Nestled between Margaret's request for T-shirt quote candidates and a reminder about the "OWP Literacy Leadership Institute's" overall requirements; Nancy presented yesterday's happenings in her usual elegant and amusing style...such a way with words... "She's got a way about her!" Nancy reminded us of key points from the "genre" lesson including a chart outline. She concluded with "Writing is messy and
learning the writing process is pretty dang helpful!"
Also during our morning, we were reminded to turn in our revised narrative and to continue working on an informational, argument and prose piece through the duration of the institute. When Amy W. inquired about length, Andra answered, "Say what you need to say". This seemed to be a theme of the day, as we continued to ask ourselves, "Does it work?" about a piece of writing. If it does, it's finished.
Carrie, with her wonderful way of tuning in to what kids really need, began her warmup with the rationale of students needing to learn how to think more logically. More specifically, her activity aimed to "teach students to write a coherent, logical paragraph that expresses a claim using relevant data, and then to be able to interpret that data." Carrie's way of illustrating how we can "Teach our children well" included a charting
exercise of our favorite activities. With a partner, we wrote verbs on post-it notes describing things we enjoy doing and placed them in the appropriate categories on an outline that Carrie had prepared. We then came up with a title as a group based on the activity ("Our Class Interests") and discussed "what trends we saw" at Carrie's prompting. We noticed we are a musical, earthy bunch as many of us chose musical or outdoor activities.
A couple of good points were brought to our attention. For example, Amy S. : "The same person sometimes posted multiple times in one category" (skews mathematical results) and Jeanne brought up that our "favorite activities" are often weather related so the trends and findings could be different throughout the year...."Seasons change and so do I...you need not ask me why". Cindy added "It's great that students are asked to look at evidence based on what the class as a whole feels (not just inferring) and John remarked that it "offers kids a way to play with data."
Carrie reminded us that it's important to try things ourselves as teachers before asking our students to do it. This is, understandably an important and recurring theme, as we are learning to write more and better ourselves so we can improve our teaching of it.
The baton was then passed to Andra who led us into a time for working on an informational piece. "Help, I need somebody!" Many of us were not feeling ready for this at first, but with a couple of examples and more information, the peaceful refrain of "the answer my friend is blowin' in the wind" began to weave itself into the room and we soon settled in to write, our questions replaced by taps on keyboards and ink on paper.
The break was filled with conversation and snacking...enjoying the cheese and shootin' the breeze....
Back to work! Andra channeled Richard Simmons and had us up on our feet to tackle revising! After journaling our personal reflections and experiences with revising, we got a real workout through practicing specific revising strategies. Afterall, "There's no great writing, only great re-writing"-Justice Brandeis. Andra had "all the right moves" as we danced through Add, Remove, Move, Substitute. Some of the key points of these strategies are re-reading to see if we need to add any more supporting details, remove unnecessary information that the reader already knows, and looking at possible substitutions (i.e. moving "chunks" or paragraphs into a different order). Cutting these "chunks" into separate pieces and taping them in various ways helped us play with new possibilities for order. "Shake it up...ooh hoo. Chunk it up!" Andra reminded us that writing is like soccer in that we don't usually just kick the ball as hard as we can. We get the ball to its goal with smaller moves..." we need to think of this as we work our way to our conclusion with supporting details that work.
Continuing our journey of embellishment and refining, Andra treated us to a colorful exploration of verbs. With wonderful examples such as "spits out sparks" and "saw is bitter-tooth after tooth" from Andrew Clements' "Workshop" book; we went on to replace passive verbs like "is" and "was" with more exciting, active ones. We also had fun filling in the blanks of sentences such as "The light ____________ in the window." Though some of us chose verbs like "winked" or "flickered" for this, all lights were on, ready to absorb more...."This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!"
After getting a helpful handout on "managing writing/workshop load", we launched into discussion about our upcoming demo. lessons. Margaret reminded us of some of the key concepts including: *is adaptable across contexts (grade levels, etc..) *includes opps. for us to "do"/write *allow time for responses and feedback *has ties to common core standards *90 minutes at most
Margaret also reminded us that we don't have to "reinvent the wheel". We can borrow ideas from other lessons and revise. Before lunch we also had the opportunity to talk with a partner about our ideas for our
lessons, which was very helpful and rich. "I get by with a little help from my friends!"
Many stayed in the classroom during lunch and the room was buzzing with good-natured comaraderie and enthusiasm as many chatted and ate together. Wisdom from Don Murray in chapter 10 page 103: "...Many teachers complain that their students can't write sentences. Too early. Following form, forgetting meaning." He went on to provide a rationale for poetry, that the "chunks" (there's that word again!) are often chalkful of meaning and can bring about the real essence of what wants to be conveyed without being overly concerned about grammar....poetry as "premature births" but births and alive. This was later elaborated on beautifully through our guest presenter Rick Taylor's demo lesson:
some kind, and this is the same with writing. Rick shared that he loves teaching poetry because "everything you need is right there." He elaborated with "Poets write about everything, including insights about life" and that poetry is expository in nature as they are still explaining an idea, only in a poetic fashion. Rick went on to show us examples of gorgeous, inspiring poems and showed how each could be broken into essay or expository writing parts (intro., body, conclusion). Even just by putting the print on the page differently, the poem could easily be interpreted as a different genre. Kim asked, "Do you ever try it the other way around...turn an essay into a poem?" Rick insightfully pointed out that not knowing where to start is one of the scariest aspects of teaching writing. One activity he led us through was to look at a beginning line of a poem and write from it as a prompt such as: "There's just no accounting for happiness"... "First when there's nothing but a slow, glowing dream..." And from this simple exercise, we created wonderful pieces today. "What a feelin'! being's believin'!" Amy S. likened happiness to the Lochness monster: "....only allowed ephemeral glances at its head or arching back". John even offered a bilingual example: "De gustabus non disputendum est" meaning "There's no accounting for taste. What people like should not be disputed."
Heather's began with "Happiness is marked by moments. Joy is a state of being", followed by figurative language. We continued to be creative and "Happy!" through a similar process with a quote on "Kindness" -also extracted from a full poem. The writing this time was preceded by a partner discussion on the topic of kindness. Rick brought up that it's easier to get kids or anyone to write if it's a topic they understand and are interested in. He shared another strategy of inspiring kids to write consisting of "quick word associations"-with the teacher or student saying a word and taking turns saying whatever other words came to mind... "No wrong answers", quick and fun, popcorn style. Rick went on to say that this exercise could easily be turned into a lesson on phrases; for example, when the students question why the teacher has more words or longer answers.
Before Rick goes off to the "Marakesh Express", drinking tea in the medina and writing to his heart's content: he'll continue to inspire us here in the Rogue Valley with teachings that embody the words he left us with today: " We're not able to touch the web without affecting everything else", further driving home the point that was brought up with Anne's lesson the day before regarding the interconnectedness of different genres. Afterall, everything is connected in some way. From the words of Star Hawk, "We are the flow. We are the ebb. We are the weavers. We are the web."
Our day ended with a guessing who's "I remember a time" essay was the real one. To some, the subject matter may have been "very superstitious" as the narratives included an owl falling out of a tree. "Who hoo is it?!" Carrie? Nancy? Heather? Though the real story was Heather's, Nancy eeked out with the most votes. Some of the factors noted regarding what makes a believable story were having specific details and a story
that made sense. Others mentioned that their ability to relate to the subject matter or not knowing what something in the story was like a "shruti box" can also influence their choice. For example, being able to relate to something might make it seem more believable to that person and something unknown may bring up thoughts that the person made it up just to sound fancy or believable.
Off to another great day with our fearless leaders Margaret and Andra! "They work hard hard for their money...oh hard for their money..."
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