On Highway 61

Remember a couple of months back when I tried to get you to hit the road?   We were talking about the Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.   In particular, I was trying to make my way to the Delta...to the most southern place on earth.   Cleveland, Mississippi.

I'm on the short list, y'all.

It sounds like a week full of hard work at Delta State, but I'm looking forward to being in the birthplace of the blues.   BBQ, tamales, Koolickles, The Fighting Okra, Stax Records, Po Monkey's Lounge, catfish, and so on.  

And he's not on the itinerary, but guess who was born in nearby Leland, Mississippi.  

Kermit. The. Frog.

I've not had a mind or the money to scoot down highway 61 before now, but I'm looking forward to my first visit to M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I.

And $30 for some graduate credit/ recertification points?

Thanks, DSU!

Guerrilla Poetry Bombs

Something tells me that many of you are about to have a lot of empty plastic eggs at your disposal.   How about some Guerrilla Poetry Bombs?   (Relax...no explosives needed.)

This is an activity I tried out with the Eastern Virginia Writing Project Fellows of 2009.   It's simple.   Pick some favorite poems.   Print them out.   Fold them up.   Tuck them inside a plastic egg.

Now for the fun part.   Where are you going to leave these little bits of magic?   It's up to you.   You could have a friend ride shotgun with you after sundown and launch these babies in random lawns.   I guess it could be called littering, but wouldn't Smokey and Junior enjoy a bit of surprise Shel Silverstein?   Who wouldn't?  

Don't limit yourself to the canon of lit-tra-ture.   Consider songs too.   Willie Nelson's "Always on my Mind" strikes me as the kind of lyric that would hit someone just right.   Van Morrison.   Lennon & McCartney.   Otis Redding.   Leiber & Stoller.   Brian Wilson.   Dolly Parton.   Robbie Robertson.   Bob Dylan.   Bruuuuuuuuce.   Just be sure to include the names of the poets/ lyricists.

Even a song we've experienced a billion time's before like U2's "Beautiful Day" shows a different kind of beauty in the quiet of reading the words without hearing the tune.

Here's an old classic that would be a lot of fun on paper.

Let's illuminate our little corners of the world with uplifting and lighthearted words.   Here's a free, printable bookmark from your old pal, Shel Silverstein, to inspire you.

On Your Marks

As an 8th grade writing teacher, my ultimate goal is to create independent writers by March.   First quarter focuses on narratives, ideas, written expression and apostrophe usage.   I feel like if I can get 8th graders to see writing as a craft by revising for specific nouns and strong verbs, there's a big payoff.   Craft.   That's what I'm talking about.  

I've written before about how I incorporate highlighters into writing instruction, but I'll mention it again because I think color-coding is one of the best approaches students use during editing and revising.   In short, we use pink to pause and green to go.   Pink means something's amiss; green means that something's sweet.   The more tools we can give our writers, the more independent they become.   And the more independent they become, the less you have to correct.   (Highlighters, colored pens, colored pencils---anything similar will work.)

Which brings me to the issue of marking up students' final drafts...   Use red, if you want to.   There's no harm in that.   You can also use highlighters to mark up a final draft. Highlighting something in pink...not just putting an editor's mark...puts the responsibility on the writer to determine the type of error.   We do need to consider the writing instruction given by that point in the year.   For example, I'm not going to write rants about usage and mechanics on children's papers in September.   That's counterproductive.  

I realize that students don't really have much of a choice when it comes to deciding if we are the type of people they'd like to share their thoughts, hopes, dreams, feelings and stories with, but we should be the type of readers that can offer both critique and praise.   If we shut our writers down early, how can we expect them to approach each of our lessons with a sense of optimism?   How can we encourage them to take stylistic risks or dig into some of their darkest corners for honest storytelling?

Okay.   I know that sounds a bit deep for third grade students, but I think you understand what I mean.

I would caution teachers against creating a penalty system to grade papers in which a product can fail on minutia.   The best example is spelling.   You will have some wonderful thinkers who have a diagnosed or undiagnosed processing hurdle when it comes to spelling.   What if their essays are perfect in every way, but their spelling is not?   Using a rubric will help avoid failing a child on one isolated skill.  And I don't get a kick out of marking up finals with negative comments at all.   My preference is that the skilled child writer will find all of his/ her errors before I do.

Am I saying to take it easy on your writers?   Nope.   Just give them challenges in which they have the real possibility of success.   Don't get caught up in carrying on about which skills they should have mastered in earlier grades.   It doesn't matter.   That's for your administration to ponder.   Teach the students in front of you what you want them to know now.  

Also, if you are a true crafter of language, you can identify something successful in just about any paper.   Voice, written expression, word choice, imagery, sequencing, believable dialogue, ideas, sentence fluency...you can find it.  

If you are still thinking that you need help on giving constructive feedback, here are 100 trait-specific comments!

In Which Our Heroes Search for Answers

Conducting research is really only meaningful when you have an interest in a topic, and that might mean a ratio of one topic per student.   That's difficult to manage.   As I was brainstorming a way to add student choice to the activity while still maintaining some control over the process, something happened in Sandford, Florida that captured all of America's attention.   George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin.

Whatever our feelings are on an issue, I feel that a teacher's role is to allow our students access to enough information for them to make up their own minds.   The opportunity to think critically is one of the best gifts that we can give teenagers.   Although I was anxious to start talking about this issue right away, I guesstimated an approximate time that enough information would be available to us and booked one of our rolling computer labs.   Also, I decided to create a list of questions to guide their research, so they would get to investigate as many sides as possible.   All answers were to be paired with their source and the date of publication.   Of course, there was also space and time for them to seek out answers to their own questions and express their own opinions.   Students were also asked to read Toure's response to Trayvon's death, "How to Stay Alive While Being Black."    

I didn't give a lecture regarding what happened, although I could have.   Being a sage on the stage when you're trying to get children to think for themselves is counterproductive.   I kept quiet for most of the time, but I did ask a few questions out loud after about a half hour of research, so students who wanted to speak up could.  

And you would have been impressed to see the seriousness with which they took on a detective's task and the intelligence with which they discussed the issues surrounding the incident.   No one ever lost sight of the tragedy of a teen's death and the fact that we wouldn't be able to sort everything out in 70 minutes of inquiry.  This was one of the quietest activities I've ever witnessed.   I gave my second block a five minute chat break, but most of them just continued to dig deeper.  

If you've ever looked at a teenager and presumed anything about their lack of passion for learning, or anything else for that matter....well....you know where I'm going with this.

Status Update

Bids for Page's demolition were due on March 20th.   The areas with the heaviest tornado damage were already removed from the site.   Today some of the past and present faculty gathered to dig up some daffodil bulbs...er...say goodbye to the building.  

No news on when the rest of the walls will come tumbling down.

The best part of the afternoon was when the high school (we only have one, y'all) buses drove by with some of our former students, and we got to wave at some smiling faces.

Perhaps last year's 8th graders didn't get as much credit as they deserved.

We were all so busy filling out claim forms, sorting through boxes, telescoping lesson plans and keeping one anothers' heads on straight that I don't know if we were able to express how grateful we were to the kids and families who shifted around their schedules and came to school with joyful, resilient spirits.   People were so good to us, and our children were truly overwhelmed and touched by the generosity of our neighbors.   The students, staff and faculty of Peasley Middle School could not have been more gracious hosts.

Since I'm still feeling lucky that I wasn't in a dark hallway trying to keep 25 kids safe from the storm, I bought a few Mega Millions lottery tickets.

I know the odds, but somebody's got to win it, right?

Where Malik's From

Not so long ago I told you about a poetry exercise called Where I'm From.   I found it in Nancie Atwell's book Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons.   I have to tell you that it is my favorite writing activity that I have ever done with my students...ever.  

Why?   The students dug deep.   They thought about themselves.   They talked to their families.   They revised.   They edited.   Many even allowed me to make copies of their poems to put in a binder to share with classmates and teachers.   Some were asked to publish their work in the school literary magazine.   I wanted to publish one here for you to enjoy as well.

A big part of what I like about Atwell's book is the fact that she has published student samples alongside the bona-fide, gen-u-ine poem that inspired the lesson.   The poem I chose to share with you, with his mother's permission, is written by a young man who has a natural ear for language.  At the same time, he would agree with Thomas Mann's statement, "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."  

Malik is about the craft.   His poem was a process.   Believe it.   I was there.   His first draft was flat but intriguing.   I know when he's "in the zone."   But I hadn't seen it yet with this activity.   It took having the poem knocking around in his brain for a day for the pieces to start falling into the right places.   He opened with a general line about slavery and moved quickly to the next subject.   I had a feeling that there was more there, but he wasn't able to come up with it until he had a chance to talk with family.   He did.   The poem really opened up after that.   See what you think.

“where i’m from”

i’m from slaves working in the hot fields of gloucester
to whites only and piles of found jewelry.
i’m from farming crops and hard work to
“when will we be free from this misery?”
i’m from families being torn apart
to  wondering if relatives will be found,
dead or alive.

i’m from newport news to a family of 5
i’m from "that’s dope" and billy jean,
to the greatest love of all.
i’m from the the jeffersons and moving to the eastside,
to finally getting a piece of the pie.
i’m from the sweet taste of butterfingers
to playing with barbies and kens.
i’m from the witches and mysteries
to playing softball in the warm dusty summer of ’90.
i’m from stacks of poems and books,
to barking dogs and purple soda.
i’m from a ripping eye and pain,
to doctors working to fix it.

i’m from a lost boy living in hawaii
to a military woman with no children.
i’m from that boy found and loved
to that woman who’s now a mom.
i’m from a calm, peaceful place
to the concrete jungle of new york.
i’m from winters spent in maine
to the sunny city of los angeles.
i’m from the flow and rhyme of a
lonely soul,
to slick rick reading
a
fairy tale.

Bunny Surprise

Sure, reviews say that this is for the early elementary set, but 8th graders love it.

  

There's a bunny.

The bunny checks out a library book...a book about wolves.  

He's good reader, so he visualizes what he's reading.  

And his imagination is powerful.  

It's not too long before..yep...CHOMP.  

Sorry about that spoiler.  

Kids never see that coming because the slim picture books still seem pretty harmless.  

But wait, there's more.   Readers have the option of a happy ending.

Let this curious bunny help you illustrate What Good Readers Do.

See Emily Gravett explain how rabbits are born.