Day 3: Jeanne

What a pleasure to welcome our two guests, Mary and Deirdre, both alumni of the Institute, to join us for the morning.

Andra presented the blog review, sharing our Tuesday activities in a fun, informal voice. Thank you! Thanks, also, for saying that you researched blogs and looked at models to help with the blog. It’s nice to know this all doesn’t just come naturally, as we all prepare to tackle the blog-write on our own, now. (Plus, the blog handout & schedule will help us, too!)

Thanks to Amy S. for encouraging Nancy to read her funny, alliterative “how I learned a skill” piece on kissing. Loved it!

"I remember the time..." Warm-up: Andra

* Write about something unusual, strange, wouldn’t normally happen, surprising…

* Brainstorm first (4 minutes)

* Choose 5 ideas and circle them. Then rewrite each in an explanatory sentence, not sharing with anyone until this afternoon. <Flashy thingy from MIB> We kept our topics under wraps for a few hours and continue with the air of secrecy!

“Rich and scrumptious” Demo Lesson: Mary  Palmer Nowland

Wow! Did we all enjoy this, or what? I know I was coming with a sense of writing poverty (a la quote from Natalie Goldberg), but was enriched by Mary’s ideas and teaching.

Her 3 pieces of the lesson:

1.     Collect words and phrases from rich, descriptive writing

2.     Look at pictures, notice and collect

3.     Private Eye Adventures (The Private Eye by Kerry Ruef)

My top 10 take-away ideas:

1. Reading and writing should go together. Writing notebooks are open during reading, and reading notebooks are open during writing.

2. Notice how authors put words/notions together that don’t normally belong. Mimic & practice. Jot these down; collect them! Underline in your book or make a list. “Grinning like summer.” “A prairie fire of pain.” See handout for samples from Mary’s authors of choice.

3.  Write like this yourself. Change nouns to verbs, put colors where they don’t belong, smell things that can’t be smelled.

4.  Joan Dunning, Secrets of the Nest … barn owl description. Teach kids to push the pause button and insert this much descriptive richness, then keep writing.       

5. Use all the senses to describe: taste blackberries (we still want the copy of that poem); touch & smell items from nature; look at pictures for detail (like the frog); hear dialogue from a photo.

6. Model writing for students, but don’t overdo. Make your samples accessible to your students, not toooo creative. Making a list is a non-threatening start for students of all abilities.

7. Collect photos: garden, nature, boots & shoes, dialogue…. Use them for a myriad of writing prompts. Figure out the best way for you to store and organize them.

8.  For youngers, label the photos with sticky-note words to get them started. (See photo below.)

9. Use Private Eye adventures with a magnifying device and items from nature. This promotes students’ writing in looking and questioning, relating and wondering, saying, “Holy Toledo, look at that!” Examine for color, texture, smell, sound. Teaches analogy, simile, metaphor, description. (Get magnifying devices at Harbor Freight on the cheap.)

10.  All kids need to contribute or deposit in their word bank so they have plenty to draw from when they write.

"Make Professional Goal Setting Work for You!" 
Demo Lesson: Deirdre Pearson 

Those SLGs and PPGs are part of being a teacher…so find ways of integrating them into your job as a writing teacher. Make them work for you instead of just being a hoop to jump through.

Deirdre’s PowerPoint presentation took us through the nuts and bolts of Common Core and goal setting, pointing out some benefits of being an English/Language Arts (ELA) teacher in this process:

            *We can support other content area teachers who have to include and assess writing as part of their standards. We can help them see “they’ve already been doing this” in lab reports and requiring sentences to start with capitals. We can encourage.

            * We have the advantage of the wave approach. Since ELA topics keep coming up and can be revisited throughout the year, students have multiple opportunities to show growth.

Deirdre and Andra shared their goal setting successes and misses, inspiring us to take 10 minutes of writing time to consider our personal goals for this year…getting those thoughts down now!

After lunch…

Andra: Continuation of “I Remember the Time” activity
We split into our response groups to choose a sentence to spark a story. An air of mystery surrounds this!

Benefits of this activity in our classrooms:

* Helping students write narratives without over-facilitating

* Opportunities for mini-lessons: detail, plot development, show vs. tell, believability in fiction

* Hands off to let response groups do their work: the collaborative nature of real, authentic response

We all benefitted from extended writing time and response group feedback, both for the "I Remember" piece or other projects.

Wrap-up:

Due Monday:

            1) Narrative. No need to post to Moodle, but bring a hard copy to read.

            2) A completed & readable copy of the “I remember the time...” writing.

What are you thinking about for a possible Demo Lesson? A Script… (with apologies for misquotations…)

[Hand back initial ideas from the orientation meeting in June]

ANDRA: What problem or issue are you grappling with that will make a good demo lesson for yourself and the rest of us? Do we need peer-coaching tomorrow?

CARRIE: Can we brainstorm so we don’t overlap topics?

CINDY: Should I do the 6-word essay idea because it’s comfortable for me? Or should I do engaging reluctant writers or revising for conventions because those are areas I’m concerned about?

MARGARET: What were the things in the 6-word essay that you were teaching?

ANDRA: Check Common Core, how can the lesson be buffed up?

CARRIE: The “If I Were in Charge of the World” poem is tried and true, but I feel the need to work on argumentative, since it’s out of my comfort zone.

ANDRA: How could you take “If I Were in Charge…” and give it the argument angle? Buff it up.

HEATHER: I want to do something with song and poetry circles…emotion cards… picture/song connecting writing…writing about a character based on song lyrics or a poem...

ANDRA: I hear reading/literacy connections, some grammar standards. Sift through and see what percolates.

SASHA: I would like to do activities for building community and a sense of environment in the classroom, so students feel safe before they even begin writing, so they will take risks. I like the idea of collecting as part of the process.

ANDRA: So one overall theme with several strategies that will build community, like Mary’s lesson.

JOHN: I felt successful in writing today and getting to know myself as a writer again. Maybe I will make a model lesson that’s creative, like ballad poetry, instead of argumentative or research writing.

AMY S.: [TO JOHN] What about primary vs. secondary sources, even in poetry? I want to hear that lesson!

[Fade out to general announcements]

Poetry presenters are coming!!!

Pre-Assessment homework. Oops! Pretend this is you on Monday and bring it tomorrow.