Raising Readers and Writers

My students and I are so lucky to have a researcher in our room!  Melissa came to me with another idea and I loved it!  We are slowly plodding through the process as neither one of us has done anything like this with first graders (or any kids for that matter) and finding our way as we go.  It’s been very exciting and the best part is coming up.

We are tying the Social Studies standards of learning about  past and present as well as the similarities and differences in how different cultures meet human needs with using 21st century technologies to present information.  I’ve been reading a variety of books about families.  After each story, the students and I have added to our chart entitled Stories are Important to Families.  We listed the kinds of stories we tell in our families.  They include stories about our grandparents or parents when they were little, stories about special celebrations, stories about special places, stories about things that bring back memories, stories about a scary time, etc.

Tomorrow we will construct a list of questions that an interviewer might ask which will be attached to a letter we are sending home.  On Tuesday, we will have a guest speaker who we will interview.  Then the kids will get to practice with the cameras and iPods as they interview each other.

All of our hard work will come to fruition on Wednesday!  We will be sending the children home with either a mini camcorder or an iPod Nano to interview their grandparents or other older relative over the next week and a half.  We will then save each movie, create a DVD for each child and create an iMovie with everyone’s videos that I’ll also upload to my podcast server.  The kids will also do some writing about their interviews that will be combined with their videos for their podcasts.  If I can figure out how to combine these videos with Timeliner, that I’ll add that component too.

My kids have taken quite a journey this year as they’ve learned about informational reading and writing.  I hope that I have given them the foundation that will propel them to always ask questions and search for answers.

Here’s a quick clip of my daughter sharing her memories of a favorite vacation.  I was playing with the RCA Small Wonder camera trying to figure out how to convert the videos into files that could be read on my Macs at school.

As I write this, Jim Brickman is playing in the background and 15 4th and 5th graders are lying around my classroom writing in their writer’s notebooks.  Mondays after school are one of my favorite times of the week.  Today I was reminded of the importance of talk among writers.  It doesn’t matter how old they are.  Writers need time to talk about their ideas, their writing, and their wonderings.

We are working on memoir writing.  I read Patricia MacLachlan’s All the Places to Love and asked the kids to jot down their own special places that came to mind as I read the book.  I reminded them that something in the book might spark a memory of a special place or special person that has nothing to do with the book.  That’s OK!  After I finished reading, some of the kids had lots of things written down and some had only a few things.  I could feel the tension from some of them when they thought that they might not have enough to write about today.

I immediately turned to one of the basic tenets of writing workshop…time to talk.  I asked the kids to share some of the places they wrote down and the stories that went with them.  We heard stories of swing sets turned  giant ships that sailed the ocean which brought to mind the swing set that became a fighter plane in the backyard.  Someone then shared the first time he got to shoot a bow and arrow at his mom’s friend’s house.  The mood in the room visibly relaxed as the ideas started flowing.

So, for now, the room is humming with the busyness of writers putting their words on paper.  This is good!

I just know that our technology teacher loves to get an email from me in her inbox! It usually goes like this…It’s late at night, I’m reading a book or looking at a website and I get an idea that uses technology, but I don’t know how to do it. So, I shoot an email to Kathy and say, “This is what I want to do. When can we meet so that we can plan it out?” She is always more than accommodating. Our latest project is creating an iMovie with my first graders using their personal narratives. I told them that they were the youngest class to create their own iMovies at our school, so they think they are pretty special (which they are!). (Thanks to Troy Hicks and The Digital Writing Workshop for the idea).

Kathy and I met this week to discuss the possibilities for my after school writing group of 4th and 5th graders. It always helps me to talk with Kathy to clarify my thinking. She takes my muddled ideas and shows me how we can make it work. She suggested that we use Glogster as the vehicle for the kids’ project. That way we can embed iMovie, a slide show, Wordle, etc. right into their digital scrapbook. She introduced me to a new site called Classtools.net that has several Web 2.0 applications that we can put into the glog. The animated book looks interesting to me. She also suggested Voki, which allows the user to create a speaking avatar that can also be used in the glog.  The kids won’t do all of these things, but they will be able to look at the different options and decide which ones best meet their purposes.

What I do know is that I want the kids to have choice in their projects. I want them to explore some different genres as well as make choices about the visual and audio components of their piece. So, my homework is to explore these sites and solidify my plans for the final project. I’m not quite sure yet where it will take us, but it’s sure to be exciting!

I’ve been wanting to expand my blogging in some ways and I decided that I would participate in Nonfiction Mondays. I always get so many good ideas from other blogs!

I went to the library today in search of some books on nutrition. Two OSU dietetic students will be visiting us this Thursday to talk about the food pyramid and making healthy food choices, so I wanted to build some background knowledge for the kids. I found several books and one that I liked was The Edible Pyramid: Good Eating Every Day by Loreen Leedy. This book, considered a hybrid informational text was originally published in 1994 as a Reading Rainbow book. It was updated in 2007 to reflect the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s newly redesigned food pyramid. I think my students will enjoy the simple (and sometimes humorous) text and soft, colorful illustrations.

In this book, a cat, dressed in a tuxedo, welcomes all the animals to the grand opening of the Edible Pyramid Restaurant. The frog hopes the flies are fresh and the pelican hopes they have seafood. The pyramid menu helps the customers plan healthy meals. The cat, starting at the left hand side of the pyramid, explains each of the food groups. Lots of examples are given in each food group and the illustrations are luscious looking! I know that some of my kids have not tried some of these foods, so we’ll have fun trying some new things (beets, rye crackers, kiwi, to name a few). I even learned something new. The steps at the side of the pyramid remind us to be active every day. There are many pictures that show ways kids can be active…swimming, hula hooping (is that a word?), biking, skating, and dancing.

I’m looking forward to sharing this book and the others I checked out with my students. We’ll tie math and technology into our study as I ask the kids to keep track of how many fruits and vegetables they eat during a week’s time. We’ll tally their results and create graphs on the computer with the technology teacher. Maybe we’ll even create a podcast about the importance of eating healthy foods.

You can see the round up of other nonfiction books here.

I love giving and getting books!  One of the first things I bought when I found out I was pregnant for my first daughter (who is now 21) was Jim Trelese’s Read Aloud Handbook, Pat the Bunny, and Goodnight Moon.  So, as you can imagine, I love shopping for books for Christmas presents.  Here’s what I’ve chosen…

For my husband…

Cincinnatus:  The Secret Plot to Save America by Rusty McClure and Dave Stern.  My husband used to work for Rusty, so I think it will be fun for him to read.  Next on the list for him is I Alex Cross.  He’s a James Patterson fan.  We both read and enjoyed Three Cups of Tea, so I knew he would like Greg Mortensen’s Stones into Schools.  His last book is How to Photograph Cars.  He had put it into my cart on Amazon thinking I wouldn’t notice.    Well, I did notice, and I knew it was something he would enjoy that I wouldn’t have been able to find myself.  He’s a professional photographer who specializes in seniors and families and wants to begin focusing on photographing seniors and their cars.  I hope this book will give him some ideas.

Next, my 21 year old daughter is a little harder to shop for.  Gone are the days when she would read whatever I bought her.  We read a lot of books together in our mother-daughter book club that ran for 6 years and in that time, she discovered that she liked fantasy.  Fantasy has never been one of my favorite genres, so Molly gives me ideas of books she’d like to have and then I buy them for her.  This year, she asked for Acacia:  The War with Mein.  It received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.  I went ahead and bought her the second book in the series, The Other Lands so she’ll have at least one surprise.

My 16, almost 17 year old son, likes nonfiction and adventure books.  I always say that he’d be fun to take to a cocktail party because he knows a lot of trivia due to all of his reading.  My husband bought him a book about Tim Burton when they visited the MoMa while I was at NCTE.   I also bought him Compound by S. A. Bodeen.  Sally Oddi from Cover to Cover Children’s Bookstore told me about this debut novel back in June.  I always enjoy reading author’s first novels.  They are often the best!  Another starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, it is described as a post-apocalyptic thriller by Boolist.  I know I’m taking a chance, but I think he’ll like it.

My youngest who is 14, is receiving Liar by Justine Larbalestier.  Again, I heard Sally Oddi talk about this book at one of her November booktalks.  The protagonist in this thriller is a compulsive liar who becomes a suspect in her boyfriend’s murder.  After reading Donalyn Miller’s blog, I also bought 13 Reasons Why.  I think she’ll like it.

So, I’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and I hope Santa brings you some books that you will love!

As I began our unit on informational texts, I wanted to make sure the kids had a solid understanding of the difference between fiction and informational texts.  After looking at several examples of non-fiction books and creating a Venn diagram comparing fiction and non-fiction, I gave the students piles of books that included both kids of texts.  I wanted to listen to their thinking and see if they could sort them accordingly.  They did a great job.  They were able to articulate their reasoning for sorting books.  They looked at non-fiction conventions (table of contents, photographs of real things as opposed to illustrations of things that could never happen), the topic of the book, whether or not the book told a story, etc.  I was feeling pretty smug, thinking I had done such a good job of teaching this concept.  (A little like the smugness I felt with my oldest daughter who was really very well behaved.  Then my son came along and reality hit!).

Then…I noticed S. had Me and My Place in Space in the fiction pile.  I had this book in our nonfiction section of the classroom library.  I began to wonder about this misconception.  I decided to bite the bullet and ask him and his partner why they had put this book in the fiction pile.  (Remember, too, that Melissa is in my room video taping the whole conversation for her research…Yikes!  I was hoping that I could carry this off!)  We started to look through the book with the whole class.  As we paged through the text and looked at the pictures, we could see without a doubt that the illustrations lent themselves to “fake fiction.”  A girl wearing a homemade box space suit floats through the solar system.  The drawings looked like those we saw in many fiction stories.  The class was sure that this book was indeed fiction.  But then, I started to read the text.  There were facts about space interspersed among the pages.  We could learn from this book!

We knew we had a dilemma.  What to call it?  I was sitting in my chair with 23 six year-olds watching me as I grappled for the correct term.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember, so I called it a “combination text.”  That term was fine for the time being.  (Melissa later reminded me that the correct name was “hybrid informational text.” )

The next day when we sat down, I told them the correct term.  We talked about how hybrid cars use a combination of gasoline and electricity  and hybrid texts were a  combination of fiction and nonfiction.  My kids now think they are the smartest first graders in the whole world because they know this very important term.  Every time a new adult comes into the room, we have to give them a little quiz.

Hybrid texts was a new term for me as I began this research journey this summer.  I had been calling this type of book literary nonfiction (Katie Wood Ray’s term), until I had a conversation with Barb Kiefer from OSU.  Hybrid texts are those like Steven Jenkins’ books whose main purpose is to convey information, but also contain other features of fiction whose purpose is to entertain.  You can read more about hybrid texts here.

So now, if you’d walk into my room, and picked up a book from the classroom library, you could expect my students to tell you more than you’d ever want to know about the text features and what kind of book it is.  This knowledge has empowered them and given them more confidence in themselves as learners.  They love to share their thinking and are always excited to bring me a new book that they’ve deemed a hybrid text.

Our school is going to participate in the National Day of Writing on October 20th!  In the past, we’ve done things as a building that revolved around reading, but this is the first time we will focusing on writing.  Our district recently purchased new mentor texts for us to use in the classrooms, so we wanted to put them to good use.  Our theme is, “Writers learn from other writers.”  Each class is going to use one of their mentor texts during their writing workshop that day.  Then throughout the day, one class from each grade level will gather in a common area to share their writing with an open mike.  I love the idea that we will have kindergarteners through fifth graders sitting in the same room for the same purpose…to celebrate writing.  I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Writer’s notebooks and pens in hand,  14 teachers and our principal met for our first teacher writing group last week.  As the teachers gathered, an  overwhelming feeling of excitement  came over me.  It was like a family reunion where you get to see all of your favorite people that you haven’t been able to see in awhile.  Seven of the teachers had participated last year, and I was so glad that our community was growing to include more teachers.  I just kind of stepped back and enjoyed the atmosphere, feeling like a proud mom.

Our group is unique in that we are a group of teachers who meet regularly to write together, share our writing, and collaborate in order to better understand the process writers go through.  This understanding helps us better understand how our students feel in our writing classrooms, which in turn, helps us be better teachers of writing.

Dr. Bloome, the director of the Columbus Area Writing Project, led us in our first writing prompt which  was created by Robin Holland, “prompt creator extraordinaire,” from CAWP.   He read from Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, citing the chapter titles and excerpts from a couple of chapters.  Then he asked us to reflect on our teaching lives and imagine we were writing our memoirs.  Our task:  create a list of chapters to form a table of contents, decide on what words would be in the index, and finally, write a chapter to go with one of our chapter titles.

While teachers shared their writing (called a “Read Around”), laughter filled the room when certain titles were read (my first chapter was called, “What to Do…Playboy Bunny or Teacher”), as well as moments of silence as people shared some poignant memories (“Where Creativity is Not to Be Honored”).  Herein lies the magic of our group.   Sharing our writing takes a level of trust.  We put ourselves out there for others to judge our work…Will it be good enough?  What will others think if I share this?  Will someone else’s be better?  I can’t even begin to explain the feeling that enveloped the media center during the read around.  You could feel the bonds begin to grow.  We learned things we didn’t know about the people we work with every day.

Then teachers began to talk about how they felt when they were writing.  They were excited!   They didn’t want to stop!  They were having fun!  This converstion led us to how important it is to develop that envirnoment in our classrooms.  We want our students to know that their voices matter and that writing is one way to be heard.   We want them to develop the life-long habits of writers.

I know this year is going to give us many more opportunities to experience the joys and frustrations of being writers and teachers of writers.    I also know that we will grow in ways we could never imagine.  I am looking forward to every step!

All of us who are teachers know what it’s like right before school starts. We have these crazy dreams where we’ve lost complete control of our classrooms.  I’ve had dreams where I’m standing on the table trying to get everyone to pay attention and chaos is reigning in the room.  Well, last night’s dream was a new one.  I dreamed that my first graders were huge, like high school kids.  One of them had a beard and mustache.  Another one was smoking a cigarette and wouldn’t put it out when I told him to.  None of them fit into the tiny first grade chairs, and of course none of them would listen to directions!! 

I thought it would be fun to share our anxiety filled school dreams.  Share them in the comments section and it will give everyone something to smile about as we get ready to start a new year.  The reality is never as bad as our dreams!

Welcome to Shelly and Lisa and their new blog.  Check them out!  They are sure to have a lot to share about their thinking.