Category Archives: Homepage

“Not on the Test” by Tom Chapin

Date
Posted by
Comments2

The singer-songwriter Tom Chapin (with help from John Forster) has written a very insightful (and funny) song called “Not on the Test” about all the things that you won’t find on standardized test.

You find the song at National Public Radio’s site.

I particularly liked a few verses, such as:

“Each box that you mark on
Each test that you take
Remember your teachers –
Their jobs are at stake
Your score is their score
But don’t get all stressed
They’d never teach anything
not on the test.”

And

” Debate is a skill
That is useful to know
Unless you’re in Congress
or talk radio
Where shouting and spouting
and spewing are blessed
‘Cause rationale discourse
was not on the test.”

Peace (in multiple choice options),
Kevin

Student Newspaper/Student Writing

Date
Posted by
Comments1

The Student Council, which I helped form a few years ago for fifth and sixth graders, recently published its second edition of a student-centered newspaper at our school. Students do all of the writing and illustrations, and Student Council leaders lay out the newspaper and then deliver it around the school.

But the newspaper is also available online (that’s my only real job with this project).

Click here to view the December 2006 edition of Tigger Talk!

Hobart Shakespearean Kids

Date
Posted by
Comments1

Today was our monthly staff meeting and our principal surprised us with popcorn and water, and showed us this documentary from PBS called The Hobart Shakespeareans, which is about a teacher in Los Angeles who uses Shakespeare with his elementary students as a way to foster collective spirit, literacy and understanding of self. It was amazing not just to watch the kids perform, but to listen to them reflect on the meaning of the words and language.

The movie was well-done and offered an uplifting insight into the power of a single teacher (which is a familiar story, I know, but powerful all the same) who sees a light in some kids that others have ignored, or not raised the bar of expectations high enough for them to push, reach and succeed.

It was the best use of staff meeting time in many a year. 🙂

Peace (to be or not),
Kevin

OnPoEvMo: Mannequin January 2007

Date
Posted by
Comments3

This is my first poem of 2007 for my One Poem Every Month for a Year adventure and I guess it was inspired by my recent experimentation with StopMotion Animation and my use of a mannequin in a dancing movie.

Mannequin (January 2007)

Listen to the poem

I am the mannequin
Sinewy thoughts all aflow
Dancing on the edge of the stage
just inches from disaster and audience intrigue
as the invisible hand caresses me into shape,
gently,
and guides me forward into the spotlight.

I can hear the harmony, the melody, the music,
somewhere in the back of my mind
the growl of the ever-expanding universe
so bones begin to pop, skin falls away,
my mask comes undone
until there is nothing left of me but soul
and movement.

I am the mannequin
who believes in self-determination
yet fears the unknown hand at my back
which wields the majestic power and authority
of preordained fate.

I slip the string
loosen the knot
and fall off the stage
with the resounding crash of independent thought.

Peace (with string),
Kevin

Inventing words, Wiki-style

Date
Posted by
Comments3

As part of my students’ study of how words enter the English language, they were given the assignment of coming up with three of their own made-up words (See the book Frindle by Andrew Clements for some inspiration). I have done this each year and have had my students share their words via our class Weblog.

This year, I decided that a Wiki makes the most sense, particularly if we are creating a collaborative document, which we essentially are doing as a dictionary. So I used my Wikispaces site and, with a brainstorm that hits in the middle of the night, first moved all the invented words from 2005 and 2006 students to the space. With the 2007 student words added, there are now more than 200 invented words in the dictionary.

Yesterday, my students were on the Wiki, adding in their words. We also decided to add an audio version of the words, so everyone sat down and read their words and definitions, and then I linked the audio to their entry. Very neat!

mr_h_wiki.gif

Head to the Crazy Dictionary of the Norris Sixth Grade

Peace (with invention).
Kevin

Using Wikispaces — sixth grade collaborative story

Date
Posted by
Comments5

I have begun tinkering with Wikis with my sixth grade student writers and over winter break, I started a short story and gave all of my students the link and told them they had the option of continuing to the story, if they wanted. I have used Seedwiki before but I wanted to give Wikispaces a chance, and I think I like it better than Seedwiki now that I am using it.
About 12 students took me up on the offer and the result was a rather strange story with lots of twists and turns, and I read the story to all four of my sixth grade classes, who laughed and listened with much attention to their creation. Then, I thought, we should audiocast this story. So yesterday, two students narrated the Wiki story for our class websites.

Head off to read the Wiki story called The Mole in the Hole

And you can listen to the story, too, via this audiocast. The Mole in the Hole

external image mole.gif

We are now working with a Wiki to create a Crazy Dictionary of made-up words as part of our study of the origins of words in the English Language. I’ll provide those links in the coming days.

Peace (with collaboration),
Kevin

Claymation — the final chapter

Date
Posted by
Comments2

And now for the grand finale of the claymation adventure with my 8-year-old (wait — he turned 9 today) and 6-year-old sons. With the addition of this final chapter, the entire movie is now just under 10 minutes long. I estimate it took us about five hours to do everything, over the course of four days (including a few rainy days, which was helpful). I am going to burn the movie onto DVD for family.

My kids are so proud of their work and I am proud of them, too. My role was mostly technical advisor and voice-over help (I am the cat), but there were plenty of times when the 8-year-old took control of the computer when I was busy with our 2-year-old and did it himself.

And so, here is our final installment, entitled Finding Mouse:

[googlevideo]-273136659726214358&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Peace (with clay thoughts),
Kevin

More Movie Magic

Date
Posted by
Comments0

My sons wrapped up their holiday break by finishing the last two segments of their claymation movie. I’ll share one segment today and the final one tomorrow.

This is called Capturing a Thief:

[googlevideo]-1094750595682080449&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Peace,
Kevin

A Writer is …

Date
Posted by
Comments0

In a touching memoir of his relationship with his father (and the suitcase of writing that his father bestowed upon him and asked to read after he died) that was delivered as a Nobel Lecture and then published in The New Yorker, Orhan Pamuk tries to get at the heart of what a writer is. (Pamuk won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature).
Here is one section of his description of a writer, as he sees it:

“A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words.” — Orhan Pamuk, in The New Yorker (Dec. 25 2006/Jan.1 2007 edition)

I like that description because it touches a deep chord with me and my own personal writing process. I know it is not the same for everyone and Pamuk even acknowledges that for his father, the writing process was completely different — more social in nature.

Peace (with words),
Kevin

Tagged and Released

Date
Posted by
Comments4

I’ve been observing from afar a “tagging” game going on among edubloggers, who are asked to write five things about themselves that other bloggers may not know (are there really other bloggers out there in the world?) and then spin the game to five other people (reminds me a bit of six degrees of seperation — minus one). Cheryl Lykowski — who is part of our Youth Radio initiative — got me this morning and so here I go:

Five Things about Me

  1. My nickname Dogtrax comes from a childhood nickname — Red Dog, which is a football play. We played some tough tackle football in my apartment neighborhood and I was a blocker for my best friend, Chris, and he named me Red Dog (my hair was red back then). The name got shorter as the years went on, and was reduced to Dog, and then when I started doing some independent recording with a four-track machine, I named my “company” Dogtrax Studio.
  2. I have written more than 200 songs — most of which stink and many of which I have the lyrics (archived) with no chords, so the words are alive but the music is mostly lost. Except that I have on cassette tape about 100 songs from the last 20 years sitting around, gathering dust and losing their magnetic strips, no doubt.
  3. I was in the Connecticut National Army Guard for six years as an infantry soldier — I was a Wire Dog, which meant running communication wire through the dead of winter from one command center to another. I got a low degree of frostbite on one of my fingers to remember the experience by.
  4. A friend and I are working on a movie script that centers around our college days and an interest in Buckminster Fuller — the man behind the geodesic dome and many other scientific advancements.
  5. I have composed and played music for my family’s church and listened with pleasure as a huge pipe organ and a full choir belted out two of the songs I wrote here at home, with a guitar and a computer notation program. On one of the performances, I even had my wife play her violin and a friend play his guitar, while I played my soprano saxophone on the song. Glorious indeed.

Hmmm. Now who shall I tag?

I’m not quite sure how this whole venture progresses from here but my National Writing Project friends can consider themselves tagged.

Peace (in at least five ways),
Kevin

PS — So I began tracking the meme project backwards, just because I had a few minutes, and phew … the links track way back with this Five Thingamabob Project. I grew exhausted just following the leads.