I am not all that familiar with horse-inspired books, but the girls in my class are. Here, one of my students reviewed No Small Thing by Natalie Ghent. Not long after this glogster project was made, I saw this book being passed around a small group of girls, no doubt dreaming of riding in pastures. This is another in my series of March Book Madness posts.
Peace (in the fields),
Kevin
We were settling into a nighttime routine, my son and I, slowing down the day before sleep.
“What words did you learn at school today?”
“AT!” he shouts, with some frustration. He’s only six.
“At?”
“We already knew it. It was already in our circle. Next to ‘the,’ and ‘to,’ and ‘and.’ You know … the circle,” he says, using his hands to demonstrate the circle. The circle is where they keep high-use words that they are learning in his kindergarten class.
“Well, it’s good to keep using new words.” I sound more like a teacher than a dad at that point, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
He nods, the frustration now fading.
I have watched him closely this year in kindergarten. His reading and writing skills has blossomed so much since September. Each week seems to bring new developments in his learning. With two other kids, you would think this would be no surprise. But it is. He surprises me daily.
When we read books, he picks out words from the text to read. He’s writing little stories, making comics. “We’re making books and books and books,” he informed me earlier in the day. He and two friends have become co-authors on what I can only guess, knowing them, will be another history of the Star Wars Universe.
His literacy development is on full display, if we just take the time to watch and observe him, and ask questions. His teacher is doing a great job, pushing him and nurturing him. And so is he. I guess we are, as well.
Peace (in the snapshot),
Kevin
For the past two years, I have taught The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan as a class novel, with great success. This year, however, too many kids have already read it perhaps inspired by last year’s movie), so I am shelving it for the year. That saddens me, but I do see many other kids still enjoying it. This Glogster project is just one of a couple that were done on the series by my students. It continues my March Book Madness feature.
Peace (in the search),
Kevin
Yesterday morning, I read an article from The New York Times about efforts by writers to use the Twitter format to write very short poems. I am always intrigued by how technology informs our writing, and how our writing can be adapted to technology. So, throughout the day, I tried my hand at some Twitter poems, and used the #poetweet hashtag to share my writing with others.
It’s challenging, as you can imagine. The constraints of 140 characters leaves very little room for exploration. You need to be short and you need to choose your words carefully. It’s a great exercise in editing, actually, and I wonder if some variation might not work well in the classroom.
Here are some of the poems as screenshots off Twitter, which I recast into podcasts this morning, too.
Peace (in the poems),
Kevin
I’m continuing with my March Book Madness. I had a number of students who read Scat by Carl Hiaasen. They got hooked on his style of writing from when we read Flush as a class novel, I think. This particular student is a strong reader, and she really enjoyed the story here, as you can tell from her glogster poster about Scat.
Peace (in the swamps of Florida),
Kevin
I spent four hours yesterday with a small group of teachers in our school district who wanted to learn more about digital storytelling. The principal found some money for Professional Development, we negotiated a fair price, and I developed a plan of action for the day, along with multiple resources.
The session went wonderfully well. We were doing hands-on work with Google Search Stories, then into iMovie, and then onto Voicethread. I peppered my work with leading questions around how technology and media are changing our perceptions of composition (and we had a long conversation about how important “design” is in this world). There was laughter, silence, sharing and reflection.
(see some of the Search Stories they created)
Then, one of the teachers asked, “What is this Writing Project I see on some of the books and papers you brought?”
It was an opening I wasn’t quite expecting, but I was ready to explain all about the National Writing Project, and most important, I talked about how the experiences within the NWP prepared me for the kinds of presentations I was doing with them. It was one teacher sharing their knowledge with another, or teachers teaching teachers. It was hands-on activities, followed by reflective pedagogical practice. It was examining what the students might need for learning. It was even about bringing enough food to the session.
(See a voicethread they played around with)
I owe a lot to the Western Massachusetts Writing Project for my ability to lead workshops and PD sessions. My experience there, and the nurturing that I got over the years (I remember Paul Oh inviting me to be his partner at my first National Writing Project Annual Meeting, to talk about advanced summer technology institutes) has profoundly shaped me as a workshop leader. I never would have known I had it in me, to be honest, until someone tapped me on the shoulder (Paul and Bruce Penniman, among others) and said, you should do this. You can do this. The door opened for me and it has remained open since then, and that has forever changed my own perception of myself as an educator.
Whether or not my teaching colleagues from yesterday follow me into the WMWP, they certainly got a taste of what it means to be in a NWP session around writing and technology. They were learning. They were doing. They were reflecting. They were writing.
(You can come view our workshop website and use the resources as needed. The NWP is also about sharing with the world).
Peace (in the workshop model),
Kevin
I was amused when a student of mine picked this book out of my library. Vordack is slightly unsual — a funny book about how to be a villain. (It’s hard work!) She loved the book, which surprised me further — I never would have known. Here is her glogster project about Vordak the Incomprehensible: How to Grow Up and Rule the World by,eh, Vordak himself. This is part of my March Book Madness feature.
Peace (in the lair of amusing villians),
Kevin
During free moments yesterday, I was reading many of the blog posts from National Writing Project teachers and supporters yesterday as we launched into a #Blog4NWP weekend to let our voices be heard about the importance of the NWP in our teaching and writing lives (read mine here).
I was often struck by some powerful phrases from many of my NWP colleagues and decided that it might be interesting to try a found poem from various blog posts. So, with sincere apologies to many of the bloggers whose words I have “borrowed” here (and possibly adapted slightly), I present my found poem and podcast. The links in the poem should bring you to the original post.
Dancing on the Surface of Water: A Found Poem
(listen to the poem)When 130,000 teachers
reach 1.4 million students,
how can you argue that these professionals are not finding powerful ways
to motivate,
to educate,
to push learning in new directions ….Great teaching is not as simple as breathing;
it doesn’t come out of a sparkling spring bubbling up from nowhere
as if it were some magic elixir handed down in secret handshakes
in shadowed hallways.
Great teaching comes from mentors,
from connections,
from learning together what works
and what may not work,
and reflecting on how we might adapt next time
to make more impact.The small pebble of federal support creates a ripple effect
extending out,
expanding across classrooms
and schools
and cities and towns everywhere,
allowing us some precious moments to dance upon the surface of water.We reach out our hands to our young writers — the struggling and the confident —
so that they, too, may make sense of their world on the page.
When they discover their power as a writer, their lives may be altered forever.
We teach for moments like these
and celebrate their arrival with the intangibles of
praise,
and wonderment,
and community.The National Writing Project has been a refuge,
an intellectual and professional and collegial home
that has done more for us as teachers of teachers than even we might have first imagined
when we gathered together with strangers one summer
only to emerge as colleagues
– and as teachers of writing, it has meant more than we would have dreamed possible.
Each summer, teachers from across each state meet for weeks
to eat, sleep, dream and inhale writing.
They come together to do the essential, albeit difficult, work in their classrooms
of moving pens to paper, of words to the screen,
of thoughts into action,
of transforming young thinkers into powerful writers.
It is only because we are teachers
that we can truly begin to conceive of ourselves as writers.
We are dedicated to the development of networks.
And writing.
And, of course, to thinkingWe’re counting on you, our government leaders,
to be an authentic audience for us
and our students.
We ask that you show support for the young great American authors working across
information age media that you —
with your support and with your ears open to the possibilities
of teachers learning together —
will help us as teachers to
discover,
nurture,
and celebrate
even in these times of fiscal constraints.
We’re counting on you.
Peace (in the poem),
Kevin
I am still doing my March Book Madness feature, but today’s feature is a reprint from the past, given the work many of us are doing this weekend to support the work of the National Writing Project in the face of federal funding cuts. I wrote this Glogster review of NWP’s Because Digital Writing Matters back in September.
Peace (in the digital age),
Kevin
This is going to be a short Slice of Life today because most of my writing energy was taken up with composing a piece about saving the National Writing Project. We lost our federal funding and this weekend, those of us who are online are trying rally support for our organization by blogging and lobbying our legislators. If you have been part of any NWP event, or understand its importance in helping teachers, I’d encourage you to blog about it as well.
This is my post: Why the National Writing Project Matters
And organizer Chad Sansing has more information about the #blog4nwp weekend here at his own blog.
Me? I seem to have lost some of my actual voice with a cold (just in time for a four hour workshop tomorrow around digital storytelling) but my fingers are working just fine, and my other voice — my digital voice — feels pretty strong today.
I hope you can join us as writers, or at least, as readers and supporters of the National Writing Project.
Peace (in the rally),
Kevin
