It's Monday!

Not only is it Monday (for a few more hours), it's also Spring Break, so my stack is toweringly optimistic.

Right before break, I finished listening to Code Name Verity. It was all kinds of brilliant, so I'm listening to Rose Under Firenext.

Maxine Kumin's final book And Short the Season: Poemscame. I'll savor it and make it last.

Franki loaned me Nightingale's Nestand I have Shannon Hale's Dangerousfrom the library.

I've hoarded a few books I ordered for the classroom library until I can read them:

Bad Kitty Drawn to Trouble
Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Big Bad Ironclad!
Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party
Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy

I think the final Lunch Lady (Lunch Lady and the Schoolwide Scuffle) is back on the shelf in my classroom -- I released it into the wild before I read it, so I may sneak back into school and read it while I can.

I have about twelve professional books stockpiled, but I'm not kidding myself. I hope to read:

Celebrating Writers: From Possibilities to Publication

Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts--and Life
Assessment in Perspective: Focusing on the Readers Behind the Numbers
Rethinking Intervention: Supporting Struggling Readers and Writers in Grades 3-6 Classrooms

Looks like some good reading weather the next few days! (...making lemonade, in case you were wondering...)

Poetry Friday -- Pancakes!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by TIm Hamilton

PANCAKES
(Heaven must be a place where there are pancakes.)


Pancakes, pancakes, I love you.
Batter, butter, syrup, too.

Mix them up and pour them out,
use a ladle or a spout.

Pour them in a pan that’s hot,
cook them well, but not a lot.

Get them brown, don’t let them burn
Use a spatula to turn

them over when one side is brown.
Be careful and flip UP not down.

Stack them on a plate real high.
Look at them, let out a sigh.

Melt the butter, pour the maple
(don’t get any on the table!).

Get your napkin, tuck it in
(don’t get maple on your chin!)

Now your fork…get ready…GO!
Eat your pancakes, 10 in a row.

Oh my goodness, this won’t do –
I am full down to my shoes!

Let me rest for just a bit…
Okay, now 10 more will fit!

The bacon’s ready now, you say?

Life is good! I say, “HOORAY!”

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Julie Larios has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at The Drift Record.

Next week, on the brink of Poetry Month 2014, the roundup will be here. I'm hoping you'll share a description of your PoMo14 project for a special roundup within the roundup.

Best wishes to the authletes who are participating in March Madness! Write on!

Boxes and Patterns and Templates

Vicki Vinton's recent post about the overuse of graphic organizers was thought-provoking. Is even the thoughtful use of an occasional teacher-made or teacher-provided organizer in order to acquaint children with the kinds of tasks they will be asked to do on a high-stakes (we're talking fail-the-grade high stakes) test overuse? We think not. There needs to be a balance. But by balance, we're not suggesting one-for-one. Balance to us goes back to "sparingly" and "thoughtful."

I was thinking of Vicki's post yesterday at Environmental Club. I provided students with teasel seed heads (harvested from the weedy area along the train tracks in my neighborhood),

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Hornet Photography

and felt, pom-poms, pipe cleaners, google eyes, clothespins and magnetic tape. The goal...or I should say, MY goal, MY idea, was to decorate the clothespin and make a refrigerator magnet that would hold their papers. I sat and cut felt and pipe cleaners for them while they worked. Here's a sampling of what they made:

Most of the outcomes bore no resemblance to the idea I had in my head when I bought/gathered the supplies. Free to make whatever they wanted, they made some AMAZING creations! (And a huge mess...) It didn't matter. I intentionally hadn't provided a pattern, so I celebrated every creation. 

When I opened Blogger to begin this post about boxes and organizers and patterns, I was struck by what met me: a template. With pre-set boxes to be filled. And I have no problem with that. Would I want to sit down to a blank page every time I write a post and create the formatting? I think not! 

Next weekend, I will make my famous three-layer-from-scratch chocolate cake. It will take some improvising: the recipient wants coffee buttercream instead of the usual frosting. But will I try to bake the cake and make the buttercream without a recipe? Nope. 

On the other hand, as I try, without success, to pin myself down on my Poetry Month poem-a-day project, I find I'm leaning more and more to something very unstructured and spontaneous. Last year's "Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations" was a huge success and loads of fun...and very structured. 

So in life, as well as in our classrooms, it shouldn't (even can't) be either/or: ALL structure or ALL freedom. We need to notice WHEN we need an organizer or a pattern, a template or a recipe, and when we can do away with them and create freely.

The Scraps Book: Notes from a Colorful Life by Lois Ehlert

I forgot how much I LOVE Lois Ehlert. Well, I didn't actually forget, but I haven't dug into her work for a few years. A decade ago, when I taught Kindergarten, Lois Ehlert influenced everything I did. We loved all of her books and we LOVED a video about her life and her art. The video shared her process and photos of the table she had in her house when she was a child--the table filled with scraps and treasures. We set up our own table in our classroom and it invited creativity!

This new book The Scraps Book: Notes from a Colorful Life reminded me of all of that and all of the reasons I love Lois Ehlert. Of course I love her for her books--her books are amazing and they make me happy. But I also love her for the way she makes art and creativity so exciting for children. She is a mentor for this kind of a life in all that she does.

In The Scraps Book, Lois Ehlert shares her life as an artist. She shares it in a simple, yet profound way. She includes images from her book and photos from her childhood.  She shares her process and the ways she gets ideas.  She invites readers to live the life of an artist.  And she makes it seem possible.

For me, this book seems like a perfect beginning of the year book--one that helps launch an amazing writing workshop.  But it is also the perfect book to share anytime of the year. This week, I'll be sharing it with 2 of my students who are working on nonfiction pieces about art and drawing.  I am sure it will make its way around the room quickly.

Now, I need to go find the rest of my Lois Ehlert books again!

The Hornbook just featured Five Questions for Lois Ehlert--a great interview!

Making Learning Visible : The Brownie Problem

Lots of thinking has been swirling around in my head lately.  The last few years have been full of learning as I've left the library and gone back into the classroom.  As a librarian, I really played around with digital tools and coming back into the classroom, I'm trying to learn how those can better support learning across content.  There have been many big ideas that have shaped my thinking over the last few years.  I've always watched the work of Harvard's Project Zero and recently have paid attention to their Making Learning Visible work as documenting student learning has always been fascinating to me. This year, I also discovered the video Austin's Butterfly and our class has watched and discussed it a few times as we've learned more about helpful response.  And I've been rethinking the ways I use wall space to support student learning after reading Smarter Charts K-2: Optimizing an Instructional Staple to Create Independent Readers and Writers.  So I've been thinking about learning and documentation and response and sharing thinking in a way that promotes more learning. 

A few weeks ago I read Stephanie Parsons' post on  The Sub Sandwich Problem post, a math problem her 4th graders solved and the way response pushed them as mathematicians.  We are just becoming comfortable with the concept of fractions and so I gave them a brownie problem:

You and 4 friends are sharing 2 brownies. The brownies are equal sizes.  How will you share the brownies so that each of you gets the same amount?

Students solved the problem. This took a while.  The entire math lesson took close to 2 hours and the learning was amazing. I bopped around listening to thinking and recording short bits of conversations that captured their problem solving as they worked.  After each group solved the problem, they responded to 2 other groups' work using sticky notes around the edges. They responded with things they liked, questions they had and kind suggestions that would make the work better.  Then groups went back to change things that they agreed would make their work better.

We shared our work in the hallway and I wanted to see who adding the videos could work.They weren't great videos as I was just capturing them for myself.  But I wanted to see how I could improve hallway displays to add to the learning. So I uploaded 3 videos and added QR codes for our display. These are on a district site so only people with the inside link can get to them. 

As a class, we watched the videos I posted together and talked about how watching conversation helped them as learners. We also talked about the idea of sharing our work differently in the hallway, to include not only the finished work but the thinking that went with it. We also talked about how things we do with technology don't always lend themselves to sharing in the hallway but we want to make sure to do that differently.  So, we just played around with this.

I am working to really rethink the work we share and the ways we share it. I want to take advantage of the tools we have so that we can capture and share things we haven't always been able to share "on the wall".  Just playing around with charts and documenting learning in new ways:-)

Celebrate #MRA14!

Check out what others are celebrating this week at www.ruthayreswrites.com

Today, we are both attending #MRA14 with friends and colleagues. For this week's celebration, we will be sharing things all day worth celebrating. Our post will grow as the day goes on!

Our #MRA14 Celebration began with our drive from Dublin to Grand Rapids last night. We talked teaching, and life and books.  One book that we all want to read soon is Boys of Blur. It comes out in April.  There is a buzz about it on Twitter and at #mra14.

The morning keynote was R.J. Palacio and we had front row seats!!

We are also celebrating the navigational gifts of Katie. She has pointed us in the right direction time after time this weekend. She was the only one who knew, when we stepped out of the auditorium after hearing RJ Palacio, that we would be at registration. She knew; the rest of us were blinded by the sudden sunshine AND her brilliant navigating! (edited to add: We have invented a new hashtag in her honor -- #katieknows)

We are TOTALLY celebrating the soup and salad buffet for lunch!!

Karen, Franki and I learned SO MUCH at Kristin Ziemke's session. Here are some snapshots from my notes:

“Take a screen shot and email it to me.”

“Good luck, have fun, happy writing!”

“The learning never stops.”

“Kids need to be device agnostics – this is the WORST technology they’ll use in their lifetime.”

It’s not about the apps, it’s about the thinking: active literacy/learning=reading, writing, drawing, viewing, talking, listening, investigating. The more sensory inputs we give our kids, the better they’ll remember it when they have to use it on their own.

Turning around their school happened because of changing the teacher culture – study groups, and considering every day of every year a laboratory to study what goes well and what needs to be changed.

Poetry Friday: To Live in This World

image by Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com

Shoulders
by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in the rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and
south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.



We had outdoor recess for two days in a row this week. It got up to 66 on Tuesday. The children abandoned their coats and jackets in heaps at the edge of the playground...and then it snowed again on Wednesday and windchill factors were below zero on Thursday.

Monday, as I stood watching two fourth grade tyrants run a lopsidedly unfair basketball game, I despaired. How can we possibly raise up a generation of world leaders who will find joy in teamwork, who will look out for the little guys, who will laugh with others rather than at them?

I don't have any answers, other than what I do every day and every year: I come back to my classroom with empathy, fearlessness and humor. The road is wide, but the only way to make our way down it or across it is one step at a time.

"We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another."


Kara has the Poetry Friday roundup today at Rogue Anthropologist.

Life on Mars

I'm struggling to maintain a reading life these days. I get 40 minutes a day in the car with my audio book, but LIFE has made it hard for me to read much with my eyes. Luckily, I have avid readers in my classroom. 

When I got this ARC, I knew exactly which student should read it. Her first apps on her new iPad were space apps. Her persuasive essay was about why she should go to space camp. Her passion is All Things Space, and if she doesn't wind up with a career in space science, I will be amazed. Here's W's review of Life on Mars.

Life on Mars

by Jennifer Brown

Bloomsbury USA Childrens, August 2014

ARC provided by the publisher

I really loved the book Life on Mars by Jennifer Brown. When I first saw the book I thought it will be a non-fiction book but when I started reading it I figured out it was fiction. This book is about a boy named Arcturus Betelgeuse Chambers, most people call him Arty. Arty was named after the Alpha star in the constellation Bootes. The Alpha star is the brightest star in the constellation. All of the Chambers family is named after stars. Arty’s sister Cassi is named after the star Cassiopeia. But Cassiopeia dosen’t like being called by her name she likes to be called Cassi.

Arty has been working on something to connect to Mars, and find Martians. The machine he has been working on is called CICM, it stands for Clandestine Interplanetary Communication. Arty and his friend Tripp thinks that Arty’s next door neighbor, who they call “ Mr. Death,” is a zombie, because every night he goes behind their house in his black hoodie with his trash bag and a box and comes out in the morning.

Aunt Sarin has to stay with Arty and his sisters while their parents go to search for house in Las Vegas (A really bright city where you can’t see stars because of the light pollution.) But when Aunt Sarin has to go to the hospital because she is having a baby, Arty has to stay with Mr. Death.

Arty discovers that Mr. Death loves space just like he does, and they become friends. Arty and Mr. Death work on CICM together and decide to name it HUEY instead of CICM. Arty soon discovers a terrible secret about Mr. Death.

Nonfiction: Writing Great Leads

We are finishing up a unit of study on nonfiction writing.  In the midst of our study, it became clear that my students needed help learning to write well-crafted introductions.  As 3rd graders, they don't yet have much experience with this so many of their drafts began with sentences such as "I am going to tell you about..."  So I started to share some great nonfiction leads and we studied those. But it wasn't until I discovered the introductions in the National Geographic Kids Everything books that things started to fall into place.  

I have purchased several National Geographic Kids Everything (National Geographic Kids Everything Rocks and Minerals: Dazzling gems of photos and info that will rock your world) books this year. They are really well done and all focus on topics kids love.  The text is challenging but accessible and they immediately draw kids in.  So, as I was looking for good leads to share with kids, I pulled on from the shelf to see what type of intros they had as I hadn't paid much attention before.  Well, I was thrilled with what I read. The lead in every single one of these books is incredible!

For example, here is the lead to the book about Rocks and Minerals.  Take a minute to read it.

A pretty solid introduction into the topic.  Clear and well crafted. And then it ends with a little humor.  As we read on, we realized that each and every introduction does a little content-specific wordplay in the introduction as a way to transition into the story.

Over 2 days, we studied 6 introductions from this series and kids played with all they were learning. These were the perfect pieces to study and they helped kids really understand that a lead was not necessarily a first sentence, that it needed to be organized and set up the piece, and that it could use humor to do so. 

I have to say, I didn't really expect to use this series as mentors for writing but these intros are amazing.   haven't discovered many other introductions for my 3rd graders to study, that are as strong as these.  

Corkulous for Read Aloud

I have been thinking about ways to use digital tools in authentic ways in literacy workshop. With a few laptops and a couple of iPads in the room, I am finding some challenges.  Recently, I read Katharine Hale's post "Digital Corkboard:  A Game Changes for Readers" on her fabulous blog, Teachitivity. We don't have Corkulous on our student iPads but I put it on my teacher iPad and decided we'd use it for read aloud. I have the board on my iPad and I am projecting on to the Smartboard with Air Play/Air Server.

We started out on Day 1 previewing our new read aloud How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor.  We started off with 2 columns--things we know after previewing and questions we have. 

It was on Day 2 of reading How to Steal a Dog that I saw the possibilities of a tool like Corkulous.  I've always believed strongly in charts and writing to deepen thinking while reading.  And I've been thinking hard about how to make charts better after reading Smarter Charts.  But as we started talking on Day 2, I realized that even though this chart wasn't "up" all day, kids were using it differently as we talked.  Kids started connecting comments we made on stickies and I was able to move those around/rearrange them so threads of conversation emerged. That's always happened a bit with traditional charting during read aloud, but in a traditional way that makes it harder for kids to follow. With Corkulous, I could move and change our thinking as we went.

Since kids had no experience with Corkulous, I was playing with sticky color, arrows, labels, etc. just so they could see all that was possible.  With the projection, they could see the way I used the tool AND the way it was supporting our thinking.  By later this week, our board continues to change. In the bottom right, you'll see the arrow stickies listing Georgina's possible character traits. This started as a conversation about Georgina being sneaky . Then one day, a student decided we should take one of the traits off because the more we read, the more we realized it didn't describe her anymore.  Then kids started talking about which words described her best so we rearranged the arrows--those few on the left are the ones that seem to capture Georgina at this point in the story, based on what we know about her.

Read Aloud is a huge anchor in our classroom.  It is the time that we come together as a community and dig into one book, learning from everyone's thinking.  For that reason, charting has always been key.  But with Corkulous, even after just a week of Read Aloud. I am seeing that yes, this is a game changer.

First of all, the size of the chart makes it very engaging.  I could technically create something like this on chart paper or a board but the size of the Smartboard makes it readable to everyone.  And I can zoom in to the section of the board we are talking about.  I can arrange and rearrange thinking and kids are seeing how writing and talk change thinking and how our thinking changes over a book.  Kids are not only adding to the conversation about the book, but they are suggesting things that  should do with our board--"Move that orange one that says....to the place where we are thinking about Georgina." or "I think we should delete the sticky that says Georgina is naughty.".

I've always believed strongly in Readers' Notebooks as a way for students to capture their thinking in writing.  Now, there are so many other options available with digital tools.  I love this tool for the conversations and understandings that are happening because of it.  And I also love that it is modeling another tool that supports readers in digging deeper in their reading.

I continue to find that when I play with new digital tools, focusing on the learning makes it almost risk-free.  I know my focus is on reading and thinking so if this tool hadn't worked so well, it would have been okay because my focus was on the literacy learning, not the tool.  Although the tool is very cool, the power has been in what it has done for our conversations and how we've been able to capture that as a community.

(I'm hoping to have Katharine's students talk to my students after we've played with this a bit--to share ways that they are using the tool to clarify and deepen understanding.)


Check out other digital literacy posts in the roundup at Reflections on the Teche.