Not an Orange story but a Slice story!

Last week, I prepared my students to write their final on-demand personal narrative story as a 3rd grader. We gathered on the carpet first and I reminded them to use all they now know about writing a strong personal narrative to write this piece.

“What will you do?” I asked.

We generated this list that I jotted on the white board.

Then R said, “We should write Not an Orange.”

Confused, I suggested, “Say more.”

“We’ve been saying, ‘write a seed story, not a big watermelon story.’ But we’ve been zooming in to write a slice. So we should say Write a slice, not an orange.”

My confusion cleared. I got it!

And I’m happy to be a part of THIS writing community as I write this slice of life, my slice today of the larger orange story!

 

Inspired by National Gallery of Art Painting

(Also, this is my FIRST post using WORDPRESS!! I made the switch over the weekend!)

Friday I had the pleasure of taking the 3rd graders to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Our school is just on the other side of the Potomac River in Arlington, VA and most of the 107 3rd graders had visited this museum before. But in my opinion, you can never visit an Art Gallery too many times!! Also this was not my first fieldtrip with a school group to the National Gallery but it was the first where the docent let the kids use a laser to point to what they notice in a painting and the first where we could record on a device our favorite images. Both uses of technology added to our engagement and learning!

The title of our docent tour was Every Picture Tells a Story and it was a perfect culmination of all the reading and writing we have done this year as 3^rd graders. In my group, Ms. Janet asked us to identify all the same things we do when we read or write a printed story – setting, character, plot, and theme but this time we did it while sitting in front of amazing works of art. I was very proud of our class. All participated in a lively and deep conversation about how the artist told a story and we looked very beautiful and handsome as we did it! (We had asked the kids to dress up for the trip!)

This week we are researching and also creating the “story” of the picture.

I picked this painting:

As a model for my students, I created these slides:

What fun fieldtrips have YOU taken?? 

What small moment can you write??!!

DigiLit Sunday: Curves

 

This week’s DigiLit topic is CURVES.

Connect to Margaret Simon’s blog Reflections on the Tech to learn more.

To be perfectly honest, when I got a tweet yesterday sharing this word as an invite to join the Sunday conversation, I didn’t think I had anything to say about technology as related to the word CURVES.

In Virginia, there is a woman’s gym called CURVES and as I googled it just now, I see it is a franchise with locations all over. I personally have never been to a Curves gym but one thing I know about it is that you enter, workout in one station, then move to the next station. And once at the end, your workout has targeted all parts of your body.

When I reflected on this gym called CURVES, I do see connections to it and using technology. I personally made it a goal after returning from the Digital and Media Literacy Conference at TCRWP, that I would try ONE technology a week until the end of school. Last week, I tried Todays Meet with my students. This week I asked them to go to KIDDLE to research  science topic. It is a safe visual search engine for kids. Next week, I want to try the GREEN SCREEN at my school. They are going to stand in front of an image of the natural disaster they researched and share as if they are a newscaster on the scene reporting on this “breaking news”. Week by week, as if station by station, I am trying out something in the tech world with my students along for the ride. I guess I am curving my way along a tech path!!

I also think about CURVES as I recall how Colleen Cruz modeled how to teach kids to navigate a website. First, she had us PREVIEW the whole webpage. We saw a video, some text with hyperlinks, ads on the left side. After previewing, she reminded us that now we need to make decisions. Should I read the text first or watch the video? Should I click the hyperlink which takes me to another page to be previewed and then more decisions to be made? She described the inks as like wormholes. Do I click and CURVE my way down to the next page, next page, next page? Does each click help me to understand more about what I set out to learn today OR is the click and curve just a distractor? I’m starting to realize that I need to be an active digital reader who sets a purpose for my reading and then makes a plan to follow a path (sometimes CURVEY!) to reach my goal.

And finally, as I prepare to post my blog reflection as related to CURVES, I will be hitting “SHIFT-2” on my keyboard and a CURVEY a appears —> @ !!

And to think that at first glance, I saw no connection between tech and curves.

Thanks Margaret and the DigiLit community for getting me to think today!!

Celebrating Poetry Writing using Online Poet Websites and Kidblog

Looking back on teaching writing last week in 3rd grade, I see it as a week with not enough time. We had a special science unit to share, led by a resource teacher, so something had to give. Instead of a good 45-60 minutes of Writing Workshop, only about 30 minutes happened. However, looking back, I can celebrate that with wonderful online poetry models and with the tool, Kidblog as a place to easily draft our poems, LOTS still got done during Writing Workshop!!!

First, I placed links to 6 poets in Google Classroom and each day held a 4-7 minute mini-lesson where I simply clicked on one poet’s website and shared one of their poems. Then I suggested that my students try either to draft their own poems now or continue to read more poems, searching for more inspiration. Then I sent all off to work as poets.

Our Google Classroom page looks like this:

For example, on Wed, I shared how Amy reads the Wonderopolis Wondering of the Day and then write and posts a poem related to the wondering (Thank you Educators Collaborative for sharing Amy last Saturday so I could learn about her and her The Poem Farm website!!)

Wednesday night,  I looked on my class Kidblog and saw that Lucas was inspired to write this after he noticed that Amy had written a 26 line poem about Compost, starting each line with the letters A-Z:

and a day later, Lucas’ poem inspired William to begin drafting this:

All because Amy showed us the ABCs of Composting inspired by What is Fertilizer?!!!

On another day, I shared J. Patrick Lewis’ page of POEMS/RIDDLES that looks like this:

Next thing I see on Madeline’s Kidblog page is this:

 

I also shared Kenn Nesbitt’s poem, Joe the Emoji!

My students already have been using emoji to tell their stories and I wrote about it  HERE. 
Now they are having fun writing poems and songs using lots of emoji. My class regularly takes movement breaks using GoNoodle as our guide. Now the songs we move to there are being written in emoji on Kidblog!! Here’s one example:

I recall one of the Poetry presenters during the Saturday Educator’s Collaboration Day say that when she hears teachers say they don’t have time for poetry, she will fire back, “Do you have 20 seconds to read aloud a poem?” Last week, I did not have the time to run a regular hour-long Poetry Writing Workshop. But my students proved to me that just being exposed to a poem, a riddle, or a song for a few minutes was all they needed to write some fun poetry!!

What poetry are YOU sharing TODAY during National Poetry Month?!!

Be sure to make the time! You’ll be amazed at what gets produced.

Celebrating – Connections to Smart Educators

Saturday, I celebrated connecting to smart educators by posting to Ruth Ayer’s Celebration blog. (If you are looking for another place/day to post your writing, I recommend this!!) Today I am posting my expanded revision of this same post! 

Maggie Beatty was my small group staff developer at TCRWP in 2010. I learned so much from her that summer and I stayed connected to her brilliance through #TCRWP and then when Kate and her began their Indent blog.

When they posted asking for real problems writing teachers experience, I thought why not. I’ll send them one or two.

How fun that this week, they posted their first video sharing a practical way to solve a problem by making and using a DIY (do-it-yourself) Literacy toolkit page with a small group or during a conference.

Why so fun?

THEY PICKED MY PROBLEM!!!!!

Take a minute and watch their brilliance HERE!!

Immediately after watching the video, I sent it to many of my literacy teacher friends who wrote back, just as excited as I was!!

 

And then of course, this video inspired me to use my Michael’s coupon  on Sunday to purchase MY TOOLS.

My first page is written!!

Next update – my reflection on using it with students!

I continue to celebrate connecting to smart educators!!!
I can’t wait for the DIY Literacy book to come out.
You can pre-order it HERE

#28 I believe writing is both words and pictures!

At the beginning of the month, I was wondering about emoji. ( HERE and HERE).
A colleague didn’t think kids should use them when writing their kidblog posts. I listened and wondered.

This post that I read yesterday which was typed in ONLY emoji solidified my thinking. I believe writing is both words and pictures! Therefore,  think writing with emoji IS writing.

As I type this, I’m recalling how years ago, some librarians didn’t want graphic novels in their libraries. Again, I wondered. I took time to read one, Smile. I noticed as I read that not only was I enjoying a good story, I actually had to work harder to comprehend this story told mostly through pictures.

Yesterday I cooked a special birthday breakfast for my husband – German Apple Pancakes. I saw this recipe on facebook. It was want I call a video recipe. I had to watch and pause a few times to ensure I was including the right amount of each ingredient. But I loved watching how to combine the ingredients and how to cook it in the cast iron skillet in the oven. It turned out yummy! And I was able to cook it because I could read both words and pictures.

Next month, I am attended TCRWP 2nd Annual Digital and Media Institute. I’m not surprised at all that this literacy think tank now offers an institute devoted to figuring out ways to help teach reading and writing specific to our digital and media world.

From emoji to graphic novels to video recipes, as a reader and writer, I will continue to honor both words and pictures!! Because I believe writing is both words and pictures!

#24 – TIp – Use Elaboration Prompts to Grow Your Big Idea…Take 2

Yesterday, I grew my thinking about being a teacher in a self-contained classroom. Today I plan to repeat this exercise by taking the stance of being a teacher who teaches many classes of students and not all subject, the departmentalization model.

I like the idea of being departmentalized as a classroom teacher. In other words, I like teaching reading and writing. I’m realizing that over the past 8 years, the majority of my time has been spent on getting better at teaching literacy. For example I’ve attended summer institutes and I earned my National Board in Literacy. This is giving me the idea that all that knowledge I have, shouldn’t be limited to helping just one classroom of students. For example by departmentalizing, I could reach more kids using what I know. To add on, I have a ways to go to be an OK math and science teacher. I’m not harming the kids but I’m realizing that I need so much more time spent learning how to teach these subject well. I’m realizing there is only so much time and a better use of it might be to use what I already know well and teach literacy. An example of this was last year. I taught 5th grade writing. I was able to focus just on writing. I planned with the 4th grade teacher and together we pushed each other to teach the writing process through many units of study ending each unit with publishing parties. My 5th graders wrote LOTS and I was proud of what I helped them accomplish. Looking back on this gives me the idea that when a teacher really knows a subject and feels comfortable with it, the teacher can help her students soar. On the other hand, this year I have tried to make math exciting and fun and rigorous. But it is very time consuming. What surprises me about this is that after 23 years as a teacher, I still have so much to learn. For example after all this time, as I look back, so much of my time has already been spent teaching literacy – 6 yr as a K teacher which is a big literacy year, 5 years teaching 4th all subjects, 12 years as a Reading Specialist (all literacy!) and one year as a 5th grade writing teacher… What surprises me as I list the years and my focus is that I shouldn’t be surprised that I still struggle to teach non-literacy subjects. This is giving me the idea that maybe I should push to ask my administration if there is a spot for me to use all I know about literacy and teach just those subjects. Many people think that elementary school is the time to teach the whole kid and those kids deserve one teacher devoted to them. But now I am wondering if the expertise of the teacher shouldn’t also be valued and utilized? To add on, I have loved the flexibility of my self-contained schedule and I have loved knowing one group of kids really well. Yet, I wonder if they would be stronger mathematicians with another and if more of the 3rd graders would be stronger readers and writers if I had the chance to guide more of them. Many people think that classrooms should be self-contained in Elementary school. But I think we should be open to many possibilities and not ignore the strengths of the teachers as we staff a school.

Again, I started this piece with a stance and the writing prompts I talked about in my #23post open on my computer. When my hands stopped typing, I glanced over, picked a prompt, typed it and kept typing. Once finished, I went back and highlighted the prompts used.

Now that I finished yesterday and today’s writing, I clearly see this is an issue with 2 sides!
I can’t wait to see what I’ll be teaching next year, in the next 10 years.

#23 – TIp – Use Elaboration Prompts to Grow Your Big Idea

At the Monday conference in my town, Lucy shares tips for teaching essay. After having us learn the STRUCTURE of essay using her bootcamp strategy to write I love ice cream because…because…and most of all, because …. , she reminded me that to revise essay, elaboration prompts help. I have used elaboration prompts with my writing students and it never fails!! I made this bookmark for my students to hold and use. Feel free to use and/or tweek. The prompts are from the Units of Study for teaching Writing. I vividly remember Kate Roberts teaching me this at a workshop where she bravely had someone in the audience name a big idea and then had the list of prompts projecting from the document camera. She started to write and when she got stuck, we called out a prompt to keep her going. Since seeing that, I have bravely repeated this in my classroom, handing cards with a prompt on it to a handful of kids. And I write in front of them as I jot down the prompts heard and fill in more ideas, elaborating! I can still see a 4th grader I taught 2 years ago smiling at me at the end of the workshop where this was the mini-lesson. “Mrs. Donnelly, I used every prompt on the bookmark,” she said as I looked at her notebook, two pages filled!

Here’s my attempt now to grow a big idea in draft form – Self-contained vs Departmentalized?
(Full disclosure – I am not sure what I’ll be typing here – as I’ve recently taught both and like both for different reasons…)

         As it becomes springtime in a school, teachers start to think about NEXT year. Right now I am teaching all the subjects all day to one group of kids. I call this self-contained. I’m realizing that I like the flexibility. If I want a math lesson to go longer, I can. If I want to squeeze in another read-aloud, I can steal time away from science and make it up tomorrow. An example of this was last Wednesday when we had an author visit. We attended his presentation first thing in the morning. I had math and social studies activities planned. But the author got us excited to read and write. So, I pushed those lessons to the next day and we spent more time reading and writing. I could do this because no one was expecting me to change classes like you do when you departmentalize.  I also only have 23 students and families to know well. I see this being helpful when the parents write me emails asking me questions. With just 23 families, I have easily been able to respond. This is giving me the idea that self-contained is where I should stay. What surprises me about this is that I took a job 2 years ago specifically to be the 5th grade writing teacher. I only had to plan writing and teach it to 4 classes a day. I used to think that only having one subject to worry about as a teacher would be the best. And I did like feeling very prepared in my one subject. But now, I realize some of the cons to being departmentalized. One is you have to teach LOTS of students that one subject and I found it hard to know them all well. To add on, I had to set the timer at the beginning of every class and no matter where we were, when the timer went off, we had to stop. Many people think that being departmentalized sounds easier – only one subject to know so well. But having done it and now also done self-contained, I prefer self-contained. It allows me flexibility with my schedule and time to really know my students. (And I am even getting better at teaching math!)

(Full disclosure – I did not expect to write this much. Proof that these elaboration prompts work!! Once done, I went back and bolded all the prompts I used.)

#22 – Tip – Include what the story is really about.

At the Monday conference I attended in my town on the Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Lucy taught us revision tips – after telling the story bit by bit and using storytelling techniques, she said to ask “What is happening internally with the character (often stated by finishing these sentences: I wonder….I notice…I remember…. )” and ask “What is this story really about?”

My story summary is about the time I spent two Saturdays ago chatting on the phone for three hours to help my oldest prepare for a job interview. Here is my attempt at writing it as a small moment that uses Lucy’s the revision tips:

I picked up my blue iPhone and texted Bridgit by typing “I’m free to chat today.” and I got this text right back, “How about in 20 minutes?” After sending a happy face reply, I grabbed my laptop, my phone and headed upstairs to my bedroom. Up there, I could talk and type on the computer easily. 

After a bit, the phone rang. “Hi mom, I sent you a google doc with the questions.” 

“Great, let me open up that file,” I said set the phone on speaker, freeing up my hands. The document was a list of questions she had received from her recruiter and also another document was her resume. 

“So tell me, why this company?” I asked using one of the questions. And she started to rattle off things that attracted her to this job. And I typed things she said into the document as she talked. When she started to ramble, I asked clarifying questions. Then told her to start over and answer it again and I typed the clearer answer. When she hesitated on an anecdote to use, we brainstormed together and then I asked her again and typed her chosen story. 

Finally, I looked at the phone and it showed a low battery and that we were approaching hour three of this conversation. “I think I better go soon. I hope this helped.” 

As I hung up, I wondered about Bridgit. I would hire her in a heart beat. She is very accomplished for her 27 years. She is smart and has a great work ethic. Any company would be lucky to get her. And one will. As her mom, I just want it to be a company that she is passionate to help and one that treats her well as a valued employee. And one that includes hours off to enjoy things, like visits from her mom on holidays!

#21 – "add the weather…"

I feel very spoiled. Today, just 2 days after being inspired by Lucy and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at their 90th Saturday Reunion, I was invited to a conference 10 minutes from my house to spend the day with Lucy learning about the Units of Study for Teaching Writing. During her presentation, she had us writing. To make this point: Writers get better with explicit instruction, she told us to pick a moment that happened over the weekend and jot it down.

I quickly jotted:
I walked with Fran, Tara and Donna down Broadway to Deluxe. Once there, we sat at a booth and ate and shared all we learned during the day. 

Lucy stopped us and said: “Try this tip – add the weather to mirror the inner emotional state of the character.”

So now that I have a little more time, I wrote this, trying to use the tip to add the weather to mirror my emotional state:

              “Hi, Tara. Hi, Fran! It’s great to see you in person,” I said as I pushed through the crowded Riverside church. “This is my friend, Donna. Do you have time to grab a bite? We’re starving!”

            “That place you mentioned sounded good. Let’s head there,” Fran said and the four of us began to walk slowly down the main aisle of the church, slowly because he were following the herd of a thousand teachers also leaving a busy and tiring day of learning at TCRWP. As we exited, I pulled my coat closed and zipped it up as a cool breeze reminded us that snow was in the forecast. I was next to my friend Donna, while Fran and Tara followed a few steps behind us. Down Broadway we walked.

       As a cold wind kept blowing as we walked, I wondered about having lunch with these two teachers who I don’t really know that well. Would I, who tends to be shy around strangers, have stuff to talk to them about? Then I remembered that I had met Fran last summer twice – to chat at a coffee shop and then again while attending a week-long institute together. We even spent a whole afternoon together at a piano bar (The Carlyle where the walls were painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, the author/illustrator of Madeline) followed by dinner. “You have nothing to worry about,” I reminded myself . “Fran is very easy to talk to. I can ask her about her grandson and about books she has read recently and of course, about the writing challenge we are all doing.” 

     As the wind continued to blow, I thought how crazy it was that I get to eat with Tara today. She is one of the TwoWritingTeachers! She is one of the leaders of my favorite blog which sponsors the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge. I guess I am a bit starstruck by Tara. I love reading her blog posts. She always has strong school reflections and stories. And now I’d be sitting in a restaurant talking with her over a whole meal.

     As I wondered if this lunch idea was a good one, I realized it was too late to change our plan. We were  standing outside of Deluxe. I stepped inside and it felt so warm. I unzipped my coat and a friendly waiter led us to a booth. He even agreed to plug in Tara’s phone so it could charge while we ate. I sat down thinking how lucky I am to spend time with these two ladies. And for the next 45 minutes, we all chatted non-stop, as if we have been close friends for a very long time.

PS – Thanks Lucy for the writing tip!
I do think the explicit instruction made my writing better today!!