Tag Archives: #writeout

Seashells and Seeing: #WriteOut in the Classroom

In my first grade classroom, we started #writeout way back in August. Our school garden is a perfect place for observation and writing. By the second week of school we were out in the garden with our clipboards looking closely, sketching carefully, and adding captions as well as considering what the object they were examining (a passion fruit, a ladybug, a yellow cherry tomato) reminded them of. (I start planting that seed of figurative language very early in the school year!). We continue to venture outside, at least monthly, with our sketchbooks in hand, sometimes on a color walk, sometimes in search of questions… You can check out a variety of past explorations through this year’s #WriteOut choice board. Let’s Take a Wonder Walk is my offering.

While sharing information about #WriteOut at a recent San Diego Area Writing Project conference, I overheard someone mention the book, Through Georgia’s Eyes, which reminded me of the powerful connection of Georgia O’Keeffe’s art and close observation in nature. I returned to my classroom, pulled that old favorite picture book out along with another Georgia O’Keeffe picture book, Georgia’s Bones and created a plan for introducing my students to this incredible artist, encouraging close observation, carefully enlarged sketching, and descriptive writing.

We’d been on a Wonder Walk the previous week, using nature collectors to pay attention to small natural items around our schoolyard. Students picked one and sketched it. They were small drawings, nicely done, and the perfect prelude to this introduction to Georgia O’Keeffe and her attention to detail. Knowing I had a bin of seashells stashed in a cabinet in my classroom, I pulled them out and picked out a selection of some of the most interesting–enough that every student would have variety to choose from and varied enough that the shells were mostly different from one another.

After reading Through Georgia’s Eyes, we talked about the way that O’Keeffe loved to make her paintings large, bringing attention to things others might otherwise miss. Students each picked a shell from my collection and studied it carefully. We took out our sketchpads. Students were encouraged to sketch the shell, filling the page with every detail they could. Drawing big is hard for young students, so practicing this technique is important. Then I gave them a larger piece of watercolor paper and a sharpie marker and asked them to draw their shell again, even larger!

The following day, after reading the second picture book about Georgia O’Keeffe, we pulled out the trusty trays of crayola watercolor paints, mixing colors in the lids to capture the details of the shells. They looked carefully again, noticing nuance in coloring and shading, figuring out how to best capture the beauty of their shell. They also painted a background color to help their shell stand out. The results were stunning! (I decided to photograph them with the shell to show how much their study of the shell influenced the paintings.)

I was already excited about the work students were doing. These 6-year-olds were impressive with their attention to detail and care using watercolor paint–which can be unforgiving! My next request of them was something they initially found perplexing. I told them now we were going to paint our shells with words. What?!? I explained that our words were going to be the paint that helped others “see” the shell through our eyes. As is typical, I pulled my writer’s notebook out, took a close look at my teeny tiny shell, and started to think aloud about my shell. I wrote a few sentences, continuing to talk through my decisions. And then it was their turn.

You know that magic is happening when that hush falls over the room. First graders are not quiet writers so I get glimpses of their thinking as they work through words, help each other with spelling, ask questions about sounds, and speak the words they are putting on the page. I also knew something special was happening when no one was “done,” even when we had to stop for our reading groups and lunch. While my students were out of the classroom I walked around the room reading their words. Every single student was truly painting with words!

After lunch I gave students a few minutes to read through their writing and finish what they were working on. Then I pulled out the highlighters (first time this year!). I explained how I wanted them to use the highlighter–but first they had to pick a “golden line,” their favorite idea they had written about their shell. After highlighting we had a whip around where every student read their golden line out loud. My heart was full.

T wrote seriously, using all the time available to describe the shell.

My shell has a swirl in its window. Beige is the color that is the starting color but then white takes over. It has a pattern it goes purple to white. My shell has lines that curve to the end. My shell is very flat. In the inside there is white. If you touch its tip you would get poked on the finger. My shell has some green. It reminds me of a whale tail flaming in the ocean. My shell’s window is by the tip. It reminds me of a bucket of water filled. It’s my favorite shell.

M is an emergent reader and writer, working hard to capture sounds in words. This took effort and great perseverence to produce independently.

My shell has a triangle. My shell has a spiral inside. My shell has a window. My shell has pink.

The Place I Go To

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Sometimes a prompt inspires me. That was my experience when I read Padraig O Tuama’s prompt– the one that arrives in my email inbox each week. After reading a poem by Jane Mead, O Tuama suggested describing a place you go to. I’m a beach goer–and this week offers low-tide walking beaches timed to fit in after I finish work each day. So instead of taking my daily walk around the neighborhood, I’m heading to the beach each afternoon–my favorite beach–to walk and breathe and appreciate this place not far from where I live.

Today I decided to go with a Haibun–that form that allows for some meandering prose followed by Haiku. And while the beach is always enough, it is such a delight when I come across something special. Today it was a wavy turban snail–one of those hearty sea creatures that thrives in the intertidal zone, a harsh place that is exposed during low tide.

The puzzle of tides keeps me guessing as I walk the shoreline. Familiarity interlaced with mystery, each day brings new treasures to discover. Fall, summers’s sister, opens space to breathe, mixes heat with edges of crispy coolness, feet immersed in the translucent turquoise only the sea can offer. This is my place, ordinarily extraordinary.

Wavy turban snail

Snuggled in the low tide pool

Today’s sea treasure

#lightandautumn #wavyturbansnail

#lowtide #writeout #view #light #place #haibun

#writeout for NDOW: Exploring Senses in the Garden

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I picked today…October 20ish…to celebrate the National Day on Writing (NDOW) with my students. And since we are also into #writeout, we combined the two.

We are lucky to have a school garden and while it is not exactly exploding with plant life (yet), it does have some plants growing, some rustic seating, shade (essential on a sunny fall day like today), and hosts bugs and worms and dirt and all the other things kids love.

So, after recess today when I walked my students back to the classroom, I read them the book Outside In by Deborah Underwood. This gorgeous book talks about the wonders of the natural world–and the ways we often do not pay attention to those wonders. It also includes all five senses in wonderfully descriptive and somewhat subtle ways.

I recently had the opportunity to interview author Kate Messner, who is serving as an author ambassador for the National Writing Project’s #writeout, as part of their Write Time series. In response to one of my questions, she talked about the power of the senses to help students (and writers) extend their writing. So before we headed out with our sketchpads to write, I asked my students to pay attention to not only to what they saw, but to all five senses. As we walked we noticed…and once we arrived at the garden, we began to write.

Students listened and sniffed. They rubbed leaves, touched pumpkins, and imagined the taste of fruits and vegetables. And they noticed bugs and birds and spider webs. When they needed inspiration, they moved around the garden and wrote some more.

I love watching my students develop stamina and confidence as writers. There is something freeing and motivating about writing outdoors, writing in a sketchbook, sitting on a stump, and even writing standing up. Writing still takes effort when you are six or seven. Putting all that wonderful thinking onto the page is an opportunity to put phonics into action, exercise those developing fine motor skills, and focus attention for a sustained period of time.

When we returned to the classroom, I asked student to pick their favorite sensory description to read in a classroom whip around. Student were all willing to pick and read their descriptions, creating a symphony of voices celebrating our garden and our community of writers.

Here is the collaborative poem that includes a line from each student in our first grade class.

Senses in the Garden

A National Day on Writing Celebration

I hear a car. It sounds like a dinosaur roaring. Rooaarr!

I see the leaves swirling in the wind going to land on the ground.

I smell the sea by the beach. The waves are blowing in the wind.

Taste is like tasting popcorn.

I hear a june bug buzzing in the sky.

I hear the tip tap of my shoes. I see the reflection of my sparkle skirt.

I hear the birds chirping in the sky.

I see the spiky squash on a stem.

I can hear a hummingbird humming. It was sucking pollen.

I see a passion fruit on the table.

I touched a pumpkin. It was soft and it had a hole in it.

I hear waves crashing on the shore that the surfers ride on.

I can smell oak sap flowing down the bark of the tree.

I can taste blackberries getting eaten by me.

I smell a passion fruit.

I spy with my little eye someone walking by. A game!

I feel a pencil in my hand.

I see a moth fly like a jet.

I hear birds chirping and flying.

I smell the acorns. They are like the seed and the trees.

I see a big pile of dirt.

I hear leaves getting smashed.

I see and feel and hear the garden.

By Room 3 First Graders

10/18/24

How will you and/or your students celebrate the National Day on Writing (and #writeout) on or around October 20th? My students and I would love to see what you do!

#writeout: When Inspiration Strikes

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Many of my afternoons are filled with meetings since writing project work is hard to squish into typical work hours. This afternoon on the National Writing Project (NWP) Connecting the Network Call, as is typical, we had a writing prompt to write our way into the meeting. Since #writeout is now in full swing, our prompt was a poetry in the parks invitation of Lucille Clifton’s The Earth is a Living Thing read by poet laureate Ada Limon.

I don’t love to write on demand–I often feel stumped in that compressed moment, pressured to create in what I already know will be too little time. But today felt different. I loved the structure of Clifton’s poem as each stanza began with “is a…” followed by some action.

My mind began near the sea–a place I love and often find inspiration. And then I found myself in my classroom, inspired by the small children I spend so much time with.

Here’s my first draft written in five minutes at the beginning of this afternoon’s meeting. (And is currently untitled so I’m borrowing Lucille Clifton’s title)

The Earth is a Living Thing: Riffing off Lucille Clifton

is a great blue heron

wings spread

blotting the gray skies

with the wonder of birds

is a child poet

words tumbled

letters scrambled

ideas piercing your heart

is playground balls

in rainbow colors

bouncing, rolling

here, there, everywhere

in the play that is essential

to learning and growth

And of course, I have to add a photo that was also a part of my inspiration.

How will you #writeout today?

Exploring Acorns: A #writeout Adventure

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When life gives you acorns…make art and poetry!

Most weeks I work with my friend and colleague Carol over Zoom since we live in different parts of the state. So when we got to meet in person a few weeks ago, I was delighted to be gifted with a bag of acorns to explore with my students. The acorns where Carol lives are huge…and they have the caps that look like knitted beanies.

So, in honor of #writeout, a collaboration between the National Writing Project and the National Park Service, we got out the acorns and the hand lenses AND our sketchbooks to really study them carefully. We also read two wonderful picture books: Because of an Acorn by Lola Schaefer–a book about the interdependence of the ecosystem where acorns thrive–and Acorn Was a Little Wild by Jen Arena–a fanciful book about an adventurous acorn who after an encounter with a hungry squirrel preparing for winter, ended up as an adventurous oak tree.

And…we had to watch the wonderful video with Ranger McKenzie from Sequoia National Park about how oak trees drop tremendous numbers of acorns every few years…all at the same time in a process called masting, and that scientists have figured out that trees “talk” to each other through their root systems.

All this science and nature provided the perfect foundation for an art project inspired by Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement. Today the first graders in my classroom used scissors, construction paper, oil pastels…and wait for it…white glue to create the most adorable acorn art. Scissor work can be challenging for young learners, and to add to the scissor demand I didn’t provide a template. Instead I showed them how to trim the square of paper into the shape of the acorn nut…and another square of paper into the shape of an acorn cap. A few students expressed frustration, but with some encouragement and insistence that they keep trying, all students were able to cut out acorns and their caps independently.

We added some whimsical texture with oil pastels…and then the most challenging part, they had to use white glue to attach their acorn pieces to the background we had assembled. Trust me, white glue can be downright scary in the hands of young artists! But with admonitions to use the glue sparingly, we were successful!

Of course we had to do some writing. Poetry seemed in order–after all this year’s #writeout theme is Poetry for the Planet and I was wanting to keep it short…so we attempted a first grade version of Haiku–a three line poem (without worrying about the syllable count). Here are a few first grade attempts.

J wrote:

Acorns are hard

cozy as fall nears

Spiny as a hedgehog

O wrote:

Don’t fall yet.

Squirrels will get you.

Crunch!

And R wrote:

Acorns look like a balloon that got blown by a man.

Acorns look like a man with a helmet riding a bike to the store.

Acorns look like a top that someone is spinning on the table.

#Writeout we’re off and running! We’d love to know how all of you are celebrating nature and the outdoors in your classrooms and in your lives!

Let’s Write: Celebrating the National Day on Writing

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It’s October 20th…and that means it’s the National Day on Writing! We started our day by talking about the reasons we write during our morning meeting. It warms my heart that most of my students mentioned either that writing is fun or one of our recent writing activities (writing letters or making zines) as their reasons for writing. I do feel like we are building a wonderful writing community in our first grade classroom. It’s a place to take risks, a place to express ourselves, and a place to build our knowledge and skills related to writing.

So after recess today, I read my students Kiyoshi’s Walk by Mark Karlin. In this lovely story, Kiyoshi is asking his grandpa where poems come from. On each stop along the walk, Eto (Kiyoshi’s grandpa) writes a short three-line poem about something they see, hear, imagine, or feel…each adding to Kiyoshi’s understanding of where poems come from. At the end, Kiyoshi asks his grandfather if he can write a poem…and writes a beautiful three-line composition for his grandfather. While technically the poems in this book are Haiku, I talked about them as three-line poems rather than engage in syllable counts for my students today.

With this as inspiration, we grabbed our sketchbooks and headed out on our own walk, ending up in our school garden where we wrote our own three-line poems inspired by our walk and our time writing in the garden.

These first graders wrote as many three-lines poems as they could during the time we were in the garden. They wrote about the fog that wafted across the playground, the rollie pollies that they love to rescue from the sidewalks, ladybugs, passion fruit, the sky, tomatoes, potatoes, and so much more.

When we returned to the classroom, writers shared a few of their compositions and then picked their favorite to copy onto another sheet of paper and illustrate. While their poems are still developing, they are beginning to get the idea that there are many different reasons and inspirations for writing. Here are a couple:

I See a Butterfly by C

A butterfly flying

In the garden with yellow wings

Pollinating the garden flowers.

The Blowing Fog by M

The fog is blowing

The rollie pollies are crawling

The flowers are blooming.

I also know that being outdoors is a powerful motivation for writing for the first graders I teach. Changing our writing venue, writing in a sketchbook rather than a notebook, and writing under the influence of nature all keep writing fresh and novel. And my writing with them also matters. I hope they are learning that writing is not just for school, but that it is a lifetime pursuit that can serve many different purposes.

And I know that I don’t need #writeout or the National Day on Writing to keep writing at the forefront of the classroom–but it’s fun to know that there are educators all over taking their students outdoors, playfully approaching writing tasks, and making writing something students love…for so many different reasons.

So I leave this post with the NDOW question, Why do you write?

Time to #WriteOut!

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I love October. The weather is warm–it’s still shorts weather. Many of the tourists have gone home, leaving the beaches and the freeways to the locals. My first graders are starting to believe they are writers–and it’s time for #WriteOut! #WriteOut is a partnership between the National Writing Project and the National Park service–a two week effort to encourage everyone to get outside, explore the nature around you, and write.

Last week we warmed up for #WriteOut by going for a Wonder Walk on our school campus. We started by reading the book Wonder Walkers by Micha Archer. This is a wonderful book full of questions like, “Is the wind the world breathing?” that also pushed my students to think beyond the literal, framing their observations through the lens of wonder. After reading and talking, students took their nature collectors (a piece of cardboard with rubber bands around it) and headed out to our pollinator garden to look and wonder and pick up some bits of nature to bring back into the classroom with us.

Later students had to pick just one item from their collection to examine much more closely. To facilitate that close observation, we pulled out our sketchbooks and started drawing, trying hard to capture all the details they could see in front of them. Using colored pencils to hone in on subtleties, they added dimension to their sketches. Then using nature notebooking prompts adapted from the work of John Muir Laws including labeling their sketch, adding what does it remind you of and what do you wonder about it, students completed their entry.

The results were stunning. And a perfect beginning to #WriteOut!

The Magic of Mini-Zines

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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.

#writeout: Because of an Acorn

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When life gives you acorns…turn it into a #writeout inspiration!

On Saturday I found myself at UC Davis meeting with an incredible group of writing project teachers from all over the state as we launched year 2 of our CWP Environmental Literacy and Justice Collaborative. In that space we imagined all the ways to support our students as they learn about the earth and its systems, grow their appreciation of the natural world and resources we share, and use writing to think, to reflect, to question, and to advocate for the world we need and want for ourselves and for our future.

My colleague Carol brought some wonderful acorns she found in her neighborhood as inspiration for a making project…and lucky me, I ended up taking the extras home with me to use in my classroom. These acorns are bigger than the ones I am familiar with…and so beautiful!

And they were perfect for the book I had already borrowed from the library to read this week–Because of an Acorn by Lola Schaefer. After reading and studying this deceptively simple text, we talked about what they noticed in the book. They were quick to notice that it included aspects of life cycles…and they loved the cutouts on the first and last pages. Serendipitously the NWP Write Out newsletter included a link to a video about acorns by a park ranger at the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. My students loved learning more about acorns–and the ways that trees communicate with each other.

Then it was time to pull out our #writeout pencils and notebooks. We took time to look carefully at the acorns and sketch them in detail. Students were encouraged to use numbers and words in addition to their sketch to capture information about their acorn.

After a break for their music class and recess, we returned to our notebooks for some writing. To push students’ thinking, we used the prompts: I noticed…, I wonder…, and It reminds me of to describe the acorn we had studied and sketched. These first graders had no hesitation. They had plenty to write about and were eager to get started! To keep the words flowing, students were encouraged to use their best “kid writing” (or phonetic spelling), prioritizing ideas over correctness.

Best of all, my students are paying attention to the environment and appreciating all that it has to offer. It is my goal that this immersion in nature will lead us toward advocacy as we consider the ways all of us, as community members–young and old(er), can be a catalyst for change to make the world a better place.