Tag Archives: making

The Magic of Mini-Zines

There’s something so special about making things. You use your own hands and something that was once a flat blank piece of paper is suddenly something else, something you created.

We’ve been making Zines in my first grade classroom. Our first attempt happened during our Dot Day celebration. We took a piece of printer paper, folded until we had 8 even rectangles, made a single cut…and voila! The paper became a small, multi-paged book. Those first books became our “A Dot Can Be…” zines.

Last week in honor of #writeout, we spent some time in our pollinator garden and basin area of the playground exploring nature’s artifacts. I wrote about our experience with our nature collectors and our wonder walk here. When I left off with that post students were in the process of creating zines about the nature items they collected. What I love most about these mini zines is the agency students feel about creating them. I also like that it allows students to both “write small” and to be literary in their approach. Students who are emerging as writers might create a page that reads, “Spiders Find a Way” with a beautiful drawing of a spider on a web, while more advanced writers can write, “A rock finds a way to scrub against the tree with happiness.” The writing and creating is accessible to everyone in our first grade class. And the zines are truly tiny jewels!

And after a conversation with some colleagues on the Connecting the Network Call with the National Writing Project last week, I took their suggestion and sent blank zines (made by my students) home with students with an invitation to explore on their own at home and to make a zine on their own. (We forgot to take them home on Friday, so they went home on Monday).

And…just like my colleagues suspected, my students were motivated to write at home. Today this lovely book came in:

My student was excited to read it to me…and for me to read it to the class! It was a delightful nature-based fictional story that involved a bug and a centipede. I’m guessing some more student-created zines may show up in the classroom later this week!

I know we’ll keep on making and writing…and making writing, both inside and outside the classroom. I’m excited about the writing community that my classroom is becoming.

Primed for Summer Writing

Bubbles

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With the school year coming to a close, I wanted to come up with an activity for students that felt like play–like a party–and still provide academic content to satisfy my ever-present need to make use of all available instructional minutes. (Yes, even in the last week of school)

So, when I came across a blog post about making giant bubbles and bubble art, I knew I could turn this into a meaningful day of learning and fun…all wrapped up in a soapy bubble! I’m pretty fascinated by bubbles. I’ve spent quite a bit of time photographing giant bubbles at the beach and I’ve written about the “bubble man” a time or two (or more). I know that the trick to great bubbles is the solution–so prior to having my students explore and experiment, my husband and I tried our hand at bubbles over the weekend.

The basis of all bubbles is soap and water. But if you want the bubbles to be big and to have a bit of staying power, a bit of corn syrup and some glycerin need to be added to the mix. Using smoothie straws and yarn, I created a bubble wand that my students would be able to make on their own and started dipping and waving in my own attempt to create bubbles. This bubble thing is harder than it looks! I didn’t immediately get big beautiful bubbles flying from the wand. But with some patience, some tinkering, and some exploration of how to get a thin film filling with air onto my yarn…bubbles happened. At that point, with bubble solution pre-made, I was ready for a day of bubbles with third graders!

We started with a very interesting TED Talk titled, The Fascinating Science of Bubbles, from Soap to Champagne. We learned about surface tension, the geometry of bubbles and so much more. (If I were to do this in the future, I think I might devote an entire week rather than a whole day to bubbles!) Then we made our bubble wands and headed up to the field to make bubbles.

In spite of warning students that making these bubbles would take patience and experimentation, there was plenty of initial whining that “it’s not working!” I reminded them to keep trying. And then it happened…the first child experienced success! Like wildfire, bubbles emerged, filling the air with irridescent spheres.

The soap solution ran out before student interest waned, which is probably the best possible result! We headed back to the classroom with soapy hands, happy hearts and filled with visions and language about bubbles.

These young scientists are also prolific readers and writers, so after studying Valerie Worth’s short poem, Soap Bubbles, we created a list of bubble words and a list of potential bubble metaphors and then set the magic 7-minute writing timer and started writing. Like bubbles, colorful, delicate, evocative poems floated up, emerging from the points of students’ pencils.

Here’s a couple:

To complement the poetry and the elusive, temporary soap bubbles, we got out paper, pencils, water-based markers and some water and created bubbles…as art! Each artist created their own composition, tracing round shapes, adding a space where a light source reflected off each bubble. Then they added marker and finally, using just water and a paint brush, urged the marker to follow the water, creating beautiful dimensional bubbles on watercolor paper.

There is so much more we could have done with bubbles–including exploring the mathematics of spheres. Overall, it was an amazing day. Students could not believe that an entire school day had passed before they even realized it. Engagement was high, work quality was inspiring…it was an amazing last Monday of the school year! Based on this success, I know I will be working some bubble science into future teaching and learning!

Teacher-Writer

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What does it mean to identify as teacher-writer?

I write with my students, I write for my students, I write to understand my students, I write to understand my teaching and my students’ learning. That’s probably the definition of teacher-writer.

Today I experimented with a writing provocation I found in a Teachers and Writers Magazine article. It attracted my attention because it began with doing–actually with a blind contour drawing. I love to have students do something as a provocation for writing–probably because I like to DO as a way to instigate my own writing.

So, following the directions in the article, I used my non-dominant hand to draw my hand, keeping my eyes on my hand and not on the drawing. I tried not to lift my pen, keeping my pen following all the lines and shapes I saw on my hand.

After drawing I opened my notebook and began a list of words evoked by my examination of my hand. then I came up with some metaphors. I thought back to memories about what my hands had touched or done, capturing some of those thoughts in my notebook. I went on to express my gratitude to my hands.

The next step was to write about my hand, using the ideas generated before–or not–for about 7 minutes (my favorite writing time!).

Finally, using a different colored pen, I added words to my blind contour drawing of my hand, creating a collage of sorts. I didn’t directly copy my writing, just added some of the words and phrases I had generated.

Students could go on to write an essay or ode about their hands, having generated a plethora of ideas.

Having tried this writing on as a writer myself helps me identify how it might or might not work for my students. My young students might do better studying their non-dominant hand and using their dominant hand for drawing. I know they will worry about how the drawing might come out–I’ll have to show them some strategies and perhaps do a practice or two before we start for real. We may brainstorm words about their hands as a group before they begin their individual lists. But, I think I’ll try this project with my students. I love the blind contour aspect, the close examination, and the way that careful attention leads to more interesting writing.

What strategies do you use to keep the writerly part of yourself sharp? How do you hone your skills as a teacher-writer? Does anyone know a great picture book that focuses on one body part that is not about hands?

Poetry Teller: NPM #30

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Earlier this week I read a post by a virtual friend, NomadWarMachine, who described her path to transforming the origami fortune teller of our youth into what she called a line of thought-une teller. I immediately knew that this would be a great activity to modify for my students as a culmination of our month of poetry writing.

My idea is to have my students mine their month of poetry, pulling colors, words, and poetic phrases to construct a poetry teller. Once constructed, I see it as a game where partners play the poetry teller to collect a set of words and phrases that they will then use to compose a version of a found poem that includes their words and those of their partner.

I experimented with my own poetry teller, playing this game with myself. I collected two phrases, two colors, and four nouns from my poetry. Then I worked to arrange and rearrange them into a new poem.

You can see my prototype poetry teller and resulting poem below.

I look forward to trying this out with students next week, I hope they find this to be a fun and generative way to look back at their own poems, collect some language from their peers, and have a meaningful activity to remix the two as they create new poetic compositions.

Here is my poetry teller composition:

The Blues

More ancient than a dinosaur

Resilient as a dandelion

Blues ring out

Notes the color of robin’s eggs

Circling me in melodies

With rhythms as ferocious and regal

As the queen of the urban forest

Sounds as soft as butter

Wrapping me in the

Yellow of wildflowers

Tiny suns

The center of the solar system

Matching the pounding of my heart

The beat of my breath

Essential as air

®Douillard

#USvsHate: Going National!

Balancing: SOLC 2019 Day 19

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Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one struggling to balance the demands of work with the pleasures of leisure. More often than not, work wins, creeping into my mind, occupying my thoughts, even when I am sleeping. And I’m lucky, I love my work. It gives me purpose and satisfaction…and a fair share of frustration.

It’s report card time, the time when I most feel the tug threatening my balance. My shoulders start to knot, carrying the unspoken conflicts of the mechanism of reporting student progress. Somehow my students are also feeling the tip too, rocking like those weeble dolls of days gone by, out of sorts and out of focus–just when I need them to be so much more.

Walking on the beach on the weekend, I noticed some other people seeking balance. I watched an engineer/artist drag quite a few rocks over to a large algae covered boulder facing the low tide seas–the perfect canvas for this temporary art. With careful precision each rock was placed, with an eye to both balance and beauty.

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Nearby another person sought to achieve balance of the body. Crouching low and tipping forward, lifting first a toe, testing the raising of each foot until both feet were raised and balance was achieved–if only for a few seconds.

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Instead of planning assessments for tomorrow, my students will be making wire fish sculptures. Using floral wire and buttons, they will bend and crimp, thread and fold until beauty emerges from one long wire. Ultimately, they will create a mobile, seeking to balance their wire fish on a piece of driftwood with the help of fishing line. I’m pretty sure their efforts to create balance and beauty will create an oasis of balance and beauty for me too. I’ll tackle the report cards later.

Playing with Postcards

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It’s CLMOOC time…in fact it’s the break/brake week, meaning that without specific prompts or even general guidelines, I have been thinking about ways to make and connect.

There’s been lots of talk about the postcard project in the CLMOOC community (and by the way, if you haven’t stopped by yet, everyone is invited!) and I’ve been tempted to join the fun to send and receive (through snail mail) postcards to CLMOOC friends. I knew I wanted to incorporate my photography into the process but hadn’t really worked that out yet. And then I saw a post on Teachers Write, a Facebook group focused on getting teachers writing in the summer, where Madelyn Rosenberg offered her version of a quick write called Postcards!

Earlier today I broke down and gave into my impulse to try out Prisma, a photo app that turns your photos into art (some of the effects are really cool!). And then I buckled down and tried on Madelyn Rosenberg’s Postcards quick write strategy. With words and an image, I headed over to Canva to combine the words and images.

On Sunday my husband and I stopped by the beach around 6:30pm for a pre-sunset walk and I was amazed at how many people were in the water…still. I took a photo from above the beach to try to capture the numbers of people in the water.

Combining my words with my photo, here’s my postcard:

And who can resist beautiful, stately palm trees? Of course I have taken many photos of them, so it was fun to transform my photo into something that looks kind of art deco to me (also in Prisma)…here’s my palm tree postcard:

I think the re-imagined photographs and short form writing work well as postcards, so my next step will be to transform these digital postcards into analog postcards to address and slip into the mail…to surprise…someone!

Energize Your Leap Year: February’s Photo-a-Day Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: #Make Art

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Some days finding a photo to take and post is a challenge. Most of the photos I take are “found”–meaning that I don’t stage them other than moving around to get a better angle or to change the light. I seldom arrange things or stage a shot. But yesterday was different.

First, I was thinking about the idea of re-mediation, a concept being explored in the second make cycle of the CLMOOC. My photo-a-day prompt was shadow…and I had just gotten home from a full day at the Summer Institute. As a break from working on my #beachpeople documentary, I grabbed my camera and headed outside to look for a shadow opportunity. Nothing was grabbing my attention–the shadows I noticed seemed ordinary.

That’s when I decided to pick a dandelion puff. As I looked at it I wondered how I might photograph it in a different way. I thought about blowing on it…but couldn’t figure out how to hold it, blow on it, and photograph it at the same time…and where would I get shadow from that? Instead, I started holding the dandelion out to see how it cast its shadow. I tried the sidewalk, the side of the house, my car mirror, and the shiny paint of my car. I had to work to get the focal length of my lens right so some portion of the shot would be crisp. I took a number of shots.

When I headed back inside to study my work, I noticed some interesting images…but I wondered if I might re-mediate them in some way. I rejected my go-to apps and started to explore some that I seldom use. PicsArt caught my eye–could I transform this experiment into something that looked like art…rather than a photograph? (I do think photos are art–but I was looking for something that looked less like a photo and more like a painting or some other kind of art.)

Here’s what I started with–the original, unedited photo.

And here’s the art I made as I re-mediated the image.

I love the resulting image–the crispness of the near dandelion and the echo from the shadow. I might need to print this one and hang it in my house somewhere!

So, make some art! That might mean playing with some new editing apps, staging the perfect scene, or maybe even catching someone else making art like I did on today’s beachwalk! (Love catching #beachpeople in action!)

You can post your photo alone or along with some words: commentary, a story, a poem…maybe even a song! I love to study the photographs that others’ take and think about how I can use a technique, an angle, or their inspiration to try something new in my own photography. (I love a great mentor text…or mentor photo, in this case!)

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #makeart for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

So grab your camera and make some art! You make the rules…and feel free to re-mediate and let your imagination run wild!