Tag Archives: teaching

Taking Pictures: SOL23 Day 9

In addition to having students observe, sketch, and write under the influence of nature outdoors, I also like to have them use their iPads to take photos. I’ve learned over the years that most students take better photos if I take the time to teach them some photography techniques. So earlier this week I taught my students three photography techniques: bird’s eye view (shooting from above, looking down), bug’s eye view (getting low to achieve a low perspective, sometimes looking up), and using the rule of thirds where they use the grid feature on their camera to frame their subject thoughtfully off the center.

Once I showed them photos of the three techniques and we noticed how the photographer used their camera, we headed outside to try these techniques. The only rule: no photos of people. We were short on time (this has been quite the week), so I asked students to take 2 photos using each technique. We spent about 7 minutes outside taking photos–with me taking photos too. What I love best is that they were actively engaged in trying out the techniques. I had kids laying on their back shooting the underside of plants, kids holding their iPads up high to get that bird’s eye view, and careful framing using the grid lines.

After our reading groups and lunch we came back and took a look at the photos we captured. Each student examined their photos, remembering which technique they used for each photo. I had them pick a favorite and tell us what technique they used and why it was a favorite. Some of the images were stunning! Some were ordinary. But all students felt success–and came up with photos that were intentionally framed and for the most part, did not include their classmates. Here’s the one that resulted from the image I captured above (Thanks L!). Can you guess which technique was used?

Tomorrow we will go on a photography scavenger hunt to give students a chance to put these new skills to use. Wish me luck as we head out to explore and photograph our school campus!

Keeper of Wild Words: SOL23 Day 6

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Today we read The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith. My students were immediately drawn into this story about a grandma (Mimi) and her granddaughter (Brook). Mimi is worried that important “wild” words will disappear if we don’t use them, know them, write them, and care about them. Mimi and Brook have a list of wild words and set off into the outdoors near Mimi’s house to find the words (natural things) on the list. From wrens to dandelions, minnows to drakes, Mimi and Brook identify and appreciate all of the words on the list. In the author’s note at the end, Brooke Smith tells about her inspiration–an article about removing over 100 natural words from a children’s dictionary to make room for words like vandalism and MP3 player.

After we read and talked, we started our own lists of wild words. We had talked about how some people were already being keepers of wild words, noticing one of our students with the name River is keeping a wild word from disappearing. Of course, we had to add River to our list. You might not be surprised to learn that these southern California first graders were quick to add ocean and sunset to their lists of wild words. I had to add egret to my list–my students know I am obsessed with this quirky shore birds with the bright yellow feet.

These young naturalists were inclined to add general words–trees, sky, and clouds, so I encouraged them to be more specific. One student started writing phrases to capture her ideas more fully (she definitely wanted constellations on her list after some sky gazing over the weekend with her family).

Words matter and paying attention to wild words is another way of focusing attention on our natural world. Appreciate for and knowledge of nature and our environment is essential. I’m hopeful that the next generation will reclaim wild knowledge as they work to regenerate the resources that are on the verge of disappearing, just like the wild words Brooke Smith brought to our attention.

Under the Influence: SOL23 Day 1

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This week in my first grade class, we have been learning about Jane Goodall. My students love that, just like they do, she loves animals. I love that they recognize patience is a tool she used in her research, that building relationships takes time and effort–and sometimes that effort means just being present until trust is built. Showing up, paying attention, and caring are key.

Jane Goodall, according to her picture book biography The Watcher by Jeannette Winter, was always curious and a supreme observer from an early age. She watched bugs and chickens, recognizing that careful observation was a rich source of information.

To try on Jane’s observational skills, we headed outside with notebooks and pencils in hand to use our senses in the school pollinator garden (better known by the students as the fairy garden). The directions were simple: find something interesting, watch and notice using all your senses (we acknowledged we wouldn’t be tasting anything before we headed out), make a sketch of whatever you are observing, include writing to add details about what you are noticing.

The synergy of observing under the influence of Jane Goodall and writing outside resulted in a magical writing experience. Students were focused and engaged–there is nothing like watching a formerly struggling writer putting words independently on the page and then asking for more time because he had more to say. And the unexpected, “thank you for teaching me today,” from the high performing student–who had experienced joy writing outdoors. This experience with ordinary nature, the ants, the sticks, the fallen leaves, some lavender, a few bees, the sun on our shoulders and pencils in hand inspired us. We wrote and learned and shared under the influence of Jane Goodall and her indomitable spirit and the magic of being outside, in nature.

Primed for Summer Writing

How to Be a First Grade Poet: NPM22 Day 19

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National Poetry Month is such a perfect excuse to focus classroom reading and writing on poetry. For the last several years I’ve challenged my students to write a poem a day–for every day in the month of April. This year, with first graders and a month that began with Spring Break, I decided to have students write a poem each day they are with me in the classroom.

We warmed up at the end of March with a plunge into defining poetry in poetical terms, creating a collaborative Poetry Is poem as well as individual pieces. (I wrote about that process here.) We’ve explored the schoolyard through our senses and iPad cameras, learning to pay attention. We’ve read books and studied poems and written and written and written.

Yesterday we read The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith and then worked together on a list of wild words that we love. Students added words like waterfall, dragonfly, moonlight, turtle, and dolphin. Words swirled through the classroom as we borrowed from each other, built on ideas from each other, and delighted in the feel of words in our mouth.

Today we built poetry dice. Using a generic fold-a-cube pattern on cardstock, students cut out a flattened cube, wrote their favorite 12 wild words (they made 2 dice), and then folded and taped their finished cubes together. Then came the best part–playing with words and poetry. They rolled their dice, recording the 6 words they rolled in their notebooks. Then they considered those words, how they related (or didn’t) to each other, and wrote poetry. As a teacher of writing, there is nothing more satisfying than watching students transform into confident poets, easily playing with words, experimenting with form and ideas, and bursting to share their poems with me and their classmates.

Here’s a small sampling of poems that emerged from the roll of our student-created poetry dice:

A wolf found a hollow tree.
the wolves sleep at daytime with
very big waves.
A small clown sells big old lemons.

Relax
In spring laying on a Hawaii beach,
watching a cloud float by like
a koala climbing a tree or a
dolphin jumping out of the
water and a coati walking
in a jungle.

Under the sea there was a fish
under a rock
There were a lot of other fish
in the green coral
and the coral was as green as a cactus
and it was as wiggly as a snake.

In the trees, in
middle of nowhere,
there’s a field of poppies.
In the sky there’s an
egret flying overhead
with yellow feet like sticks.
At the beach it’s time for the dolphins to play
in the waves.

And serendipitously, the #verselove prompt over at Ethical ELA was to write a “how to be” poem. Inspired by my students, I wrote mine about them.

How to Be a First Grade Poet
Immerse yourself
in words
from books
and poems
and songs
Open your eyes wide
look carefully
using ALL your senses
Feel the roly polys
under your fingers
Smell the cilantro
from the garden
Hear the hawk
calling as it
swoops above the classroom
Taste the sweet red
strawberries
taking root just
beyond the field
Dance with the words
as they
tumble and roll
calling you to pay attention
Write your world
your thoughts
your feelings
and read them
back with
love and pride
@kd0602

Phew! I can’t wait to see what poetry will emerge tomorrow!

Quirky: NPM22 Day 11

6 Words for the Environment: SOL22 Day 30

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Today, March 30, 2022, marks the date of the Worldwide Teach In for Climate/Justice sponsored by Bard College. That is significant because as a writing project, we have spent time and energy this year looking for ways to implement climate teaching in a writing centric way.

With my young students, my approach to climate/justice teaching is to raise their awareness and appreciation of our planet, the people who live on it, the animals they already love, and also include some study of people making a difference (Jane Goodall came up through Scholastic News–so we inquired a bit further about her and her work) and about actions they can take as 6 and 7 year olds.

I have writing project colleagues who adapted the idea of a 6-word memoir into an opportunity for students to write 6 words for the environment. It seemed a perfect fit for a week of minimum days (to allow for parent conferences) just before Spring Break (which begins after school ends on Friday).

So, after they finished some amazing Poetry Is writing (check yesterday’s post for more details), we started to brainstorm words about the earth, about people and animals who live on the earth, and about actions people might take to protect the earth. They helped me write a few 6 word attempts before I sent them back to the their notebooks to write as many 6-words for the environment as they could in 7 minutes.

Then, they had to select their favorite of the 6-word statements they had written to feature on a mini poster. Some struggled to figure out which of their 6-word pieces to use (“They’re all good!” You’ve gotta love the confidence of first graders!) while others knew just what they wanted to write and draw on their poster. And even with phonetic spelling and some questionable counting of 6 words, they had important messages to share. Here’s a small sampling:

Beautiful plants, beautiful earth, beautiful life

Building time to learn about and think about positive actions to protect our precious planet is essential to our longevity as a species. My students know they can make a difference and they are ready to do their part (and urge others to help out too).

Let’s not give in to doomsday thinking and instead cultivate a love for this incredible planet and everything and everyone who resides here. Together we can make a difference.

Tulips and Poetry: SOL22 Day 29

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As March comes to an end, National Poetry Month is right around the corner. To get a bit of a head start–especially since we begin our Spring Break next week–I decided we needed to immerse ourselves in some poetry this week.

Poetry is nothing new in our class. We study a poem each week and then illustrate it, creating an anthology of poems we’ve worked with during the school year. We’ve written some poems of our own here and there. But the time is right for a deeper dive.

Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer is a perfect book to get started. The first graders loved that the poem Daniel wrote was a compilation of the answers from all the animals that answered Daniel’s question, “What is poetry?” And it set the perfect stage for our own Poetry Is… brainstorm. After a start yesterday, we took this idea further today, stretching out ideas and embellishing them with vivid description. Here’s a few examples:

Poetry is a glass of warm hot chocolate on a cold, snowy winter day.
Poetry is a grasshopper jumping and hopping and bouncing all around the fields.
Poetry is a coconut with the flavor inside and the outside is so hard and thick like a layer of armor.
Poetry is a slippery fish, as beautiful as a butterfly.
Poetry is the sound of my dad snoring.

And somehow, in my mind, poetry and flowers are a perfect pairing. I had purchased some tulips and daffodils from Trader Joes over the weekend, knowing I wanted students to have a close up look at these symbols of spring (that are not commonly found growing around here). Yesterday students used a black oil pastel on watercolor paper to do a directed drawing of tulips in a vase. Today, we used liquid watercolor to create vibrant paintings of these beautiful spring flowers. The results are stunning!

Watercolor paintings drying on the classroom floor.

I plan to matte them along with the “Poetry Is…” writing. And I think I may have each student contribute one line to create a class Poetry Is poem for a poster to hang on our door! After all, National Poetry Month is right around the corner!

Growing Advocates and Activists: SOL22 Day 12

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I love writing project work and the ways that teachers are the driving force behind proactive change. A conversation with a colleague a few years ago–about the need for climate/environmental education to become “ordinary,” something that students experience regularly, in all their classes, throughout their education career–has stuck with me. And as a result, this year in our local writing project, we convened a group of SDAWP educators to explore that very idea with an added twist: how can we make environmental literacy and justice both ordinary and also have writing at its center?

Today was our celebration and the opportunity to hear details about the work that teachers in this group accomplished. Each put together a 5 minute overview of the work, highlighting student engagement and involvement through writing.

Wow! I felt like I could see these young people growing into advocates and activists right before my eyes. They wrote and spoke with passion about our world, recognizing its beauty AND our need to take better care of it for their future. There were letters, informational pieces, persuasive essays, narratives, poems, artwork, speeches and more. I felt my heart grow three sizes just witnessing this incredible work facilitated by my writing project colleagues.

Our next step is to figure out ways to take this work beyond our group, to and beyond our larger writing project community, and to establish this as something students can expect throughout their schooling. The beauty is that these teachers did not take away anything they were required to teach, instead they worked this content into the learning the students were expected to experience anyway.

There will be more to come…

On Saturday: SOL22 Day 5

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It’s so hard to set that alarm clock on Saturday morning, and even harder to get up. Today was the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) Spring Conference, and despite how hard it was to get up, I knew that once I signed on and engaged that I would enjoy the experience. And my colleagues didn’t let me down.

As the SDAWP director, a lot of the work for the conference was already done. But today I still had some responsibilities to get the conference started and I had also agreed to introduce some of my colleagues and their work in the first and second sessions. I’m always nervous when I have to be in charge of Zoom stuff…luckily I was able to make my colleagues co-hosts and they took care of themselves. There were small glitches along the way–one of the Zoom rooms for the concurrent sessions wouldn’t work and we had to move it to another Zoom. But in spite of the technical difficulties, overall, things turn out well.

I so appreciate the SDAWP teachers who stretched themselves to present today. It’s such a hard time for teachers. We are tired and not feeling like our best selves in the classroom. It takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable to share your practice with your peers in a conference setting. Our keynote by Christine reminded the teacher audience about the importance of teachers and their role in our society. She reminded us of Robert Fulghum’s credo All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten from 1990 and shared an update from 2003. We spent a couple of minutes reading the two and noting some of the important concepts like clean up your own mess (seems like some corporations might need this reminder) and don’t take things that aren’t yours (hmmm…some powerful people might need to hear this message again). She ended with some data about what parents say about teachers and their effectiveness during the pandemic (a lot of positive numbers)–some things that are not what we continually hear in our mainstream media. That short keynote session with uplifting messages for teachers set the tone for the three rounds of teacher-led sessions.

I was inspired by beautiful short-form writing (Haiku and 6-word compositions) written by students about nature and protecting the environment, I learned about the ways teachers were finding relevant texts to help their students see themselves and the diversity of voices in our world, I saw examples of students using writing and their voices to influence change in their community, and I walked away with a renewed commitment to the power of education to make a difference in the lives of our students and in our communities.

I was also reminded that the work of teachers will never be done. Sometimes successes are hard to see and some days do not go as we plan or as we would like. Some gains are baby steps, finding a glimmer of hope in students’ early attempts to put new learning into written form. Some wins are obvious–like the teacher sharing her student’s essay about the need to ban “lighter than air” balloons and a news clip of the student speaking at a local city council meeting where after she spoke it was announced that the ban was passed unanimously. But even with that obvious win…you’ll still find balloons on the beach, like I did on my walk after the conference.

I’m glad I got up early this morning and learned with and from my colleagues. I left the conference with more energy than I had when it started, which is good since there is still so much work to be done.