Launching Writing Writer's Notebooks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stenhouse Twitter Chat: #ConstructionZone by Terry Thompson

A few years ago, I read an article by Terry Thompson that I go back to often as a teacher of literacy.  The article, Are You Scaffolding or Rescuing? at Choice Literacy helped me to better understand the power of scaffolding in building independence. I so love this article and revisit it often.  (If you know me, I have probably handed it to you at some point in the last few years.)  I am thrilled that Terry Thompson has continued to think deeply about scaffolding in the classroom. His new book The Construction Zone: Building Scaffolds for Readers and Writers is his latest thinking on the subject and it is an amazing read. As an elementary teacher, trying to meet the needs of so many students, this book is helping me to rethink the ways I set goals and the ways I work to meet focused goals for each student. (If you haven't had a chance to check it out, you can preview the entire book online at Stenhouse.)

On Monday, September 14, at 8:00 p.m. EST, I will be facilitating the Stenhouse chat around The Construction Zone. I am excited to talk to others about the ideas in this new book. And, Terry Thompson (@TerryTreads) will be part of the chat so I know it will be a wonderful hour of learning!   He gives us so much to think and talk about. So whether you've read the book or not, please plan to join the chat!  The hashtag for the chat is #ConstructionZone. I hope to see you there!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? #classroombookaday

For the It's Monday! What Are You Reading? round up, go to www.teachmentortexts.com

Last year, Jillian Heise read 180 books to her middle school students--one picture book a day.  She shared this idea and the power of the #bookaday at Nerdcamp this year.  I was intrigued and decided to give it a try.  We certainly read lots of books every day but often they are in connection to something.  I decided that this year, we'd end every day with a picture book. A book just because. (Ending the day with a picture book was Colby's Sharp's brilliant idea and it ends the day on such a happy note!)  This year, Jillian started a hashtag for teachers who were sharing books every day with their kids. It is #classroombookaday.  Some days we read a few more than one book but we've tried to end every day with a book. Here are the picture books we've shared so far, just because.

The Literacy Connection: Have You Registered to Hear Chris Lehman?

Poetry Friday -- Butterflies

Before

by Avis Harley

The butterfly was there

before any human art was made.

Before cathedrals rose in prayer,

the butterfly was there.

(read the rest of the poem here)

It's been such an amazing experience to have monarch caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies in our classroom for the past two weeks! They were given to us by one of our building's paraprofessionals, whose mother collected the caterpillars and hung the chrysalises in nifty solo cup viewers. The last of the caterpillars started to make its J today and I overheard one of my students say, "I could just sit here and watch all day!" Another student caught the caterpillar's last voracious eating on video on one of the iPads yesterday. We haven't stopped marveling at the beauty of the chrysalises. Why the gold dots? There seems to be no scientific explanation. Nature just goes out of its way to be beautiful!

If I'm understanding what I have read here, our butterflies might be fourth generation monarchs, the ones who will migrate to Mexico to hibernate for the winter before flying back to start the cycle all over again. This is as much of a miracle as the metamorphosis and the gold dots. What an amazing world this is!

Linda has the Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.

August Mosaic

Row 1:
The Dewdroppers at one of Worthington's concerts on the green. The clarinetist, Joe, sold me my bike!
From my garden: Indigo Rose cherry tomatoes, and a crop of small beets with yummy beet greens (sautéed in bacon grease, of course).

Row 2:
Our crazy cat drove us nuts for about a week not being able to keep food down. When we switched up his food, he was so happy he started sleeping with his head in his bowl!
Columbus food truck festival -- yum.
The huge piles of weeds and branches from the...

Row 3:
...Land Lab reclamation. I was gone all of July and the constant rains were quite encouraging to the weeds!
MONARCHS! The mother of one of the parapros in my school gathered lots of monarch caterpillars, raised them, carefully placed the chrysalises in Solo Cup viewers, and donated them to my classroom, along with a caterpillar to watch through the entire process. What a gift.

Row 4:
New glasses. No one has noticed, so that must mean they look perfect on my face. (Plus, they are still purple, so no big change there, but I can SEE! Yay!) The first butterfly emerged on Sunday. I found the clear chrysalis when I went in to feed the fish, and I brought it home. We missed the moment of emergence, but not by much.

Row 5:
I took it outside to the snapdragons, and we communed with the bees as it prepared to fly free.

Row 6:
This is a DIFFERENT monarch that came to the zinnias about the time our fledgeling crawled onto the snapdragons. Welcoming committee?
Yesterday I found one ready for release when I got to school (and another emerged for the AM Latch Key kids to watch). I released both in the Land Lab, and when examining our milkweed there, saw that we have at least one monarch doing its thing in the wild. YAY!

The Horn Book Magazine

I read lots of blogs, I tweet, I follow #titletalk every month and I have lots of friends who tell me about new books. But I still LOVE my 6 issues of The Horn Book every year. I have been subscribing to it for years and years. It is one of the very few paper magazines I still get in the mail and it is the ONLY one I actually read every time it arrives. An hour or two with every issue and I get a ton of great reading and a lot of info on new books that I want to check out.

This week, I got the September/October issue of The Horn Book magazine.  Not only did I get to read fabulous pieces by Jack Gantos and Kwame Alexander, I also discovered lots of new books:

--I discovered a new series that looks promising for 3rd graders--Lola Levine, due out in November.

--I learned that a new book in the Ling and Ting series is coming in November!

--I am interested in reading the new Graphic novel by Ben Hatke, Little Robot.

-- I had NO IDEA that on September 1, The Full Moon at the Napping House would be released!  Can't wait to see what they did with this one!

--I was reminded that One Day the End by Rebecca Kai Dotlich is due out soon, a book I have on my TBR list

--And a sequel to Where's Walrus? What could be better. Can't wait to see Where's Walrus? And Penguin? (and from what I can tell, this book already has several starred reviews!)

--I loved My Heart is Laughing so am looking forward to When I am Happiest.

--I loved Ship of Dolls and had no idea that here was a companion book/sequel.  Interested in checking out Dolls of Hope.

--Some of my favorite reads of the year (Waiting, Crenshaw, and Sunny Side Up) got starred reviews from Horn Book this month!! Such great books!

--Two Mice looks like a great fun story told in two-word phrases. I always like the creativity in books like that!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Horn Book and highly recommend it to everyone who loves children's books. One of the best resources out there for sure!  And I'd also subscribe to the blog Read Roger for even more fun. The Horn Book is the best.

Scaffolding Reading Notebooks

This is my third year in 3rd grade.  I taught 3rd a while ago but most of my experience is in grades 4 and 5. I have some experience in primary and last year I realized that my 3rd grade Reading Workshop was a bit too intermediate for my early third graders. They seemed to need a more primary workshop. I thought long and hard about a lot of my practices and how to better support some of my younger readers who needed more time for oral language and more support in comprehension.  Last year, we visited Emily Collins' amazing 2nd grade classroom in our district.  We were lucky to see the entire reading workshop and see the amazing work her students did.  Our visit and the conversations I've had with Emily and others since that time helped me think about the best ways to support these transitional readers in grades 2 and 3--readers who aren't quite primary, but aren't quite intermediate, either.

For years I've seen the power in kids keeping a Readers' Notebook but I really struggle with what that looks like in 3rd grade.  Sometimes we jump in and the first part of the year is chaos as kids need more time to notice their thinking and talk through their thinking before they are ready to write much.

So, this year, I am using a mini-notebook for the first several weeks of school. This is a notebook that we'll use during read aloud and reading mini lessons to keep track of our thinking in writing and sketches. It seems to be a good size and not overwhelming for kids--the page size makes it very inviting for all readers.  We are taking time to stop and jot as well as time to stop and talk. We are learning and charting different ways we think during our reading.

Next week, we'll add cards or sticky notes for kids to begin to track their thinking during independent reading time also (another idea from Emily).  And we'll do lot of talking during share time about the places they marked and the thinking they did.

After a few weeks of playing with writing about reading in these ways, when everyone has had time to play and learn in a notebook that is fun and accessible, we'll move into reading notebooks with an understanding of what is possible.  In the meantime, we'll use these pages to see what is possible.

This is a little thing but it already seems like a little change that is going to make a big difference for my early 3rd graders.

Poetry Friday -- as the hummingbird sips the nectar

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Bill Gracey

Jan Burkins, Steve Peterson and I have collaborated on another renga. Our first renga (and notes about the form) are here. Here's our second renga:

as the hummingbird sips the nectar

I.

round moon not yet full

finds my cracker--full ‘til bitten

life full with roundness

sharp as a wheel of cheddar

smooth and creamy as brie

under the gnarled oak

an old couple tosses

dry crusts to the pigeons

we become what we take in

fresh foods, sour moods, vast ideas

II.

mountain peaks tower

above the endless plains

full -- sharp -- old -- vast -- inspiring

toward evening, golden sunlight

settled on her wrinkled face

inside she’s a girl

surprised by her reflection

in her dreams she runs

river carries silt downstream

building up the new island

III.

sweet alchemy --

orchard apples filled

by the light of a star

loose tooth lost with first bite

red orb of bittersweet

cold front passes through

scrubs away humidity

wren sings from the fence

once, he learned to see rainbows

in the oil on a street puddle

a skill important

for grownups who are often

too busy measuring

too concerned with to-do to

barter duty for beauty



When we chatted via conference call about the finished poem (on the afternoon before Steve's first day back), I loved what Jan said about the process, how it's like laying one stone out at a time, building a path as we walk forward.

As we talked about our inspirations for each of our stanzas, or the stories behind our words, it was amazing (again) to learn from where in our lives these words had come.

I was the one who divided the poem into sections this time. I was working (probably too left-brainedly) to find a flow of meaning throughout the whole poem. While I couldn't find it throughout the whole, I did find it in these sets. 

Steve gave us our title, and I think it's quite brilliant. 

This is what I'm learning from Steve and Jan as we write together -- how to string pearls.

Sylvia has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Poetry For Children.

If You Plant a Seed

If You Plant a Seed 
by Kadir Nelson
Balzar + Bray, 2015
review copy from the public library

Just yesterday, I talked to my students about not judging or making assumptions, and yet, count me guilty as charged! I saw this gorgeous cover over and over again during #pb10for10, but it wasn't until my reserve came in at the library and I held it in my hands did I notice who the author/illustrator was. Kadir Nelson...does BUNNIES???

Well, come to find out and do a little research, this isn't the first time Kadir Nelson has done a book featuring animals, instead of people, but not surprisingly, the animals are every bit as expressive as his humans. LOVE the two double-page wordless spreads just before all selfishness breaks loose -- first with the rabbit and mouse (just about to enjoy their harvest) looking at the birds looking at them, and then a full-on view of the expectant and hopeful looks the birds are giving rabbit and mouse. A great place to turn-and-talk.

This is a story about what happens when we plant selfishness vs. what happens when we plant kindness. A good reminder for gardeners of all ages in the garden of Life.