Raising Readers and Writers

“Technology is not the driver, it only serves as a facilitator.” (Quote on Twitter today)

Tonight I feel a little bit like a kid at the fair…sights and sounds are whirring by, confusion abounds, excitement mounts, and I don’t know where to focus my attention. It’s a little overwhelming, very exciting, and somewhat daunting. Our teacher book club met tonight to discuss The Digital Writing Workshop. We all agreed that there is so much to think about and how do you know where to start? We are almost finished with the book and I’ve had quite a bit of time to digest the information and let it wander through my thoughts. I feel like I have a little better handle on wikis, blogs, and digital storytelling, but I still have so many questions that can’t be answered until I jump in and try some new things.
Some of the things I am thinking about…
How do I want to use 21st century tools in my classroom?
How do I choose what technologies to use first? I know that I can’t do it all, even though I want to.
What will my students need to know in order to be successful?
How will the use of technology enhance my students’ learning? When is it appropriate to use technology and when is it better to use more traditional methods?
How do I help my students understand all the facets of composition?
How can I use portfolios to illustrate student growth over the school year?
In what areas am I comfortable so that I can support my students’ learning?
Where will I need help from the technology teacher?
Will my students have access to needed equipment?
How can parents be actively involved?

I want my students to use 21st century tools authentically and purposefully. I don’t want to use technology to do the same projects I’ve done in the past. I want my students to be active decision makers in this process.

So where to start? I need to think about my goals for my students, look at the curriculum, and decide how to integrate it all together. My work this summer in the multi-modal class gave me lots of ideas for digital storytelling and I think I’d like to explore a class blog. I’ve been blogging for over a year now and I’m curious about how blogging can support my curriculum.

I’d be interested to hear from others about what they are doing with 21st century tools, useful websites, or how they’ve answered some of the questions I posted above. It’s going to be an interesting year as I journey down this path.

I was going to title this post, “I’ve got to warm up my bump,” but I didn’t know how that would go over! That was a comment made last week at my house where a group of teachers met to discuss Troy Hick’s The Digital Writing Workshop. We’ve been meeting since before school was out and it’s been a great opportunity to talk to others who have the same interests. We are from a variety of elementary schools and grade levels in our district and each of us has a different interest. We were sharing different ideas when someone mentioned a way to transfer pictures using the Bump app. Those of us with smart phones were downloading Bump and sharing pictures, which is when someone made the comment above. Even though there was lots of laughter and silliness at this point, we shared lots of good ideas. Each of us leaves the meetings with more to think about and new ideas to try in our classrooms that we wouldn’t have thought of on our own.

I’ve also been involved in a writing group led by Dr. George Newell this summer. It’s the first time I’ve been in a writing group and I highly recommend it for anyone trying to do any kind of serious writing. We are 4 teachers who taught at the summer youth writing camp and we each had our own agendas for writing. One teacher wrote an article about working with students from a rural school district, another is a new literacy coach who worked on professional development presentations, another was searching for a grant and writing a grant for the first time, and I am working on an article about the Family Oral History project. Again, this group was a mixture of teachers from different grade levels and school districts. I gained so much from this experience. First, we had deadlines, which was very helpful. More important though, was the myriad of ideas that we were able to present to each other. Since we came from different backgrounds, we each had a unique perspective and the feedback was invaluable. Having the expertise of George was an extra bonus. It didn’t matter what any of us was talking about, he was a wealth of information and suggestions for publication ideas.

Closer to home, a group of us from my school are meeting to read and discuss Catching Readers Before they Fall: Supporting Readers who Struggle K – 4. We have representations from kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and Title Reading. What makes this group so nice is that we can talk about the expectations for each grade level, things we’ve tried that work and don’t work so well, and it gives us a foundation to all be using the same language. I am a firm believer that in order for our struggling students to make the most progress, there needs to be strong communication between the classroom teacher and the support personnel. Sometimes, lack of time and busy schedules impede these communication lines, which is frustrating for everyone involved. These summer conversations give us the opportunity to share our beliefs and set some goals for the upcoming school year.

The beauty of these summer groups is that there is time to reflect, think ahead to the new school year, and learn from others you might not see during the school year. I appreciate the input that everyone brings to each group as well as camaraderie that has developed among old and new friends.

“Change is the essence of life.  Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”

I packed up my classroom yesterday, getting ready to make the move from first grade to third grade, with mixed emotions.  I’m excited to be moving into new, yet familiar territory.  Third graders are not so different from fourth graders, with whom I spent 12 years of my life.  I can’t wait to work with some of my students that I had 2 years ago; oh the stories I had with that class!  It was one of those years that if you didn’t laugh, you would cry.

At the same time, I am sad to be saying good-bye to a wonderful team of teachers who have no idea how they impacted me.  Three years ago, I came to a new building, a new staff, and a new grade level wondering what I had gotten myself into.  I had asked for a change, but first grade?  What had I been thinking?  I didn’t know the first thing about teaching young children how to read or how to write.  My passion was helping struggling pre-adolescent readers and now I was going to be in charge of 6 year-olds, some of who didn’t even know all of their letters yet.

Three years of first graders and wonderful colleagues have grounded me in solidifying what I believe to be true about children and  what’s important in education.  I stepped way out of my comfort zone and in the process became more comfortable with who I am as a person and an educator.  I’ve reached goals that I never dreamed possible and I truly believe  working with young learners taught me more than I ever taught them. My first grade colleagues, too, supported me in so many ways and I will miss working with them on a daily basis.  I was very blessed to work with an amazing team last year…Woody who always helps me understand the big picture and  calms me down when I  get on my soapbox;  Anne, who shares so much in common with me…we  finish each other’s sentences, and Heather, a brand new teacher who brought a fresh perspective to our team.  She, like Woody and Anne,  has the special gift of a teacher’s heart.

So, third grade here I come!  More changes are in my future that will take me who knows where:  I have a new group of wonderful women to work with,  my family is hosting a foreign exchange student from India this school year, and I’m taking the first steps in beginning a doctoral program.

Change doesn’t scare me so much anymore.  I know that no matter what, I will learn, I will grow, and I will survive! 

Tomorrow, I will be taking 2 students to OSU so they can talk about their experiences as members of our after school writing club to the Columbus Area Writing Project Summer Institute. One of the main things they will be doing is sharing their glogs: the thinking that went into designing the glog, their choices in writing pieces, and their overall impressions of being able to work with a group of other students who enjoy writing as much as they do. Below are the glogs they will be sharing. You can see that they each tried some different techniques. Sarita used iMovie to embed into her glog. Colin created a collage of photography and recorded his voice reading one of his pieces. It’s sure to be a great afternoon and I can’t wait to take them there!

Windows to the World by Sarita

Strength by Colin

Well, I did not keep up with blogging each night and tomorrow is the last day of our Young Author’s Writing Camp. It’s been a great week! I’m busy making tie-dyed cupcakes for our writing celebration. The kids will spend the first part of the afternoon getting their displays ready, creating before and after posters, and writing some thank you notes. Working with 7 other teachers who love literacy has been wonderful. We each come with different backgrounds from high school to early elementary, public school and private school, but we’ve found that it’s been very seamless to integrate our ideas. And each writer, no matter the age has found something to write about each prompt.

So here’s the recap…Writing journey maps, Who am I as a writer?, “Arti” fiction, 3 kinds of journeys, Nested Meditations (more on this later…I’m intrigued with it), Newspaper blackout poetry (more on this too), J. Patrick Lewis, trip to Franklin Park Conservatory to take photographs and write about inspirations, guest teacher Lisa Sieberling shared ideas on how to integrate writing and photography, Renga (another type of poetry), Inksheds, and Photo Story…with a little glitch…it’s important to save as you go.

I’m anxious to see the kids’ before and after posters. June shared this idea based on Cardboard Testimonies, which you can see here. Our campers will complete one side of their poster with what kind of writer they were before camp and on the flip side, what kind of writer they are now.

I am so thankful that I was able to work with such gifted teachers for the last 2 weeks and such brilliant young writers!

Today, J. Patrick Lewis visited our writing camp to share his experiences. I couldn’t help but think about how lucky our young writers were to get to listen to him in such an intimate setting.  Most impressive is that he treated our campers with the respect given to real writers. It was as if he was speaking to them as writer to writer.  He sure got me thinking about myself both as a writer and a writing teacher.  I ended up taking 4 pages of notes.  Here are just a few of my thoughts on what he said:
In order to be a writer, you need to be a reader.   Check.  I wholeheartedly believe that to be true.   

You have to love words.  The library is the hospital to the mind.  I love this analogy…the library being the hospital to the mind.  I believe that it is my job to immerse my students in words; to help them become curious about, oberservers of, and playful with language.  My goal is to take time to gather these gems in my own notebook. I don’t know how many times I tell myself that I need to remember the certain way an author says something and it’s gone the next day.  Or the times when I’m at a loss for words  and I wish my vocabulary was a little broader.

Make the dictionary and thesaurus your best friend.  What better way to learn more words?  And no, I don’t mean copying definitions out of the dictionary.  When was the last time you did that in your real life?  We need to teach our students in an authentic manner how to use, when to use, and why to use these references.  There are also  many options available on the web that give the same information as the dictionary and a thesaurus.  I think it’s important that we introduce our students to the myriad of possibilities.

Show, don’t tell.  Capture the moment in words, not pictures.  I have a filing cabinet of ideas on ways to teach this to my students.   I have example after example of “showing, not telling” in  other authors’  published work; however, I’m not very good at it in my own writing.  So, one of my goals this summer will be to work on painting a picture with my words when I am writing for myself.

Write every day.  Just like those in sports practice every day, so should writers.  Jane Yolen calls it the BIC method (Butt in Chair).  Pat writes from 6:00 a.m. until 4 or 5:00 in the afternoon every day.  There is a dichotomy between what I teach and what I practice (and yes, I  just used dictionary.com to make sure I used the word dichotomy correctly).  My students write every day because Writing  Workshop time is sacred in my room.  I know that in order for them to become better writers, they need time to experiment, make mistakes, and learn from other writers.  I do not afford myself the same opportunities.  Life starts speeding by and before I know it, a chunk of time has gone by and I have not put pen to paper.  This summer gives me the chance to slow down a bit and focus on my writing.  I am going to make it a priority to have some BIC time each and every day.

These are just a sampling of my notes…I will continue with more of Pat’s thinking tomorrow.  You can learn more about Pat here.

This week is our first week of the Young Authors Writing Project. There are 8 teachers, all of whom participated in the Columbus Area Writing Project, working together to create a wonderful experience for 28 kids ranging in age from 4th grade to 11th grade. I think we are all in heaven working with a group of students who want to be at camp because they love to write. The teachers have partnered up and each duo takes one day to present a lesson. What I love about this is that we are all sharing our ideas with each other and we can adapt them for our own particular grade level. Both the kids and teachers are from around the Columbus area and the teachers have experience at different levels (from early elementary to high school).

On Day 1, Debbie and Sarah launched our summer camp. We read an excerpt from The House on Mango Street and then wrote about our names. After sharing with a partner, we introduced our partner to the rest of the group. It was a great ice breaker. Next, Sarah shared some metaphors about being a writer. Wow! The creativity was flowing after that. Here are some snippets from what the kids wrote…As a writer, I am…

• I am a train fueled by ideas.
• I am an explorer roaming through different worlds. Sometimes I escape, sometimes I am reborn.
• I am a flute, quietly following the director’s baton. I want people to appreciate my tune.
• I am a wholesome meal simmering in the crockpot. Writing ideas warm up in my mind. There are no artificial colors or flavorings. The ordinariness of my words is precisely the point.
• I am a fancy restaurant waitress who serves you the best.

Aren’t these great?  I was trying to scribble these gems furiously as the kids were sharing.

Deb closed with another way to illustrate who we are as writers.  She shared her Writing Journey Map with orange barrels (showing the detours) and all.  As you can see in the pictures below, the kids spread out and went to town.  It was amazing to walk from space to space and just listen to the conversations that were happening.  Everyone depicted in one way or another, the hesitancy in beginning a new piece of writing, the dips and turns that occur throughout the process, and finally, the light at the end of the tunnel.

We end each session with a read around (sometimes large groups, other times small groups) and then ask the kids to write a little note about their experience for that day.  We compile their notes and copy them all together for everyone to read the next day.  It’s what we lovingly call the “Inkshed” in CAWP.

I will be writing more about this amazing experience.  I am in awe each and every day!

Free slideshow generated with Smilebox

We finished our Digital multimodal class on Friday with show and tell. Everyone shared their multimodal digital projects which were a digital response to a poem or song and a personal memoir piece. As what always happens when students are given choice, we had a wide variety of projects. The final projects ranged from humorous, to serious, to sentimental, to political statements. Everyone’s individuality was able to emerge, even though we all had the same assignment. That is one of the reasons I think student choice is so important when we are asking students to complete an assignment. We all learned how to use Photo Story and Audacity, to import pictures, scan images, create transitions, add music and voice overs just to name a few things. Probably more important, was the conversation that we had each morning before we began to work. Creating a metadiscourse, explaining the choices we made and why we made them was very important to the process. This project showed us that we were, in fact, creating another text to show our understanding of the original text. The social context was critical to the success of the project. Not only did we have conversations at the beginning of class about the process, but also conversation abounded during our work time. It was not uncommon to see participants at each other’s work stations trying to help. The tech support was very important too. John, our tech support person, was very patient with all of us and Dr. Newell was there to answer questions as well. I so appreciated Dr. Newell’s approach to this class. It was a true writing workshop atmosphere where we learned together and supported each other along the way.

So here are my projects. First, “I’m Learning to Speak English” by J. Patrick Lewis spoke to me because of my own student population. J. Patrick Lewis is coming to visit at the Young Author’s Writing Camp this week, so I thought I’d look for one of his poems. I was so pleased when I found it here. I chose photos of my kids that I took throughout the year and chose a song with Latino influence.

My second piece, “Summer Gifts” is about a week I spent with my grandma 6 years ago, about 3 months before she died. My grandma was something else! There were many times my grandfather would yell, “Turn that damn radio down” as she cleaned to Meatloaf or Prince blaring from her stereo. All 10 of her grandchildren thought they were her favorite because she made each of us feel that way. I chose “Heaven Can Wait” by Meatloaf as one of the background music pieces. She loved Meatloaf (my cousin took her to their concerts at Blossom Music Center until she was well into her 80s). I decided to show photos of her with only the music playing in the background at the end of my narration because I wanted my audience to focus on her and see the influence she had on my life.

I am already thinking of ways to use this on my classroom next year. I hope you enjoy!!

I’m Learning to Speak English by J. Patrick Lewis

Summer Gifts

I am taking a class at OSU this week called Digital Multimodal Composition with Dr. George Newell, another co-director of the Columbus Area Writing Project. When my daughter asked me what multimodal meant, I gave her a fuzzy answer because I wan’t too sure myself. I’ve come to learn that it is a way of showing meaning that includes text, sound (voice and/or music), and visuals (photos, moving pictures, color, etc.). Our assignment is to do a digital response to a poem and then create a digital memoir piece using Photo Story. I used the poem “I am Learning to Speak English” by J. Patrick Lewis for my digital response and wrote a memoir piece about a week I spent with my grandma the summer of 2004 (about 3 months before she died).

The process that we have gone through has been eye-opening! Each morning, George asks us to write in our learning logs about how our thinking. One of the things we’ve talked about is how our own view of responding to a piece of literature has changed as we go through the process of creating a multimodal piece. There is so much to think about and most of us in the class have gone through the same journey…first being very literal as we found images to represent the piece of writing to becoming more thoughtful and looked at the writing in a more abstract way. Even choosing the music has brought about a myriad of thinking. One man put it beautifully today when he said, “I’ve asked myself if I am illustrating, responding to or reacting to this poem as I’ve been creating my project.”

We all agree that the end product does not show all the thinking and purposeful decisions that go into the final project. I think that tells us something as teachers. First, our students need time to work through the process, make mistakes, and change their minds. I also think that asking students to write about and engage in conversations that describe their process is important. A simple rubric for the final project does not do justice to the student’s work.

These projects have certainly given me a broader view of using technology in the classroom. I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences with the teacher group who is reading The Digital Writing Workshop this summer. I also can’t wait to try some of these ideas in my classroom!

Summer vacation…time to reflect on all the wonderful things that happened in the past school year. One of my favorite events was the Avery Arts Celebration. Our teacher writing group decided to combine the art show with a celebration of all the great writing and musical talent we have in our building. Wanting to reach out and help another group, we agreed to raise money for the earthquake victims of Haiti.

A few weeks before our celebration, we invited Alex Hoops and his friend Jared, two seminary students who were actually in Haiti when the earthquake occurred, to speak to our students. They showed slides from the schools they support as well as homes and other buildings around the area. After talking to my own students and other teachers who shared their class’ reaction, it was evident that these 2 gentlemen had a huge impact on our children. Our students were able to see that there are others in the world who live in difficult situations, but still find joy in life every day.

On the day of the celebration, we had 2 guests. Frank McGarvey, a storyteller told stories from Haiti and Nathan Anders, a faculty member at Capital University, brought a steel pan, as well as some friends to entertain us with Caribbean music. They had the place rocking! The afternoon brought parents to the first grade classrooms to visit as the students shared their pond animal informational books. After that, it was off to Open Mike! Students had the opportunity to read an original piece of writing in front of an audience of students and parents. Several fifth grade students played their instruments in between readings. In addition, the kindergarten teachers worked together to create a fundraiser for the Haiti victims. Families were then invited to visit the displays in the hallways. You can see from the slide show below that we had a wide variety of writing and art hanging in the hallway. It was truly a wonderful afternoon! I have to say kudos to our entire staff for helping it all to come together!

Personalize a free digital slideshow