Fine Arts Festival

This year my school had a Fine Arts Festival in order to integrate literature, art, music, and dance. Each classroom chose a mentor text and did different projects with the book. My class, of course, was inspired by Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. This is a picture of our display. On the left hand side are pages from our class book “Love That Poetry” where each student wrote and illustrated a “Love That” poem inspired by Walter Dean Myers’ poem “Love That Boy”. The door is decorated to look like the cover of Love That Dog. (A student drew the dog. Isn’t it cute?!) On the right is our “Poet-Tree”. During our unit we talked about different kinds of poems and the students wrote haiku’s on the smaller circles on the tree. I wish I could say I thought of that cute design by myself, but I got the idea from this teacher on Pinterest. In art, the students made clay dogs and wrote little biographies for them. In music they came up with a drum beat and recorder tune to go with “The Tyger” by William Blake which is a poem used in the book. They also came up with an awesome dance and acted out the poem. I’m pretty sure every one of them has the whole poem memorized too! It was loads of fun and I can’t believe how many different directions we went with this book!

Love that…

We are almost done with “Love that Dog” by Sharon Creech. We are going to make a class book of poems “inspired by” Sharon Creech and Walter Dean Myers. Here is the poem a student and I wrote:

Love to learn

like a head loves a hat.

I said we love to learn

like a head loves a hat.

Love to come to school each morning,

love to leave saying,

“I never knew that!”

Poetry (Inspired by Love That Dog)

I’ve veered away from Lucy Calkins for bit to do a mini-unit on poetry. I use Love That Dog by Sharon Creech to inspire us. The main character in the book, Jack, writes in his journal to his teacher, Miss Strechberry, about his feelings on poetry and the poems she reads to the class. I read the poems that Miss Stretchberry reads in the book, we have a discussion, and the students write poems inspired by those they’ve heard. I suppose I should be writing my own poems too!

The first poem is “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

My version:

so much depends

upon

a blue alarm

clock

blaring with irritating

beeps

beside my fluffy

pillow.

 

 

Writer’s Celebration!

The author’s chair was placed in a corner of the carpet. The children gathered in front of it, waiting with anticipation for their chance to sit in it and read their personal narrative to the class. Parents were invited to come, but at 12:30 only one had shown up. But she had the treats, and that was most important.

The classroom ambassador read an introduction, “The students in our room have worked very hard this month writing personal narratives. We focused on zooming in on details to write seed stories instead of watermelon stories. We looked at published author’s introductions and endings and worked on making ours just as strong. Thank you for coming to celebrate with us today. We hope you enjoy our stories!”

And with that, the first student’s name was called. I gave her her story, and with a smile on her face she made her way up to the author’s chair and began to read. The class laughed at the funny parts and applauded when she finished. It was obvious that she felt proud of her writing accomplishments. Another parent entered the room, and then another. The classroom ambassador read his introduction again.

Several more students read their stories, each beaming with excitement.

“I can’t wait to sit in the chair!” one boy whispered to his friend.

“Me neither!” his friend replied.

Several more parents quietly entered the room, each one finding their child and whispering, “Did you read yet? No? Good!” Thumbs up were given.

One by one students read their stories. I was surprised and proud of the way they came up with amazing similes and details, and how they really did zoom in on small moments in time. Writing Workshop was, well, working!

Finally it was time for juice and cookies and students went back to their desks.

“Are you going to be doing this every month?” a parent asked me. “This is really great! I’ll bring treats next time and make sure more parents come! They did a really nice job writing their stories!”

I smiled and agreed. This is why I teach.

Session V: Building Stories Step-by-Step

In this session we show students the difference between commenting about something that happened and telling the event in a step-by-step way to make it into a good story. I will use my example of the whole camp waking me up.

I’ll tell students, “I could just talk about the time the whole camp woke me up, commenting on it: I remember when I was the program director at Camp Jorn and I accidentally overslept. The tradition at camp was that if any staff members were sleeping through flag pole, the whole camp would sneak over to their cabin and wake them up. They did that to me and I was so embarrassed. Luckily my friend made me feel better about my mistake and told me it was okay.”

Now I have to ask myself, what am I really trying to say in this story? In this story I want to show that everyone makes mistakes sometimes and it’s wonderful to have friends who stick by you and make you feel better when you do make mistakes.

I’ll go through the story I wrote, breaking it down by what happened first, second, and third.

Confessions of a Third Grade Cheater

I have never really thought of myself as a good oral story teller. Something to do with timing. But today I really felt like I perfected the story I always tell my students at the beginning of the school year about the time I was in third grade and I cheated on my timed multiplication tests. I suppose it is also a good example of a personal narrative.

When I was in third grade, I tested into the high math class. That meant that I had to go downstairs to Mrs. Nash’s class with all the other smart kids. Memorizing your multiplication facts was a big deal in third grade and Mrs. Nash felt like the best way for us to accomplish this feat was to have us take timed multiplication tests. You know the type. You had one minute to answer about a billion multiplication facts for each number. Once you mastered your “zeros” you went on to the “ones” and then the “twos” and so on. I was doing really well until I got to the sevens. I just couldn’t remember what 7 x 8 was or what 7 x 3 was. Was it the same as 3 x 7? All I knew was I had 15 more seconds to get that answer down! The fact that we were timed made my heart beat fast and my palms sweaty. I hated it. I could figure out the facts, but I did not like to be rushed!

I figured, the best way to rid myself of this anxiety was to just write down the answers on the folder I was using to cover my test so that other kids couldn’t cheat off me! This worked really well for the sevens and for the eights… but then I started to feel a bit guilty. I was a good kid. I never really had gotten in trouble before. I really knew I shouldn’t be cheating. So the night before the nines test, while my parents were watching television in the living room, I confessed.

“Mom… Dad… Um… I… cheated on my multiplication test.”

“You did? You must feel really guilty! You know what we have to do, right? We have to go in before school and you have to tell Mrs. Nash what you’ve done.”

“Okay…”

We got up early the next morning and went in to see Mrs. Nash before school. I confessed my sins again. Mrs. Nash was a reasonable teacher and she came up with a logical consequence. START BACK AT THE ZEROS! Oh no!

I don’t really remember much from the rest of that year (although my palms still get sweaty whenever I have to take a test). I do appreciate the way both my parents and Mrs. Nash handled the cheating in a reasonable, related and respectful way. And for the fact I can use this story to launch a conversation with my students about logical consequences. (They came up with some good ones for themselves!)

Session III – Qualities of Good Writing: Focus, Detail, and Structure

In Session 3, we introduce students to qualities of good personal narrative writing which include, “Write a little seed story; don’t write all about a giant watermelon topic. Zoom in so you tell the most important parts of the story” (Calkins & Martinelli, 2006, p. 29).

We then have students practice identifying the difference between a huge watermelon topic or a little seed story. Here’s my list.

*I could write about time when I was about your age and I broke my arm on the day of my first sleepover birthday party. (seed)

*My trip to England and all the stuff we did. (watermelon)

*What it felt like when I reached the top of Snowdon (the tallest mountain in Wales). (seed)

*Fun times I’ve had watching my cats. (watermelon)

*The drive home after we adopted our cats. (seed)

*My brother. (watermelon)

*When my brother was about 10 and took a walk around Lake Geneva, went too far and no one knew where he was. (seed)

*The year my soccer team lost all of our games. (watermelon)

*My first year teaching. (watermelon)

*The time I made a teepee with a small group of campers in the forest. (seed)