin Teachers).

There are two keynote sessions and 3 other sessions during the day-an A, B, and C session. The A and B sessions offer 20+ choices for participants. Some are given by features speakers and others by classroom teachers, technology specialists, authors, etc.  The C session is an opportunity to hear a Featured Author of your choice.  Everyone leaves the conference with new energy (and usually a few new books).

This year, we have a great slate of Professional Authors:

Donalyn Miller author of The Book Whisperer will present the morning keynote entitled,

One Book, One Child, One Teacher. She will also present a session later in the day called, Bring on the Books!.

Ruth Ayres, author of Day By Day and blog, Two Writing Teachers is presenting 2 sessions for teachers.  Celebrating Writers and Meaningful Minilessons.

Bill Bass author of the upcoming book From Inspiration to Red Carpet: Hosting a Student Film Festival will offer two sessions,  Developing Student Filmmakers and Authentic Learning through a Digital Lens.

Bill Kist author of New Literacies in Action and The Socially Networked Classroom will present sessions on  The Socially Networked Classroom and The World is a Village: Implications for Global Education in a Web 2.0 World

We also have a great group of Children's Authors speaking at this year's conference:

Eric Litwin and James Dean, author/illustrator team of PETE THE CAT will open the conference with a song and present two sessions on Interactive Literacy for teachers.

Our afternoon keynote speaker will be Sharon Draper. Sharon is the author of Out of My Mind, Sassy, Tears of a Tiger and other books for teachers and children. The title of her keynote will be, Literacy, Laughter and Learning. She will also present a a session called Making Books Come Alive for Adolescent Readers.

Bob Shea, author of Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime, New Socks and Big Plans will present sessions entitled,  Super Fun Time with Bob Shea and Super SECRET Fun Time with Bob Shea.

James Preller, author of the Jigsaw Jones series, Bystander, Justin Fisher Declares War and others will present sessions on Meet James Preller and Meet James Preller: The Long Version.

There are also many great Dublin teachers and Central Ohio bloggers presenting at the conference. Some Central Ohio bloggers you may know include:

Mandy Robek from Enjoy and Embrace Learning who will be presenting Helping Emergent Writers Develop.

Tony Keefer from Atychiphobia will present You Can Build Community with Writing.

Bill Prosser and Karen Terlecky from Literate Lives have a session that is becoming an popular tradition at the conference: So Many Books, So Little Time.

Mary Lee Hahn will be presenting on one of her favorite topics, Make Read Aloud a Must, Not a Maybe.

I will be presenting Comprehension in the Digital Reading Workshop.

Deb Frazier (Primary Perspective) and Nicole Kessler (Nicole's Book Nook) will present VoiceThread: Breaking Down the Walls.

Scott Sibberson (Scott Sibberson) will share Free Web Tools and Applications for Literacy Learning

Maria Caplin (Teaching in the 21st Century) will present with colleague,  Mark Saelzler on Digital Literacy in the Everyday Classroom

It looks to be an amazing day of learning and hanging out with colleagues.  There are lots of other great sessions. You can visit the Dublin Literacy Conference website and access a program and registration form.  Hope to see you there!

It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

Love It's Monday! What Are You Reading?  Joining in with Teaching Mentor Texts today as well as lots of other bloggers to share my recent reading.
My reading life has been a little crazy.  I have not given myself as much time to read as usual because I am really working hard to get into a good exercise routine (Reading Teachers Running).  It takes a lot of time to exercise and to eat healthy. And I know when I get into a good book, it is hard to make time for anything else. So, I am mostly reading at night.  I am trying NOT to read as much--last January, I read 40 books but I am trying to be a bit more balanced this January.This week, I read:

I missed last week's post so I'll talk about the last week or two of reading.

The Most Important Book I've Read Lately

Yesterday, I finished John Green's new book THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. This book has been hugely anticipated and I was looking forward to it. I am a huge John Green fan and have read all of his other books. PAPER TOWNS is my favorite. I was excited about this one but a bit worried that it couldn't live up to the hype. And it couldn't live up to his other books for me. How wrong I was. This is an amazing book. Brilliant and all-consuming.  It is the story of Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters.  I really don't even know what to say about this book except that I will most likely read it again sometime soon.  It is a story that will live with me forever--a story that actually changed who I am, I think.  No matter what is on your To-Be-Read stack, I would highly recommend moving this one to the top. The book is being reviewed and rated everywhere and I have not seen or have not heard of one person who was disappointed.  Be prepared--it is not an easy read. You will be sucked in to the joy, pain, fear and energy of these characters.  As I said, it is all-consuming.  (I actually purchased 2 copies of this book--one for me and one for my 21 year old. I do not want to give mine up and I know we will each want to keep a copy of this one forever.)

Nonfiction

FED UP WITH LUNCH by Sara Wu
If you discovered the blog FED UP WITH LUNCH where Mrs. Q., a public school teacher, decided to eat a school lunch every day for a year. She took photos and blogged about her experiences. From the way the food looked to the way it tasted to the way it made her feel. She had no idea that the blog would attract so much attention but it is and she has become a huge advocate for healthier school lunches. Once she gave away her identity, she published this book. Her book has been recently released and whether you read her blog during her lunch-eating year or not, this is a great read. I was afraid it would be a repeat of the blog, but it wasn't.  There is lots of good information and ways to make a difference in your school community.  A great book and a great attitude about how to make good change.

Young Adult
SCORPIO RACES
Donalyn Miller recommended this book to me and I LOVED it. It wasn't a book I would have picked up myself.  I am not a horse love. Don't love adventure or islands really.  But I LOVED this book.  There is a bit of romance, but a huge theme that I loved.  The story is set on an island that provides an amazing backdrop for the characters. And I loved the characters the most, as I do in most books that I love. I loved the main characters and the not-so-main ones.  The island is a small town where everyone knows everyone, and somehow the author made you feel that way too. I can't really explain why I loved this book but I did and I highly recommend it.

Picture Books

Catching up on Caldecott reading as we get ready for Caldecott Voting at school next week. Last week, Miss Loren from the Dublin Library came to visit and talk to the kids about Caldecott contenders. We love when she comes because we discover lots of new books and we love to hear her thinking. This week, kids will have time to look around and vote for a book they think should win. I read the following books to catch up a bit on 2011 picture book reading.

*BLUE CHICKEN by Deborah Freedman
*PLANT A KISS by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
*ZOMBIE IN LOVE by Kelly DiPucchio (This one would make a fun Valentine's Day read aloud.)
**GRANDPA GREEN by Lane Smith
SAY HELLO TO ZORRO by Carter Goodrich
JONATHAN AND THE BIG BLUE BOAT by Philip Stead
UNDERGROUND: FINDING THE LIGHT TO FREEDOM by Shane Evans
LEVI STRAUSS GETS A BRIGHT IDEA by Tony Johnston
BEFORE YOU CAME by Patricia Maclachlan
NIGHT FLIGHT by Robert Burleigh
WOOF MEOW TWEET-TWEET by Cecile Boyer
***WHERE'S WALRUS by Stephen Savage (One of my favorite new wordless books.)
WHERE'S MY T-R-U-C-K? by Karen Beaumont

Coming up Next
Not sure that I will read any fiction this week. I will probably choose a YA book sometime soon --maybe CINDER. Or I might read THE MIGHTY MISS MALONE by Christopher Paul Curtis. (I keep hearing amazing things about this one and I have an ARC from NCTE!) But I need to think about THE FAULT OF OUR STARS for a bit before I commit to new characters.

I will be reading a professional book that I am VERY excited about--OPENING MINDS: USING LANGUAGE TO CHANGE LIVES by Peter Johnston. I am a huge fan of Peter Johnston and his book CHOICE WORDS.  CHOICE WORDS is a small book that has had such a huge impact on my teaching. In it Peter Johnston teaches us about the power of language and the messages our language gives to children. This new book looks to be an extension of that thinking and I can't wait to read it.

I have also been looking forward to reading Louise Borden's upcoming book HIS NAME WAS RAOUL WALLENBERG.  I saw this one in process and can't wait to see the final book.  Such an amazing story.

I would also like to fit in ICEFALL by Matthew Kirby. I have been hearing great things about it and it is all of a sudden getting some Newbery buzz. And it looks like a book that my students would love. So I am wondering if I can fit it in before next Monday...

Poetry Friday: Digital Mentor Texts for Poetry Writing

Last Friday, at The Opposite of Indifference, Tabatha shared several centos that she had found while reading THE GREAT GATSBY. A cento is a poem created with the words of another author. You might have missed that she followed up on Saturday with this digital cento -- a poem created by editing a video of a commencement speech by Steve Jobs.

When I saw this, I realized that Poetry Friday had a way into the Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop conversation that's been going on here all week. I can honestly say:

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!


Poem Flow is the first place that comes to mind when I think of where I might look online for poetry in a digital form that makes me say, "I could do that!" Not only do they have an online presence on their website and on Poets.org, but Poem Flow also has an iPhone app that delivers poetry line by line, word by word, phrase by phrase on a simple white background. Click here to view Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider in Poem Flow. Seems like that would be easy enough to do with PowerPoint or Keynote, but I know better than assgning it until I've tried it myself! (Franki's reflection on the importance of the teacher as digital writer is here.)

I would also love to create a typographic poem.  I've been stuck at the "How do they DO that?" stage, but I really have no excuse -- there are MANY how-to sites and tutorials online. Maybe I'll challenge myself to learn to make one before April! Here's an example that's perfect for Monday's holiday/remembrance. It's a poem that is a combination of typography and cento (and it was created for a school assignment). 



Here's a funny Taylor Mali typographic poem about language.

I used ToonDooSpaces, an online comic-making site, with my students for a couple of years. I could never convice any of my students to make a poem into a comic, but I had fun with Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty.

My students love to read poetry on the classroom Kindle and the Kindle app on our iPods and iPad. We have Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong's PoetryTag Time and Gift Tag, Gregory K's Kickstarter poems (on pdf), and Alan Katz's Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking.

Here's an easy way to make a digital book of classroom poems. Show your students Laura Purdie Salas' 15 Words or Less weekly challenge. Same as Laura, start with a photo for inspiration. Then invite your children to write a very short poem that's as descriptive and original as possible. Drag your photo onto a page of PowerPoint/Keynote (ideally while projecting on your screen/whiteboard for students to see), then have the students bring their poems up for you to type, one on each page. Voila! A digital poetry book!

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

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Living Your Life as a Digital Writer

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

I realize that my posts have been anchored on the things I believe about the teaching of writing and how I have been thinking about those when it comes to digital writing. Anchoring my work in the powerful things I've learned working alongside writers in writing workshops over the years is key.

Writers' notebooks are hugely powerful tools in the writing workshop.  It is not so much the notebook but the practice of living your life as a writer by keeping one.  A writer's notebook is hard to define as it takes on a bit of a different personality for each writer. Ralph Fletcher says,  "It's a place to collect, to react to ones world, to play with language, to stalk your inner voice, to find your stride as a writer."  And in her book Notebook Know-How, Aimee Buckner says, “A writer’s notebook gives students a place to write everyday...to practice living like a writer.”  


As a writing teacher, inviting kids to keep notebooks has always kept writing workshop authentic.  It was a tool that reminded me that living your life as a writer was key. It was also a place to focus on growing and being a writer, rather than on writing "stuff" and focusing on projects/products. 


So, I have been thinking about what this idea of a notebook means for digital writing.  How do we make time for kids to live their lives as digital writers and what does that even mean?


When I think about the writer's notebook, there are several things that make it powerful. A few things that writers do in the notebook:


They collect great writing--words, phrases, passages
They collect images and moments in their lives
They collect their thinking
They try new techniques
They play with language
They give things a try

A writer's notebook is the place where writers can play with the things they learn from other writers/mentors and make them their own. For me, a writers' notebook is often where the real work of mentor texts happen. It is a place where they can collect writing they like. It is a place where they can try a technique that they saw another writer use, without the stress of a finished product. It is a place to play with things.  Then, it is a place to go back to when publishing to pull out some of the things that will make your writing more powerful.

A Digital Writer's Notebook?

So, what does this mean for writers in this digital age. Obviously, a spiral bound notebook will not help our writers collect digital pieces, try our new techniques in film, or play with sound effects. But these things are clearly things that writers who use digital tools do. So, as the definition of writing has expanded, so has the definition of writer's notebook. 

Teacher as Writer
I try to look at myself as a digital writer first. What habits do I have that feel like a writer's notebook expanded to include my life as a digital writer?  Here's what I know about my life as a writer:
I blog regularly.
I read other bloggers' writing daily and often try things I've seen
I bookmark things I'd like to try in my blog writing
I save videos, presentations and podcasts that inspire me to try something new in my composition
I collect photos that I may use in presentations in the future
I play with new tools and often become obsessed with them as I am learning them
I try to create things with new tools for fun
I try various drafts of things and save the drafts
I revise and edit with online tools
I share writing online and immediately for feedback
I compose collaboratively using things like Google Docs

I am sure there are millions  of other things I do. I did all of these things before there was a digital tool for composing. The difference is that before, my playing with writing, my collecting and my drafting was all housed in a writer's notebook. Although I still sometimes use the notebook, more of these habits happen on my computer, ipod or ipad these days.

As writers, we naturally pay attention to things we want to try.  (Yesterday for example, Tony Keefer used a check mark symbol in a tweet.  I had never seen that so immediately decided I wanted to write a tweet with a check mark. I investigated and thought of a tweet that would need a check mark. Now that is something I can do. The point is, sometimes these things are very small and meaningless but it is the way writers pay attention to what is possible and try out new things that is key.)


Mentor Texts as Invitations
So, I want to make sure to use mentor texts in ways that go beyond creating products. I believe in study and I believe that if we are writing persuasive essays, we need to immerse ourselves in reading persuasive essays to begin the study.  However, I think an equally powerful way to use mentor texts is as invitation.  If we want our students to live their lives as writers, invitations and playing are key. Collecting is key. And going back through your attempts is key.

So, I am trying to add more things like this to my time with kids. Quick minilesson type invitations where we study something a digital composer did and try it out ourselves--not to share, not to publish, just so we have it as a possibility in the future.

A few things we've done that support this idea:
Our students have access to lots of digital books and they spend quite a bit of time on sites like Tumblebooks. They enjoy audio and understand the idea of podcasts.  And they know how to record in Garage Band. If kids are to create audio, I want them to have fun with voice and music. So, I invited them to try a few things.

I created an invitations in the library that we played with in a minilesson and a few kids tried out using the foam board displays. One was a foam board display entitled, "How would the character say that?". Scattered around the board were favorite characters and memorable dialogue. We tried reading it aloud in various ways in the minilesson. Then I invited kids to try recording different ways to read character dialogue on garage band. This was fun for those who merely wanted to play. For others, it helped them when they created audio podcasts of picture books for younger students.

I also try to create invitations by finding pieces that connect to student interest. In the past I have found how-to videos for students who like to build with legos and many give those a try while building--taking photos or video of their process.  Our students love to build and a favorite building toy is Straws and Connectors.  I wanted to give the students options for visual creation. On the Straws and Connectors site, you can access several PDFs of directions for building different structures. Once I showed these to a few builders, they created visual directions that will be turned into PDFs and put on our school website.

5th graders are currently playing with Numbers, learning how to make graphs, charts and tables. Eventually, they'll be invited to include those in some of the research that they do. They will also be able to use it when they conduct experiments, etc.  So this playing time is key. Some may choose to use this tool. Others may not.

And, I love to share the Klutz Tricky Video book with students. These have been amazing invitations for students to see how various film techniques work and to give them a try. Klutz actually has many resources when it comes to giving kids opportunities to try some new and doable techniques.

And kids are finding their own ways to play when it comes to digital writing. When they have play time built into their digital writing workshop, they watch television differently. They look at commercials differently. They examine webpages differently. They listen to sound effects and they notice when a film has a close-up and when the scene is shot at a distance.  Then they give things a try. I have to remind myself of this every time someone wants to create a talk show about nothing ("Mrs. Sibberson, don't you watch TV. Talk shows about nothing are funny!") or when they want to spend hours taking a million photos of themselves and embedding them in nonsense pictures on Pixie.   The products don't always work, but the students are becoming more sophisticated digital writers every time they play.  And they are living their lives as writers.

I have worried about this "play time" and am trying to figure out the balance between playing with tools, strategies, and techniques and creating quality products for an audience. But I have come to realize that this play time is the way digital writers live. It is the way I live as a digital writer.  I like to play with things, give things a try, work with new tools, attempt new techniques and formats. Then these things come back in more published pieces when I see the need.  This play time is critical and most of my playing comes from mentor texts I've discovered-something I've seen someone else do that I want to try.  

My challenge is to help my students find ways to collect and revisit these things as we do in our writers' notebooks--to reflect and reuse in future work.  I am still working on this idea but know that I want my students to live their lives as writers--writers who have access to digital tools and writers who are critical readers of all types of texts. If I want them to live their lives as writers, I want them to be awake to all that is out there, to notice what is possible and to think, "Hey, I can do that." I want them find things they want to try and then to have the freedom to play with an idea or technique without the pressure of a finished product--knowing that this will add to the things that are possible for them in the future.  Just as in pre-digital writing workshop, I want notebook type thinking that helps kids live their lives as writers, and I want time for students to work hard on a published piece for an authentic audience. Both are equally important.

Mentor Texts: Teach the Writer, Not the Writing

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

One of the most powerful things I learned as a writing teacher, was by Lucy Calkins who said, "Teach the writer and not the writing.  Our decisions must be guided by what might help this writer rather than what might help this writing."  

I have come back to this quote often in the last few weeks as I am working with 2nd graders on creating e-Comics.  In Writing Workshop, before the digital tools entered, I had very little trouble remembering Lucy Calkins' important words. I was good at focusing on the learning, rather than the product. I felt confident about teaching things that my students would use in future writing--I was impacting the writer, not the writing. I learned early-on as a Writing Workshop teacher, that it was easy to "clean up" a student's writing to make the product "look good". I could do the revising and editing, make decisions for the child, etc. and have something nice to publish.  But I quickly realized that with that approach, students writing never improved. Students never grew as writers. I was lucky to learn from amazing writing workshop teachers and saw huge growth in writers once I stopped focusing on individual pieces of writing and started focusing on individual writers.

Enter digital writing...  I feel like I took a little step back in time and in my ability to manage an authentic writing workshop. It seems that more often with digital tools, I am a bit more structured and directive.  I have to continue to remind myself about my beliefs about writing and learning.  I have to go back to books by my writing mentors--Katie Ray, Ralph Fletcher, Lucy Calkins, Don Graves, Shelley Harwayne--to make sure I am staying true to what I know about quality writing instruction.  Some days, I look around and notice everyone in the same place in the writing process, everyone using the same tools to create or everyone creating similar pieces and I panic.  My workshop before digital tools was much more student-centered.  Students had choice in tools to use, formats to publish and how fast to move in the process.  There seemed to be fewer directives and more invitations.  My vision of what a writing workshop should look like is harder to make happen with so many new tools and possibilities coming so quickly.  I am working to make sure I stay true to what I believe about writing and that I give my students the right messages about what it means to be a writer.  I am moving toward making sure my writing workshop matches the vision I have for it.

So, back to the Comic ebooks.  This is a collaborative project I've been working on with our art teacher, our technology specialist, and our 2nd grade teachers.  We started this project to meet several goals/standards that included learning around narrative writing, text and illustrations working together, using draw tools, finding and saving documents, creating ebooks, dialogue and talking bubbles, and more.  

We used Pixie and Comic Life to create the ebooks. Comic Life has been a popular piece of software but we noticed students not really knowing what to do with it. The photos available didn't always make for the best stories. And they had no idea how to use a draw tool to create comics.  In reading, I noticed that our younger students focused more on individual frames in their reading of graphic novels, than in the story as a whole.  Understanding that graphica was just one more way to tell a story was key goal for us. It was a long unit of study as the students only worked on the projects during art and library class. As with our 3rd grade book trailer unit, we immersed ourselves in comics and made decisions about how our writing would go. 

Challenges:  

About mid-way through our study, students were noticing the various sizes and shapes of the frames in comics.  We talked about how many shapes and sizes they could find and talked about why each was different.  EVERY SINGLE child believed that the authors of comic books merely filled out the template they were given.  They knew Comic Life well and just assumed that comic book writers were given a template and filled it in.  They had no idea that the comic book creator was the one who decided on the size and shape of the frames and how critical that decision is to the piece as a whole.  I was a little bit alarmed. As much as I love the tools that make digital writing more accessible, I also saw the limitations.  The messages my students were getting from this piece of software, were that the software was in charge of their decisions as writers.  I had to rework the unit so that students understood the decisions authors made when it came to frames, and more. 

Another challenge that we faced was that, as teachers, we realized that we got caught up in technology troubleshooting. This was a huge project and there was always some issue that required a computer restart, help with a password, an undo, etc.  Our kids are great at problem solving and collaborating but there were many times when kids needed our assistance.  This seemed okay at the time--kids were learning important technology skills as we worked with them. But what we realized was that we had very little time to conference with the kids about their actual writing or their process. Our work with them focused on the technology  We had worked hard on the writing before they got to the computers, but many kids missed out on the in-the-midst conferences that they needed because we were caught up in troubleshooting. 

We worried about publishing.  Our plan was to publish the ebooks on a internal class site. Putting work on the Internet is a little more stressful.  Published pieces have always forced teachers to make decisions about what is acceptable to "publish". But it seems to be even more difficult when we are not merely hanging writing in the hallway or hosting an author event with student writing.  

Reflection

We stepped back and thought back to all that we had wanted kids to learn and realized they learned SOOO many things that would take them forward as digital writers.  No matter how their "product" turns out, every student learned to tell a narrative story using a draw program and in graphic novel form. In terms of technology, they learned to save and name documents, to use draw tools, to create text boxes, to use and manipulate templates, to export pieces, to change fonts, and more.  In terms of writing, they learned to make decisions, to think about their audience, to connect words and visuals. They learned the difference between dialogue and narration.  They learned how to revise when things weren't going as they had planned.  They learned how to reread and rethink when something didn't make sense to their reader.  

None of this is evident if you look only at the finished products but this learning--the learning that they will carry with them as writers--is far more important than what the product looks like.  I have been visiting and revisiting the Video Game Design website that Kevin Hodgson created to make visible all of the learning that went on in his game design unit. This website is hugely powerful and important work. If we are to have successful writing workshops, it is critical for us to make the learning visible and capture what it is the students learn as writers--things they will carry with them no matter what it is they compose. I also think it is important for us as teachers as a reflection tool. We need to take the time and sit back and reflect on the learning that happens in a project like this--otherwise, we run the risk of focusing on the project and teaching the writing, not the writer.

Celebration

Some days, these comic ebooks take over the library. It seems there is always a computer open that's screen shows a product in the midst of a comic creation.  A student who left a computer on, a child who popped in to work on something, etc.  And guess what? Our biggest, most important goal--the one we forgot about throughout the project--has been achieved.  Early on, we knew we needed good student-created mentors for our students. Pieces that students at our school created that would open up what was possible with the tools we had. As these open computers sit around the library or as I am finishing up moving a pdf to my flash drive as a new class comes in, someone notices the comic on the screen and someone says (almost every day)--"What is that? I want to do that."  I can only imagine what will happen in the next few weeks as these comics are put online for the school community.  So, we've met individual standards-based goals. But we've also met a schoolwide goal of creating a library of projects that our students can learn from.  In-house mentor texts that can open up what is possible for all students.  Every writer will grow a bit by seeing a few more things that are possible.

Teaching the writer, not the writing is key when it comes to any type of writing, especially digital writing.  Some days I feel like I am back to my beginning years teaching in a writing workshop-reminding myself of what is important.  I have to ask myself every single day-what I am doing to help this child become a better writer? What will he/she take with him no matter what he/she is composing in the future? What should I focus on now that will impact all future writing?

And I also have to ask myself, what am I doing to help this community of writers? How am I building our own library of mentor texts-pieces to learn from and to open possibilities for what is possible in our writing community?

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Creating My Own Book Trailer

I was working with 3rd graders on creating their own book trailers. It was a long-term project and I was thrilled with the trailers I had found to study with children.  This seemed perfect for this grade level as book response is a part of their writing curriculum.

I believe strongly in Study-Driven/Inquiry-Based writing instruction. I live by Katie Ray's quote from her book STUDY DRIVEN, which is one of the books that has most influenced my life as a writing teacher. She says, "In an inquiry stance, teachers help children explore different alternatives for how to write something, and then let them do what writers really have to do and make decisions about how their pieces will go." I have been working hard to transfer this understanding about the writing process to a workshop where digital pieces are being composed regularly.  It is not as easy as I had imagined!

As I was inspired by all of the amazing conversations the kids were having about each of these trailers and what they envisioned for their own, I started to read Kelly Gallagher's new book WRITE LIKE THIS. Early in the book, he reminds us of the importance of writing the kinds of things we are asking our students to write. DUH! I knew this. I have kept a writer's notebook for years and believe strongly in this important piece to being a writing teacher. However, I had kind of forgotten to do that with the book trailers. I figured I had created videos and other similar products and I was constantly creating pieces digitally. But I realized that I HAD to create a book trailer.  So, I got to work.

Here's the thing, by the time I had decided this, I had done a ton with the 3rd graders getting them ready for their own composing.  We had studied 6-8 book trailers as a group. We looked at trailers where students spoke and used green screen and animation:



We looked at samples that had no spoken words but focused on visuals:



We looked at student-created videos as well as commercially published trailers. We studied several scripts of effective book trailers. (I had transcribed several so that we could look hard at the crafting of the script.) We looked at the first lines in the videos and which hooked us.  I had typed up the first lines of some of the trailers we had enjoyed and we talked about how each was crafted:

Some Leads We Studied:

Caveman ABC

What do you get when you take an acorn….  Aabear……a caveman…and a dinosaur and put them all together in one book?

Shark Vs. Train

The great white shark…short tempered, single minded marauder of the watery deep.

The steam locomotive train…unstoppable,  coal fueled, king of the rails.

We’re In a Book

Shhhh!  Pssst! Piggie

Yes Gerald?

Piggie, I think someone is looking at us.

39 Clues

“Somebody’s Coming”

“Look at this”

A worldwide adventure, a family of rivals, a game of wit, a reward beyond measure…

Snakes

Snakes Snakes and even more snakes.

Dinotrain

All Aboard! All about the dinotrain. This books adventures begin right down the track.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

One bus.  One Pigeon.  One Rule.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Everyone has a dream of something they would like to do.  But have you ever heard of a pigeon who would like to drive a bus?

We had watched a few trailers looking at the variety of  decisions each writer had made. We looked at the text decisions, visual decisions, and sound decisions.  We talked off of a form like this that we used when watching a few of the videos.

We definitely knew the possibilities.  I thought we were at the point that it would be no big deal for the kids to actually create a good book trailer.

So, then I jumped in. Before I asked the students to move forward in their work, I decided to create a trailer for Mo Willems' book, SHOULD I SHARE MY ICE CREAM. I love Mo Willems and I knew all the kids would know this book.  So, thinking about the things we talked about, I created a plan, just as I had asked my students to do. I used Popplet on the iPad to think through the things I wanted to do in the script, with text, with sound and with visuals. This is when I realized that all of these conversations were wonderfully inspiring when I was thinking about what decisions other writers had made. I realized how very overwhelming it was to think through each one of these decisions myself, now that I knew what was possible.  It was all too much to think about.  But, I got to work.

I knew that I wanted to use Ice Cream Truck music. I knew that I wanted real photos of ice cream. I knew that the script would be behind these photos and I wouldn't be on screen. I knew that I wanted to mention other books in the series and have pictures of those.

All of the planning was pretty fun.  But then I got to the actual creation and it got really, really hard.  Getting my ideas to match my vision was not as easy as I thought it would be. I wrote the script and timed it. I found photos on flickr and on my own iPhoto account.  Then I got started dropping it all into iMovie.

I dropped the ice cream truck photo, the other photos and the book photos. I read my script and realized I needed more photos. Then I began my search for ice cream truck music.

That's where things fell apart.  It wasn't so easy to find this music, especially music that was available for use for a project like this.  So, my husband and I became obsessed with finding good music. We finally discovered that "Do Your Ears Hang Low" is a popular ice cream truck song and available for free use.  But we couldn't find a version that worked online. So, we tried a few things. We bought the piano app on the iPad and found simple sheet music online that we tried to play. We called my mother-in-law, a pianist in Toledo and her play it on her piano while we recorded it over the phone.  We got caught up at the kitchen table for HOURS trying to get the music I was hoping for.

I worked so hard on the music that I didn't have time to actually finish the book trailer....

I ended up abandoning the project as a class expectation. I could not justify spending much more time on this project once I realized what was involved.  The unit wasn't wasted--we had learned to be very critical readers of digital text. We had learned about the decisions digital composers make and the reasons that they made them.  So,  I showed some simple examples that were more book podcasts.I invited kids to finish who wanted to and I stepped back to reflect on what went wrong when it came to the writing.

What I Learned:
The most important thing that I learned was how important it is to go through the process of creating digital pieces before I even think about assigning them to students.  With the experience behind me, I can better understand what kids will need, which mentors would be most helpful, the time the project will take and the learning that is necessary. Having assigned a book trailer before I had ever created one myself became a huge problem.  Not only did I overwhelm the students with the trailers I shared, but I lost sight of the goals of the project.  Looking back, had I planned the project after I had gone through the process myself, my teaching would have been far more effective.

I also learned how easy it is to get caught up in some little thing for hours.  Not being able to find the music to fit my vision became my obsession.  I could not move forward without the perfect music.  All of a sudden, I understood those students who spend hours on garage band and create three seconds of music.

Deadlines matter. I dragged my book trailer creation out for days.  As with any writing, a deadline would have forced me to just make a decision and get the work out there to an audience.  Deadlines almost provide a sense of relief for some projects.

There were so many decisions, almost too many. The options I have as a composer of digital text is overwhelming. Whether we are creating blog posts, websites, podcasts or book trailers, the possibilities are endless. Knowing how to make digital writing authentic and doable for young children is currently a struggle for me.

I lost steam.  I can't imagine what the third graders felt.  One of the problems was that the work on this was done solely in the library. And working on something for 45 minutes every 4 days doesn't seem like the best way to attack digital composing.  So, what place does digital creation have in the library when time with students and time planning with teachers is limited?  What are the most important things for elementary students to learn and understand?  Would this have been different in the classroom?

Questions that Came from My Experience?
What is worth the time? How much of the time spent was really worth it?
Was this doable for an 8th grader?
Did I give too many options?

I am struggling with what is doable at the elementary level.  I clearly learned that I tried to pack too much into this project and I am not sure if the learning was worth the time. How do I keep writing authentic and teach students so that they grow as digital writers, but at the same time, make sure we are not spending hours and hours on deciding how to create the perfect Ice Cream Truck music?

I will never ask students to create a digital piece of writing without first going through the process myself.  And I don't really want to do that in the midst of a project again. As a teacher of writing, I need to take full advantage of trying various types of digital writing just because....knowing that the learning I do in the process will make me a better teacher of writing.  I have been learning a great deal from Kevin Hodgson over the years and his work with students. He seems to plan in a much more effective way than I have lately. And it is becoming clear to me that his commitment to his own digital creations allow him to do that.