Se Hace Camino Al Andar

I invite you to read my goals for the 2006-2007 school year. Click here to access the Writely document. [Note: Writely doesn't work in Safari. I recommend Firefox or Flock, though it works in IE as well.]

I’ve been out of the loop this past week, hiking a trail at Mount Rainier National Park. When I came back down from the mountain, everyone was talking about DOPA. I haven’t read the legislation in full yet but Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher Blog has a good point-by-point summary of the bill. [Thanks to Doug for the tip-off]

If I am thinking about using blogs in my classroom, then the DOPA bill has huge implications, of course. What are my options if my students can’t access blogs and write their own? For the purposes of my inquiry, it takes the discussion into entirely different direction that is not necessarily productive, and distracts from the purpose of my inquiry.

   
  Originally uploaded by NaniRolls.

[Click the photo to see the set]

All done! It was a great week; a tiring week but great all the same. Today, we talked some more, in both the morning and afternoon session about transitioning to the essay. In the morning session, we “celebrated” by sharing the pieces we wrote. There was a big closing session, with some of the participants reading their finished pieces. They were really well-written and funny (one or two were sad, though).

On my way downtown after the workshop, I stopped at Bank Street Children’s Bookstore and picked up two books to help me plan writing workshop for the Fall. I bought “Lessons for the Writer’s Notebook” by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi and “The Writing Workshop: A World of Difference” by Shelley Harwayne and Lucy Calkins. The Ralph Fletcher book comes with a CD of Fletcher talking to the kids about the writer’s notebook and reproducible handouts, though I’ll probably turn them into transparencies instead. The other book, The Writing Workshop, is a book for staff developers. I bought it because I know that my AP will want me to “turn-key” (his favorite word) the information from this week, and also, I figured this book would reflect the information I got this week, in terms of how it was presented to us.

Now, in non-education news: I’m leaving tomorrow for Seattle. Since tomorrow is my birthday, Hank got us a hotel room at the fancy-schmancy, so hip it hurts, Hotel Andra in Downtown Seattle. We’ll be there for one night, then we’re headed to Issaquah to stay with friends of his. On Tuesday, we’re off to Mt. Rainier and the Wonderland Trail for a few days of hiking and camping. After that, the plan is to just hang around Seattle and possibly take a side trip to Vancouver. I’m still debating whether or not I’ll bring my laptop but who are we kidding? I’ll probably bring it, so you can expect to see some pictures and I’m bringing work with me (of course), so I might do some planning-blogging. We do have two long flights, with one layover on the way back. That’s what I love about ecto…I can write my blog posts, save them, and post them the next time I have internet access! If you want to follow our vacation adventures, check out Costero Del Amor.

No pictures today! The keynote was given by Eloise Greenfield, a children’s book author. The venue was Riverside Church, which is absolutely beautiful but not a good venue for someone like me (i.e., deaf). I had a hard time staying away during the keynote, partly because I couldn’t really follow what she was saying and partly because she was reading from a paper, word for word, so her voice was kind of sleep-inducing as a result. Anyway, today felt like things were winding down. In the morning session, we talked about making the transition from personal narrative to personal essay. Before that, though, we talked about the structure or architecture of a mini-lesson, which was really helpful and valuable for me.

First of all, a mini-lesson should be about 7.5 to 12 minutes long. That suggestion is based on studies done on the attention span of adolescents.

1. Make sure the lesson being taught is a part of a string of lessons. This keeps you “honest,” which is just another way of saying don’t just pull stuff out of your ass and be lazy.
2. There are four parts to the mini-lesson. They are: Connection, Teach, Active Engagement and Link.
3. Demonstrate. Demonstrate. Demonstrate.

Connection: How does this fit in with what we are working on? How does this stuff connect to our lives? “Yesterday, we were working on ______________, today we are working on ______________.”

Teach: State and restate what we are teaching, demonstrate while thinking aloud, keep the language consistent and check in with the kids to make sure they’re following you.

Active Engagement: This is a chance for kids to get started, practice and for you to assess. You can do turn&talk, stop&jot, think&thumb. You could using their work, your work or a class piece.

Link: Give directions, repeat teaching point, give options/choices.

I wrote a sample mini-lesson on using a map labeled with memories to help find a small moment. So, here’s what I came up with:

Connection: “We’re working on our Dilly mimics and we need to uncover a moment we can use as the subject of our books. We’ve discussed a couple of strategies, like using a timeline.”

Teach: “Another way we can uncover these moments is by drawing a map of a place we know well, and labelling it with our memories.”

(I would have the above picture on the overhead.)

“See, I drew a map of the neighborhood I lived in until I was 8. I drew all the places I remember, like my house, the neighbor’s house, the street where we played.

”Then, I labelled all the places with things I remember happening at that spot. Like, this is where my dad taught me to ride a bike. This is where my sister and I watched Hurricane Gloria. This is where I got scratched by a squirrel.

“As I labelled the places, I kept thinking of more, and that’s how my map got so full!

”Does anyone have questions about how to create a map and label it with our memories?“

Active Engagement: ”Very quickly, in your notebooks, I want you to make a list of three places you could map.“ (2 or 3 minutes)

Link: ”So, if you want to try this strategy, take a sheet of paper, or a clean page in your notebook and draw your map, and start labelling it with your memories.

“Remember, we’re trying to uncover a moment we can use for our Dilly mimics.

”You can work on the map or try some of the other strategies we’ve discussed in class.“

I can totally visualize myself doing this mini-lesson and that’s great! After this, we spent a little bit of time talking about making the transition from personal narrative to personal essay. One strategy for doing this is to come up with a list of small moments, then come up with corresponding ideas for each. Then, choose one of those ideas and write a journal entry about it.

We also talked about making the transition in the afternoon session but the most valuable part of the afternoon session was the discussion about rubrics and assessing the writing workshop. I think that needs to be its own post, so I’ll come back to that later.

I finished a notebook today and had to run out to buy a new Moleskine during lunch. I’ll be carrying around both notebooks for awhile though, as I plan for August with all this new information at my disposal.

I created a Dandelife account. You can see it here. I am definitely going to try to use this with my kids. I love the photo uploading and video uploading feature (if you have Flickr or YouTube accounts). You can also lift stuff from your blog and put it on the timeline. There is a “This Reminds Me…” button which is awesome, since it can be used a writing-generation tool.

PS Wish granted, Mr. Abbott.

Tim left a comment over at Se Hace Camino al Andar and told me about a site called Dandelife, which is billed as a social biography network. In light of the use of timelines in writing workshop to generate personal narrative pieces, this is an interesting Web 2.0 app with a lot of potential. I haven’t explored it fully yet but I’m excited!

Today’s keynote speech was given by Katherine Bomer. First of all, it was the best use of PowerPoint I’ve ever seen, and she said it was her first time using PowerPoint, too (I bet she had help!). The theme of the keynote was using music and art to inspire writing. Katherine is this totally down-to-earth, goofy, beautiful, artistic woman and she was an excellent presenter. She made the point that we, as artists, “turn to each other’s art to inspire ourselves.” I think that’s a great justification for bringing more art and music into my classroom. She also said that moving between artistic fields is way of being creative, in and of itself. Her speech was special in that it wasn’t just all talk talk talk. It was almost like a mini-workshop. Katherine shared some strategies she uses to get kids to write, using music and art as prompts.

First, using Art to inspire writing:

1. Make an art timeline. This means gathering visual images that trigger or represent various stages/milestones/places in your life.
2. Draw or paint self-portraits. The key here is to have the kids write about it afterwards.
3. If the kids are writing fiction, they can paint the main character.
4. Write about art itself.

Second, using Music to inspire writing:

1. Again, make a timeline–this time, make it a music timeline. Katherine talked about how her ipod is the greatest thing she ever owned because of all the playlists she can make, essentially creating a soundtrack for different activities in her life.
2. Write about music.
3. Write songs

The best part of the keynote was that I walked away feeling inspired, as I had after the last two keynotes. Katherine really made me feel like I could do what she had done in her classroom, and that the time and effort that goes into organizing this strategies is worth it.

In the morning session, Kate talked about drafting and revision.

We really focused on the idea that we teach the writer, not fix the writing. So, what you see in the picture above is a chart we made. We came up with a list of things that kids will inevitably struggle with in the drafting stage, and some strategies we can teach them to help them. It’s really important to name the strategy for the kids, because we want them to include in their arsenal, to use it later, on their own.

Kate also said that what we’re really trying to do is identify the theme in the story but that we shouldn’t do it for them, even if it was obvious and they weren’t getting. It’s their writing and their decision, basically…that’s something I have to remember. It requires relinquishing a certain amount of control over the whole writing process. It’s a little scary but ultimately, good.

Today was a classic Wednesday, a hump day, so I was sort of spacey all day and not as engrossed as I was yesterday and Monday. But here’s the important stuff I got out of the morning session:

Revision Strategies

1. Leaving “bread crumbs”, of significance, of detail and proper nouns, and of setting. There was another one, about internal lists but I didn’t really get that one.
2. Re-experience a moment. Pick the most important moments, find a moment that falls short, re-write from scratch, using sensory details, remember dialogue, action, etc.

Editing and Grammar

1. Do the grammar and convetions as you go.
2. Observe what they are doing/not doing/doing wrong and address it in a mini-lesson or a mid-workshop interruption. Don’t wait until the end of the unit.

Kate reminded us that editing main point is to prepare your piece for publication.

We wrapped up the morning by touching on the structure, or architecture of conferring. There are three parts to conferring:

1. Research. This is where you ask those questions, like ‘how’s it going?’ and ‘what are you working on?’
2. Compliment. The most important part of this is to be real and authentic. You and I and everyone else knows that kids have an uncanny bullshit detector.
3. Teach. Follow up on conferences with mini-lessons that address needs that come up during the conferences.

The afternoon session was helpful as well but I’ll save that for another post. I still have homework to do!

Link: Education in Texas.

Carnival of Education!