Raising Readers and Writers

I’m supposed to be preparing for our teacher book talk tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait to share these pictures!  Juan, an undergrad student came to visit us yesterday so we could practice asking interview questions before we took the cameras home.  He told some wonderful stories about how his family came to the United States from Mexico.  The kids had lots of questions about what school was like for him in Florida and what kinds of things his mom cooked for him when he was little.  They also wanted to know about what kinds of books he liked to read.  He shared an engaging story about how he liked to pretend he was Curious George and how he loved to climb trees when he was 6 years old!

Next, we divided the kids into small groups so they could learn how to use the iPods and mini-cams.  It was one of those magical moments when all is going well and you know that you are doing something right!  I had enough parent volunteers along with Juan and his friend and Melissa to work with the students.  As they worked, I walked around, listened in to conversations, and took photos and video.  Each child was engaged…deciding on what questions they wanted to ask (We typed up the list the students developed the day before), highlighting those questions, and then learning how to operate the iPod or mini-camera.  Spanish was being spoken fluently at one table, at another table, one of my girls was learning that an interview involves asking the other person questions, not talking about yourself, another group of boys was learning how to change the batteries, and the other table was learning how to hold the camera still and keep the subject in the middle of the frame.

Today was the big launch day!  5 kids giddily walked out the door with either a mini-cam or iPod ready to interview their families this afternoon!  Check out the Smilebox to see all the fun we had yesterday!

Another free digital slideshow by Smilebox

I’ve shared quite a few books with the kids to help build a foundation for our oral history project. The kids were able to come up with a very long list of interview questions based on the books we read.

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco: We can tell stories about things that have been handed down from generation to generation.

White Socks Only by Evelyn Coleman:  We can tell stories about important events that happened “back in the day.”

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco:  We can tell stories about being scared.

Family Pictures, Cuardos de Familia by Carmen Lopez Garza:  We can tell stories about holidays and family traditions.  We can tell stories about cooking with our family.

My Abuelita by Tony Johnston:  We can tell stories about our jobs.

I Love Saturdays y domingos by Alma Flor Ada:  We can tell stories about our cultural heritage.

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco:  We can tell stories about our brothers and sisters.

Each of these books was wonderful in its own way.  They all evoked stories from the kids and there have been many days that the kids have come in with stories from their parents.   The excitement is mounting as “camera day” gets closer.  It’ll be so interesting to see what kinds of stories the kids record and bring back to school.

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.

Do you know any students going into grades 4 through 11 that like to write?  Do they live close to Columbus, Ohio?  If so, I know the perfect opportunity for them!    The Columbus Area Writing Project will be hosting Columbus Young Author’s Summer Writing Camp June 21st to July 2nd.  Teacher consultants from CAWP will be teaching this unique summer camp.  We will be focusing on helping students “find their voices” in writing as they write about a variety of topics in several different genres.  Just as in the writing project, we will be having a daily read around where students can share their work and get feedback from their peers.  In addition, we will be having an author visit and a field trip.

Last year was the first year CAWP held the summer writing camp.  I was not able to participate, but I’m looking forward to teaching this summer.  We had our first planning meeting earlier this week.  There is something extremely powerful about being in the same room with a group of teachers who share the same passion for writing and are working toward the same goals.  We come from a variety of school districts and grade level experiences, so it’s sure to be a great experience for everyone…teachers and students alike!

Have someone in mind who would love this opportunity?  Click here for the flyer and application.  I’d love to hear from you if you pass this information on!

We are now in our third round of research and it’s been very exciting to see my students’ progress!  At this point, my young learners, always asking questions, think nothing of turning to the table of contents to look for information or flip through pages to find something in particular.  They’re learning how to put information in their own words and some have ventured to do internet searches for hard to find information.  After  allowing students to have free choice in their research in December and February, I knew they were  now ready to focus on creating hybrid informational (also called literary nonfiction by Katie Wood Ray) books on pond animals.  Every child has chosen an animal to research, they’ve asked questions, and they’ve read for information.  Their research journals are full of information ready to be put into what we are calling, “Wow!” nonfiction.  I’ve turned to some tried and true mentor texts and a few new ones too…

Atlantic by G. Brian Karas is a hybrid text that gives information about the Atlantic Ocean in first person point of view.  (I am the Atlantic.  I rub shoulders with North America  and bump into Africa.)  The author also put facts about the ocean at the end of the book.

If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer uses the pattern, “If you were born a ________, you would ________.”  This beautifully illustrated book tells about many different baby animals. 

10 Things I Can Do to Help My World by Melanie Walsh is a new one this year.  The kids loved it!  The bright, vibrant acrylic illustrations are very simple, yet effective.  The simple text starts with I and a verb (try, remember,)…with the rest of the sentence being completed on the following page.  Each page is a die cut flap (the shape of  a sink, a light bulb, etc.).  A hint for making simple changes is accompanied by a ecological friendly fact written along the illustration.

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This by Steve Jenkins (I LOVE Steve Jenkins’ books) has a question/answer format about animals’ eyes, tails, noses, ears, etc.  There are facts written around the illustrations as well as a listing of additional facts at the end of the book.

Finally, Zach thought we should add Alan’s book because he had a 5 page spread, so Alan’s book, The Race, is our last mentor text.  You can see the pride in Alan’s face that his book is being used as a mentor text!

The kids are just beginning to make choices about their books.  We’ve practiced using the patterns in Atlantic, If You Were Born a Kitten, and 10 Things You Can Do to Save the World.  This week, the kids will be deciding which pattern they want to use in their books and what other features they want to add to make their writing stand out.  After that, we will create a class podcast about their pond animals.

Seeing the kids’ progress in the research process reinforces my belief in giving children lots of choices and lots of time to practice what they are learning.  Scaffolding students’ learning and encouraging students to take risks allows them to be successful in so many ways!  I am very proud of them!!

I hope you’ll indulge me as I  share a story that just made me smile.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my 4th and 5th grade after school writing club adapted some folk tales and wrote scripts for the drama club, run by our music teacher.  We had an assembly last week where the drama club presented the plays, which was very exciting for my young authors.  They were so proud to see their hard work performed on stage.

After the show, the music teacher stood up and thanked the writing club for their wonderful work.  She explained that adapting stories for the stage was very difficult (a statement that I can attest to!).  She then said, “Will Mrs. Johnson and her writing club please stand up?”  Well, can you guess who stood up with the 4th and 5th graders?  Two thirds of my class stood up to accept the applause from the school!  The best part is that the first one of my kiddos who stood up is a little girl who told me on  the first day of school that she didn’t like school and she didn’t like to write.  If you’d see her in my room today, you’d think she was the president of the first grade writing club (if we had one).

Seeing my first graders stand up like that made my day.  They see themselves as authors and they take great pride in their very serious work!  So, I guess I now have 2 writing clubs…one that meets on Mondays after school and another that meets every day in Room 14 where all kinds of great writing is happening.

The first grade stories are finally uploaded onto the podcast server!  I saw a video clip from Bud Hunt about first grade stories being published digitally.  I immediately went to our building tech teacher and told her I wanted to do the same thing.   She had never used  iMovie with first graders, but she was willing to jump in and make it happen.  This project was huge and it wouldn’t have materialized if it wasn’t for Kathy (the tech teacher) and Betty (the media specialist).  Added to their expertise were 4 other parent volunteers and the ELL teacher, along with me in the classroom with 24 laptops and 24 eager first graders.

Steps we took:

• At the end of our personal narrative genre study, each child published his or her story.
• Kathy and Betty came in and took digital pictures of the kids’ individual books (a photo of each page and the cover). The kids helped with the picture taking by holding their books flat.
• Kathy downloaded the photos onto individual laptops and noted whose photos were on which laptop.
• THE BIG DAY!  Kathy and Betty brought the laptops to my room.  I had asked 4 parents to help with the project (one was a grandma who had never used a computer before), as well as the ELL teacher.
• The students logged in and brought up iMovie.    Kathy had hooked up the Epson machine so she could project one computer on the screen and lead them through the process step by step.
• All the adults worked together to record the students reading their books.  We recorded one page at a time so that it would be easier to line up voice recordings with the photographs.  We had kids and laptops everywhere…in the hall, the ELL teacher’s classroom, and my room.
• Once all the voices were recorded, Kathy showed the kids how to bring their photos into iMovie from iPhoto.  (At this point, the kids had reached their limit and they began to get very antsy.  We decided to stop them here and have the adults sync the voices with the photos.)
• Kathy, Betty, and I finished by lining up the photos and voice recordings.  Everything was saved to my classroom server.
• I uploaded the final iMovies onto the podcast server and you can see them here:  http://video.hboe.org/users/avyjohnsonju/.

This project was very rewarding, but one that couldn’t have been done without the collaboration of several people.  I am very thankful to Kathy, who is always willing to listen to my ideas and help me make them a reality.  Thanks to Betty, who is always available to help out in these big projects, and the ELL teacher who changed her schedule to help us out.  And finally, thanks to my wonderful parent volunteers who stepped out of their comfort zones to help us create this project.

Tomorrow will be the really fun day…showing the kids their wonderful work!

A small group of teachers met yesterday afternoon to talk about Troy Hick’s book, The Digital Writing Workshop.  I love that our group represents teachers from different buildings, different grade levels, and different comfort levels when it comes to using technology in our classrooms. All of us have a love of learning and a love for what we do each and every day in our classrooms.   One of the major topics of conversation was the importance of us, as teachers, taking time to actually explore and try the ideas presented in the book before we ask our students to do it.  We are going to work slowly through the book, giving ourselves permission to play with some new ideas, make mistakes, and learn from each other.  We are fortunate to have two of our district technology teachers be part of our group to help us on our journey.  We are also going to set up a forum where we can ask questions and share ideas online so that we can stay connected between the times we meet face to face.  I am so looking forward to this new study group and broadening my horizons when it comes to using technology with my students.