My alarm rang early on a Saturday. Today was our San Diego Area Writing Project Spring Conference! Before I got out of my cozy, warm bed I checked the weather app on my phone. Drizzle. Drizzle is not really rain, right? I decided against dressing for rain and opted for my Vans tennies and some black almost dressy pants to go with my cute sweater top. (I would have to open the conference, but I also had to walk a good bit to get from the parking structure to the conference venue on the UCSD campus.
About 5 minutes before I was planning to head out, I looked out the door and changed my mind. That was NOT drizzle–even by Southern CA standards, that is called rain! I rushed back to my bedroom, kicked off the Vans, changed into jeans with skinny legs so that I could pull on my cowboy boots–the dressier footwear option for rainy conditions–and then headed out the door wearing my raincoat with my umbrella in my bag.
With windshield wipers on high, I braved the slick freeway and low visibility, and as I approached the university, the weather began to clear. The ground was wet and puddly as I walked from the parking garage, but the sky had cleared a bit and it wasn’t even drizzling.
It’s hard to get up on a rainy Saturday morning to attend professional development–even when it is self-selected. But I knew once I arrived that the energy of the participants and presenters would carry me through. And I was right. Our morning keynote by our own Christine Kane focused on the value of conversation, how the best conversations reveal things about ourselves both to those we are conversing with and to ourselves as well. She referenced David Brook’s newest book, How to Know a Person, and shared some of his advice about being a “loud listener.” She also reminded us of the Chinese symbol for listening which includes the eyes (to see), the ears (to hear), the mind (to think), undivided attention (to focus), and the heart (to feel).
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What a perfect set up for being conference participants! The three sessions I attended were excellent! Even with 35 years of teaching under my belt, I felt inspired and motivated by gems of wisdom and practice shared by the presenters. I enjoyed my interactions with fellow participants and left the conferences knowing it was a morning well spent.
My drive back home included one surprise rain shower along the way, but as I headed off the freeway toward my house, the sky was bluing and the sun was shining. As I stepped out of my car into the driveway I was greeted by tiny yellow suns sprouting right out of the driveway cracks. Dandelions! I couldn’t resist kneeling down to capture their light and glow. Nothing like a bit of sunshine on a rainy day!
I have a love/hate relationship with technology in my teaching life. I love the possibilities that technology offers and hate dealing with the glitches, the learning curve, and the challenges of keeping my students on task with more creative tasks. When I moved to first grade after the pandemic, I left the creative use of technology mostly behind and instead depended on those practice apps as my primary use of technology in the classroom.
I’ve been starting to feel like my students need opportunities to be creators using technology instead of consumers of content that others have made. So with a bit of a nudge from my sister, I started thinking about a digital storytelling project where my students would create Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for things around our campus that were either going well or need more attention.
We spent time earlier this month studying stories and breaking them down to three main parts: the beginning where the context is set, the problem (or the danger as one student described it), and the solution. They took a wonderful wordless story, Flashlight by Lizi Boyd, condensing it to three drawings that told the major story elements. They wrote their own stories based on a character drawing from our fifth grade penpals including those same three story parts. At this point, I was ready to embark on the digital storytelling project.
So…this week we learned about three photography techniques: bird’s eye view (a perspective from above), bug’s eye view (getting low and looking up), and the rule of thirds (where the focal part of the photograph is positioned in a particular third of the frame). We studied some examples and then headed outside to try on these techniques by going on a photography scavenger hunt. The first graders in my class loved this activity and clearly began to understand the three different techniques. While not all the photos are stunning examples of photography, they are gaining experience with the camera on their iPads and making intentional choices about the photographs they take. Here’s a few first grade examples.
The next day we brainstormed things that our school does well and things that need more attention. We know that our school is quite good at composting and that students need reminders to eat their snack and lunch before running onto the playground to play. We ultimately came up with eight different topics. After students listed their top three topics to work on, I put them into teams so they could help each other to tackle the topic selected. Student then drew the three photographs they would take on campus to create a story of change…a public service announcement.
I was nervous this morning. Would they be able to take photos that would work in their PSA stories? Could they use each other as actors in the photos they envisioned? How would they handle the openness of this task? Would they be distracted and tempted to mess around instead of focusing on the photos?
After a little bit of in-class modeling, we all headed out with iPads in hand. I love it when students surprise me with their creativity and focus…and that was definitely what happened today. Students supported each other, posing and directing. They checked their photos to make sure faces were not visible (one of my requirements), and they all got their 3 photos taken. I loved watching the cooperation and teamwork and was thrilled that I didn’t have to referee any problems. I saw students who are often followers in the classroom take the lead in this creative pursuit and shy students step up to let others know exactly what they needed for their photos. When we returned to the classroom, we spent a few minutes back in teams giving each student a chance to show their photos to each other and tell their story based on the photos.
On Monday we will be learning iMovie and transforming these three still photos into a short video PSA, complete with voiceovers. Wish me luck! My fingers are crossed that our photos will turn into wonderful video PSAs!
Last week we returned to school after our two-week winter break. The first graders in my class were eager to talk, telling each other about all the things that had happened while they were apart. Knowing that students would be chatty, I planned lessons that would allow interaction and conversation on our first day back in class.
I’d been thinking about having students craft a collaborative poem for a while now. We’ve been studying poems and writing some of our own all school year, but still, it seemed that the time was ripe for something more. I began our lesson with Kwame Alexander’s delightful picture book, How to Write a Poem, illustrated brilliantly by Melissa Sweet. We read and noticed first, with students intrigued by the use of collage, the lyrical language, and colorful images. Before I began reading, I had asked my students what they knew about metaphorical thinking. What? That was their response. So after reading and talking about the book, we went back through the book so I could point out examples of metaphor…and just about then, my principal walked in. She comes in from time to time, pulls up a chair and sits and listens. She doesn’t interact and her poker face is nearly unreadable. I just went on with the lesson, feeling students pulled in as we talked about words falling from the sky like rain. We imagined ourselves outside, heads tipped, tongues out, ready to catch those words. As we became the metaphors we were studying, we talked about how metaphor lets us use ideas from our imaginations to make our writing become more clear…and more fun! When my principal left, I still had my students full attention as they grappled with this abstract idea of metaphorical thinking.
Now, we needed to try it on for ourselves. I decided on having students create a collaborative poem by having each student contribute one line to a “winter is…” poem. So I asked them, how might you use metaphorical thinking to describe what winter is? The first responses had them leaning back on what they already knew. Winter is cold, winter is when trees lose their leaves. In some ways, this was the perfect next step. We talked about how those are facts about winter…now we needed to think about how to make comparisons that were surprising. When one of my students got to snow was white cotton candy, I knew we were heading in the right direction! I had them try a few “winter is…” lines, and just when they were running out of steam, I pulled out the colorful sticky note sentence strips for each student to write their favorite “winter is…” line on. I could feel the motivation lift and even my most reluctant student eagerly chose a color and started writing his line (although there were none written in the notebook at this point). Once they had written, they stuck their post it on the white board.
I wasn’t quite sure where we were at this point. I let the post its sit over night and pulled them off the next morning with the intention of typing up their lines to form a poem. As I typed I divided the ideas into 3-line stanzas, that seemed to help give the poem shape. I was pleasantly surprised when the ideas seemed to come together into a poem that I felt we could all appreciate.
Winter Is…
Winter is white puffy cotton candy
A time for snowflakes that look like crystals
When snow foxes dig holes to keep their cubs warm
Winter is a cold hug in your heart
The wind at the beach
Time for hot chocolate
Winter is snowflakes blowing
Clouds melting
A freezing tree giving words to my pencil to write down
Winter is a snowflake full of thoughts
A snowflake falling down as fast a rocket
Pine trees covered with snow
Winter is a cold place to relax and slide your pencil to write down your mind
Snow soft and crunchy like people walking on the snow
Full of puffy snow like white cotton candy
Winter is a frozen lake waiting for spring
Holidays in your mind
A snow of thoughts flying through the air
Winter is a chilly place where it snows
Winter is so fun because you can play
Winter is a time for joy!
By Room 3 First Graders
1-8-24
I can see where students were inspired by their classmates and where some students are still not quite there when it comes to moving away from facts as they craft a line about winter, but I am pleased with this as a starting point. And even better, my principal saw me eating lunch on Wednesday and commented on the book and lesson–in a very positive way. She loved that I was introducing metaphorical thinking to first graders.
But honestly, the real payoff started to emerge in small moments as the week went on. My students started to point out metaphorical thinking throughout the school day, and in their own speech. On Tuesday, we returned to the book, Kiyoshi’s Walk by Mark Karlins as we embarked on writing 3-line poems about the cardinals we had created in the style of Charley Harper the day before.
As I read the Haiku in Kiyoshi’s Walk, they pointed out the metaphors…a pile of oranges described as a “hill of orange suns.” Again, not every student is yet ready to employ metaphor effectively…yet, but the seeds are planted. So we wrote 3-line poems on Tuesday (I try not to have these poems be about syllable counts–trying instead to focus on ideas and word choice) and then on Wednesday, I asked students to go back to their poems and improve them by changing a word or two or adding another detail (revision!). Here’s a student who was clearly influenced by Eto’s poem in Kiyoshi’s Walk.
Cardinals
Champ 1964 St. Louis Wins
Cardinals fly to win
Trophy of suns
By J
When J read the poem to me, he pointed out that since trophies are golden, they are shiny like golden suns–something he changed from his first draft the day before. And I know, clearly his mind was on the St. Louis Cardinals (a favorite team) rather than on the bird we crafted the day before. But the win is in the poem–three lines, metaphor, revision…and pride in writing! I’ll take it! Another student wrote this to describe his cardinal.
The Red Cardinal
The red poinsettia feathers
keep me warm
and they fill the forest with love
By F
And there were also more subtle attempts like this.
Flying in the Wind
I see that cardinal
flying in the tree
just like the wind
By O
What I see is students experimenting, playing with ideas, playing with words…and growing as writers and poets (as well as readers and thinkers). I love that something as deceptively simple as reading How to Write a Poem resulted in our writing community learning together, composing together, and risking trying on some new techniques together. I am reminded once again of the power of poetry…so yes, I will continue to say, “More poetry please.”
Thinking Through My Lens 