There are two of these nailed to the telephone poles on either side of this bridge-like structure near my school. I passed them yesterday without stopping, but today I had to take the time to capture a photograph. They have me wondering and asking questions.
Are they urban art? An advertisement for something? They can definitely work as a writing prompt! What do you think? What story would you tell?
Today marks my 45th blog post. It also marks my shift from a focus on summer work back to my classroom. Tomorrow is my official first day back–a day that will be filled with seeing familiar faces, catching up on summer activities, meetings and more meetings, and working to prepare the classroom and plan for an engaging start to the new school year.
The beginning of the school year always feels hard. Even with 2/3 of our students returning (or maybe in spite of it), we want to set a tone and begin to build community that will set the stage for a year filled with learning. Co-teaching makes it easier…and harder. We have each other to work through our ideas with, and our ideas get examined and turned inside and out as we each consider how that idea might work…or where it might fall flat. We have lofty goals for our first, second, and third graders–and we have to remember that they are still very young, so sometimes we have to temper our own enthusiasm and consider how to help our students build the stamina and resilience to reach (and exceed) the goals we set.
And because our students loop up with us we can’t depend on our favorite activity from last year, or read that book that worked so well with last year’s class. Each year we need a fresh approach to getting started–new books to read, new ideas to get writing started, new ideas for getting to know each other. It’s what I love about teaching a multiage class–and what makes it hard!
So I’m reminding myself to breathe. And to appreciate the little things. When I got home today after a long day in the classroom (I know, my official first day back is tomorrow–but we worked all day today!), I realized I hadn’t taken the time to look for any patterns to photograph. But the plants above the kitchen sink caught my eye…so I took out my macro lens and started noticing. I ended up capturing the centers of a number of plants. Do you see any patterns?
I also spent a little time in the back yard watching Geoff work with the sprinklers. They have been dysfunctional for most of the summer. He dug them up and replaced the parts yesterday and today was adjusting the spray to both cover the yard and not hit the house. There’s something relaxing about spending a bit of time in the yard, feeling the cool evening breeze, and watching the water spray. (We now have fancy rotating sprinkler heads!)
I’m sure that sprinkler pictures are not what readers look for in a blog post–but the act of appreciating the spray of the sprinklers helped me to clear my mind and reframe my thinking. I know we’ll figure out how to get this school year started and I know I will love my new students and I know that my returning students will rise to each new challenge as the school year progresses. As teachers, we also have to remember that we have to build our own stamina and resilience as we reach for our own lofty goals! It has taken stamina and resilience to get to this 45th blog post too. Some days it’s hard to write and I feel like I have nothing of worth to say…and then I breathe, try to focus on and appreciate the little things and dive into the writing. Some days are filled with false starts…but by sticking with it, I always learn something about myself and I hope something that will help my students.
What do you do to refocus when things feel hard and you feel anxious? How do you build your stamina and resilience?
One of my fellow #clmooc-ers, Vanessa Vaile, posted this invitation in the G+ community to remix, hack, create found poetry…and it’s been sitting in the back of my mind, waiting for the opportunity to find its place on my blog.
This morning the twittersphere handed my this poem and it has stayed with me all day, begging me to think about ways to remix and recreate and combine it with my photography.
The World Is in Pencil
BY TODD BOSS
—not pen. It’s gotthat same silkendust about it, doesn’t it,that same sense ofhaving been roughedonto paper evenas it was planned.It had to be a laborof love. It must’vetaken its author sometime, some shove.I’ll bet it felt goodin the hand—the oof the ocean, and
the and and the and
of the land.
Source: Poetry (November 2011).
One of the benefits of blogging is that other people like and follow my blog…and when they do that I often take a glimpse at what they are blogging about–it’s a lot like my experience with the CLMOOC. Yesterday shotwithmyphone.com liked my blog post and I spent some time perusing the photos he posts…all shot with his iPhone (like me!). One of his posts was titled One Shot, Two Ways and is part of a challenge posted here. The challenge invites photographers to take two photos of the same shot–one with a vertical orientation and one with a horizontal orientation and to post them side by side.
Inspired by those ideas (and looking at a few photos) I decided to try a variation on that theme and show two views of the same photo–one original and one with some editing and filters applied. In some ways the editing process I apply to my photos feels a lot like revision in the writing process. It’s the part of the process where I zoom in (or out), crop out distracting details, brighten up the setting, or change the mood. In many cases, revision in writing and editing in photography transforms the end product and helps the reader/viewer see it differently.
Here’s are a couple from my beach walk on Sunday:
And here’s a couple from yesterday’s excursion to the Living Coast Discovery Center:
There are times when I post my photos without editing, but I like experimenting with how to take a photo and work with it to convey the message I have in mind–or one that emerges as I play with it.
What do you think? How does the editing change the way you see the photo? How does it change the message of the image? How does this relate to writing and writing instruction? I’d love to know your thoughts!
I’ve done a couple of recent posts about mentor texts I use in my classroom and recently I noticed a challenge by some other teachers about a Picture Book 10 for 10 Challenge. #pb10for10 Their invitation is to share ten picture books you can’t live without on August 10th. So today is August 10th…and my picture books are all in my classroom.
I had almost abandoned the idea of sharing my picture book favorites since I don’t have easy access to them today. But then I spent the morning with my SDAWP colleagues at UCSD thinking about complex texts–both reading and writing–which led me to think about the ways I use texts in combination in the classroom. So I started thinking about some of favorite picture books for the classroom…and how I often layer books to create more complexity and deeper meaning with my students. These books come from the top of head (with the help of the web to sort out the actual titles and authors)…you don’t get pictures or excerpts…just what I can remember!
I’ll start with a few that I used with my students to examine abstract concepts. Most of them use the idea of color in different and interesting ways.
1. The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor: This book is a gem (like most of the others by this author). I love the way she describes colors using senses other than sight. I wish I had my book handy to include an excerpt! Read it — you won’t be disappointed!
2. The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin: This book, all in black in white, is gorgeous! The use of texture and Braille add a fresh dimension to this book…and reinforces the need to use powerful sensory language in descriptions.
3. The Sound of Colors by Jimmy Liao: This book describes the experience of a blind girl as she travels in the New York subway system. Imagination takes the girl on a powerful journey. What do you experience when you aren’t able to see?
4. The Colors of Us by Karen Katz: This books offers way to describe the colors of our skin in beautiful and appreciative ways.
5. What Does Peace Feel Like? by Vladimir Rudunsky: This book is a collection of similes and metaphors from students describing peace–helping to bring some concreteness to this big and abstract concept.
6. If… by Sarah Perry: This books takes a fanciful journey into the imagination and invites students to imagine if worms had wheels and other fanciful and surrealistic ideas.
And I also love books that are about math and nature. Two more favorites that I used this past year to support my students’ understanding of the Fibonacci sequence and its appearance in the natural world.
7. Wild Fibonacci: Nature’s Secret Code Revealed by Joy N. Hulme: This book explores the appearance of Fibonacci numbers in the natural world–mostly focusing on the spiral.
8. Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman: This book is another look at Fibonacci’s sequence and spirals using spectacular illustrations.
And to round out my ten, two other books I purchased this summer and intend to use with students this year.
9. One Hen by Katie Smith Milway: A book about micro loans and how small investments can make a huge difference in someone’s life.
And one more math and science focused book
10. Dave’s Down-to-Earth Rock Shop by Stuart J. Murphy; This book combines geology and classification as the characters devise new ways to sort and display their rock collection.
I look forward to seeing what picture books other people love. I’m always looking for new books to inspire my students’ thinking and to help them understand complex concepts. I’m especially interested in those hidden treasures that somehow don’t get the attention of the large bookstore chains…and yet have wonderful content, language, and illustrations. What picture books do you love?
Jonathan London is probably best known in children’s book circles as the author of the Froggy books, but he has many wonderful books that are varied in content and well written. I mentioned Dream Weaver a couple of days ago as my contribution to the #113texts Mentor Text Challenge. Today I want to tell you a bit about Condor’s Egg by Jonathan London.
Condor’s Egg is a realistic story about a family of California Condors in the wild. As is typical with London, the language is lyrical and carefully chosen. His use of verbs evokes movement and creates a sense of action. And as an added bonus, there is factual information about California Condors at the end of the book as well as a guide to using the book with children.
During the 2012-13 school year, after reading the book as part of our study of birds, we used a number of sentences from this book as mentor sentences for our students to study and then to replicate with their own content.
Here’s one sentence we studied: Circling, he rides the warm air, higher than the tops of the clouds. This is a tricky construction with the main part of the sentence between the parentheses where extra information is often deposited.
T (a second grader) created this sentence–a close approximation: Roaring, they start their engines, then the drivers shoot off the starting line.
J (another second grader) came up with this one: Building, Steve builds a square house, nice and safe!
Here’s one from a first grader (Okay–I know it’s not fair–this is a talented writer!): Running, she goes through the house as fast as she can, trying to get away from the pretend monster.
And here’s one more second grader: Diving, she is determined to catch it, landing on the dusty floor of the canyon.
We used many sentences from this book and explored creating our own sentences following the pattern of London’s sentences. By doing this my students had opportunities to try out new sentence structures, which later showed up in their own writing.
I was thinking about the Jonathan London titles that I use…here’s a few:
How have you used London’s books? What titles do you like?
If you’ve been reading my blog at all you know that I participated in something called the CLMOOC this summer. The Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaboration was an opportunity to experiment with the principles that underlie Connected Learning. This short video gives some more information or check the link above.
When I originally signed up to participate in the MOOC I thought I would stay on the fringes, read what others posted, and think about how the participants interacted. I knew I would be time challenged, after all I would be facilitating the SDAWP Summer Institute during the bulk of the MOOC. But somehow, I was quickly drawn into action. I used my photo-a-day work as my introduction and posted a couple of photos. Immediately I began to get feedback, comments, and links to others’ work with a similar focus…I was hooked! Then came the #vineoffmonday. I was already playing with Vine and with Instagram video, so it was fun to see what others were doing. I loved Kevin’s invitation to make a seven second story and even though I wasn’t particularly successful, the challenge was valuable–and it’s something I can see having my students try (even if they don’t use a social media platform like Vine to do it).
I’d been thinking about starting a blog for a couple of years…and have had a couple of false starts where I posted once or twice and then never returned. With the CLMOOC community around me, I decided to create a new blog AND to challenge myself to posting 30 days in a row. Remember, this was not a “summer’s off” undertaking–with this community around me, I made my decision to blog right in the middle of the SI I talked about earlier. (And if you know writing projects at all, you know that it is an intense and focused time of meaningful, challenging work–even as a facilitator.)
My blog became my space for “makes.” I explored my photography in a variety of ways, thought about learning and spaces for learning, considered my own classroom and how I might approach my teaching differently, and wrote and wrote and posted and posted…today is my 34th consecutive post!
And…I earned my first badge!
To earn the badge I had to submit one of my makes, reflecting on its significance. I chose my Spaces for Learning post that I wrote in response to an invitation from Terry to respond to a Washington Post article about teachers and teaching.
I am strangely proud of my badge. It represents a summer of exploration and of putting myself “out there.” It has been about writing every day even when I am busy and tired and would rather just hang out or watch some mindless TV. It has been about being public with my learning process and trying things beyond my comfort zone. And I still see lots of spaces for my learning to grow. I definitely have a better understanding of the Connected Learning principles and how they support my own learning and risk taking. I plan to create more spaces for this kind of learning for my students…and for the teachers I come in contact with. It has definitely been a summer of making and connected learning for me…and I don’t want it to stop!
Sometimes it is the simplest books that pack a powerful punch. When I started to consider a recommendation for the #113texts Mentor Text Challenge so many books came to mind. I expect to add more than one!
Dream Weaver by Jonathan London is one of those simple books with beautiful language. The verbs create an orchestra of sound and movement.
A sudden wind, and the trees hum, the branches creak, and Yellow Spider’s web shimmers, like wind across a pond. But she hangs on and you stay with her. The whole world is in these leaves.
Besides the language, there are two other features of the book that I love. One is the way the books uses the space on the page and draws you in close to feel the insect view and then pulls back to give a human perspective. I also love that the back of the book includes facts about spiders. (The fiction/non-fiction mix is one of my favorites!)
This year we used this book as one of several to teach beginnings. Here’s the text of the first page:
Nestled in the soft earth beside the path, you see a little yellow spider.
This beginning takes the reader directly to the “place” in the book. Our students wrote a piece where they highlighted the qualities of our local community–exploring ways to share their opinions with evidence from their own experience. But like most young writers, they are still working to build effective beginnings. So they studied this beginning from Jonathan London and many tried their hand at making this structure work in their own writing. (Nestled did become a favorite word in our class!)
Here’s a couple of examples from students:
“B” , a second grader wrote this opening
Nestled between the blue beach and the desert there’s a small town called Cardiff-by-the Sea
Okay–I’m not sure that the beach and desert are quite close enough to “nestle” this little town, but she definitely got the idea!
“K”, a third grader tried this version where the setting is revealed in a similar way without using the word “nestled.”
A little town called Cardiff lies between two other towns in Southern California: Encinitas and Del Mar.
There are many ways to use this book as a mentor text. I highly recommend it, especially for students in grades K-3. I’d love to know how you’ve used this book (or others like it)!
A friend of mine gave me two books the other day. One I have read all the way through and the other I have browsed through. They are alike…and they are 100% polar opposites. The first, more of a coffee table/picture heavy book is called A Lifetime of Secrets by Frank Warren. Warren invited people to send a secret to him on a postcard or in a letter that he curated as an art installation. They range from unthinkably horrible to silly, yet their arrangement and juxtaposition creates a powerful message. This idea of sending anonymous secrets on the back of postcards is an interesting one–and one, and one that people seem to get relief from the sending…and maybe relief in reading the anonymous secrets of others. Here’s a related website.
The other book is The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha. This is a collection of little things that make people happy…like when you find cash in your coat pocket or the grocery store opens up a new line just when you think the wait is endless. Each is written as short vignette–as short as a sentence or two to as long as a couple of pages. This book also has a related website where people can submit their own awesome moments (in 1000 words or less).
What strikes me about both of these pieces is the way people want to connect–even if it is anonymously. People seem to have an urge to know that those things that burden or delight them also resonate with others, that they are not alone. Like these water lilies I photographed today, tangled connections seem to help us as we live and grow.
So as my thinking often does, I came back to the classroom with my thoughts about these books. So how does the sharing of secrets and the sharing of awesome moments connect to the classroom? I’m thinking about all those little things we do in the classroom to establish a trusting, cooperative, and collaborative community. The ways we work to support each other in spite of our differences. And a lot of that happens through writing–just like it did in these books. Our writing uncovers our lives and lets others in. It exposes our interests and our fears, our hopes and our dreams.
In response to my thinking about establishing a genius hour in the classroom in yesterday’s post, another friend commented about her experience seeing “wondering walls” in classrooms where students wrote down their questions–those things they are wondering about. I’m already thinking about how a wondering wall might serve as an entry place for developing student-generated projects…and for encouraging students to use their classmates wonderings as springboards for their own. Would that be like Postsecrets and The Book of Awesome — a place to connect and learn from each other? A way to develop community and create collective interest as we pursue our individual wonderings? What do you think?
At the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) we are always looking for ways to learn from each and ways to support each others’ learning in our mission to improve writing instruction for the young people in our area. For a while now we’ve been wanting to create a shared resource of mentor texts that teachers love and have used successfully to teach writing in their classrooms. We’ve thrown a bunch of ideas around about how to do that–and nothing has really stuck.
Enter Barb–SDAWP Teacher Consultant and one of the administrators of our SDAWP Voices blog, the collaborative blog we’ve been experimenting with over the last year. In another part of her life she is an artist with fabric–creating beautiful quilt projects–and maintains a sewing focused blog where she also participates in challenges and contests and blog link-ups. Sharing her experience with textile artists and their social media world is helping us at the SDAWP experiment with new ways to build connections…and learning experiences.
So starting today we’re asking people–everyone is invited–to commit to the 113 Mentor Texts by the End of 2013 challenge. Committing means agreeing to add at least one mentor text that you’ve used to teach writing or used to support your own writing that you would recommend to others. There are lots more details on the SDAWP Voices blog here.
So join us…and please share with your friends and colleagues so we can reach our goal of 113 mentor texts by the end of 2013!
Thinking Through My Lens 