Slice of Life: Atomic Blur

(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers)

Yesterday, we spent about an hour beginning our class discussions about our game of Quidditch (which we play at our school every year). The choosing of a team name can be tricky, but like most everything with my class this year, the process went rather smoothly. I love this class. We brainstormed about 20 possible names, went through a voting process and narrowed it down to a name that they all seemed to like.

We are Atomic Blur.

I can’t help but wonder if the situation in Japan has influenced their name choice. Another team is Biohazard, and a third (whose name escapes me right now) also seems to hint at the disaster in Japan.

Today, I am going to have them write fictional “back stories” to the names of their teams, suggesting they invent a superhero character with the name of their team. I jumped onto our webcomic site this morning and quickly created this one as a starting point.
Atomic Blur

Peace (in the blur),
Kevin

March Book Madness: Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles

book cover of   The Nixie's Song    (Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, book 1)  by  Holly Black and   Tony DiTerlizzi
This is part of my March Book Madness series of posts. Mostly, I have been sharing out student work. But I also throw in my own reviews now and then, and here is one for Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi that I read aloud to my six year old son.

I’ll have to be sort of blunt: I didn’t like this one. And I don’t think my son did, either, although he enjoyed the illustrations of the giants, faeries and other enchanted creatures. But he wasn’t clammoring for me to cuddle up on the couch for read aloud (which is not like him) and I felt as if we needed to finish it just to finish it and move on to another book, and not to finish it because we were so engaged in the story.

And that’s disappointing because we both loved DiTerlizzi’s The Search for WondLa. That book had rich characters, an interesting plot with several story arcs and a setting that was full of wonder and surprises.

This book, which is an offshoot of the original Spiderwick Chronicles? Meh. We never really connected with the main character (although there was something there about this boy that I wanted to see further developed), the plot seemed strung together rather quickly, and it really felt as if someone had made a sequel to famous movie but only half-heartedly (as if, well, money for a follow-up were the reason, not the art itself). At least, it was short.

I admit that I picked this one up by mistake, thinking it was part of the original Spiderwick series. But I don’t think my son or I have much interest in reading more Spiderwick at this point in time. Enchanted creatures or not, the writing left me bored and dreaming of something better to read with my son.

Peace (in the book chronicle),
Kevin

Slice of Life: A Whole Lot of Words

Slice of Life 2011

2,964.

This is the number that reflects the grading I have been doing for the past five days in between sports events with my sons, lesson plans for school, teaching, eating, sleeping, talking to my wife, petting the dog and doing all of the things that people do when not working.

2,964 is the number of Parts of Speech words I have been looking at through my teaching lens, examining and, in some cases, explaining in writing why “to” is a verb in that case and not a preposition. I have 78 students, who each had to color code Parts of Speech words in a project (identifying words in their own writing). There were 38 Parts of Speech that had to be identified for each student.
Partof Speech Projects 2011
Here’s the break down of the words I read:

  • 790 nouns
  • 790 verbs
  • 395 adjectives
  • 395 adverbs
  • 234 prepositions
  • 234 pronouns
  • 78 conjunctions
  • 78 interjections

And overall? They did great. I am very impressed by the effort and hard work that went into this project. I’ve written before about how odd it is to have kids pick apart writing to get to the word level, but I was most impressed by the writing itself. They had to write a narrative about themselves to use as text for color coding. It’s nice to see how far so many have come from where they were as writers at the start of the year.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was sick of Parts of Speech right now. (so are my students).

Peace (that’s a noun, right?),
Kevin

Slice of Life Video: Inside the Pyramids

Slice of Life 2011(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers)

I normally get to school a bit earlier than most of my colleagues — it’s that time to get my head ready for teaching — and I was wandering down the hallways, looking at this recent social studies project that my teaching colleague does with our kids. The students create pyramids of what they would bring into the afterlife with them, and then they put the pyramids on top of their lockers.

Here’s a brief video tour of a few of them.

Hallway Lockers from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.

Peace (in the inside look),
Kevin

March Book Madness: Just Kids

Just Kids (trade paperback)

The brackets for basketball are out, but I am still plugging away at my own March Book Madness, where I am featuring book reviews and posters from myself and from my students.  Today, I am writing about Just Kids, the memoir by rocker/poet Patti Smith. This book won the National Book Award and I was very curious to see what the fuss was about. Although I am a musician and I write songs, I don’t know all that much about Smith, other than bits of her music here and there.

Just Kids covers the early years of Smith’s entry into the art world of New York City and it centers its heart around her relationship with photographer/artist Robert Mapplethorpe. I know of Mapplethorpe from my time living in Connecticut, when his photography show generated significant (negative) publicity at the Wadsworth Atheneum art museum in Hartford. The images were strong, and unsettling, and the show sparked controversy over whether or not they were pornographic or not.

Smith and Maplethorpe lived together and they were each other’s muse for much of their time in New York as they tried to find a foothold in creating art for a living while barely surviving from day to day. He helped her, and she helped him. The memoir captures this time together, and Smith is indeed a lovely poet. This book has so many beautiful lines about love, friendship, music and art — particularly the ending, where she writes about Maplethorpe slowly dying of AIDS as she is carrying her second child into the world. Her remembrance is moving and touching, and her connection to Maplethorpe is so strong, the reader can’t help but feel the loss, too.

What I found so interesting, too, is Smith’s world as an emerging artist before she found rock and roll. Her paths crossed with all sorts of folks, from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, to William Boroughs, to poet Allen Ginsberg, to others whose names meant little to me but I have a feeling they were influential to many. She lived for some time at the famed Chelsea Hotel, where artists scratched out a living. Her neighbor was the famed Harry Smith, whose recordings and collection of Americana music in the deep south are still looked at as an important archive of music in our country.

I felt jealous, even with all the turmoil. You can just sense the possibilities for art in the world around her, and her writing captures the spirit — both the highs and the lows — of something emerging during that time, as if it were a wave that she was desperately trying to catch as an artist, and then, she does, and everything (including her relationship with Maplethorpe) changes.

Just Kids is a gem.

Peace (in the art),
Kevin

Slice of Life: The Rubber Stamp Collection for Teachers

Slice of Life 2011Yesterday, I got inspired by a piece I read at McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies humor site about potential rubber stamps that writing teachers would want to have handy when correcting student papers. It cracked me up. And then, on Twitter, I started to create and share my own over the course of the day. So, here I present to you, my collection of possible Writing Rubber Stamps for Teachers:

“Remind me when I said you could use a bright pink gel pen for final projects? You owe me a pair of glasses.”

“Lovely. Beautiful. Stunning. Don’t Stop”

“Remember that graphic organizer we used? Did you use it?”

“I hope someday to walk in a bookstore and see your book on display. You’re an amazing young writer.”

“Do you really know where this story is going? ‘Cause I don’t.”

“I wish the standardized test knew you were such a poet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. “

“i before e except after c. Or better yet, why not use that spellcheck on the computer you used to type this thing.”

“You flip tense so much I don’t know if I am in the future, present or past. I’m gonna barf.”

“Your character in your story was just perfect. I felt as if he/she were walking into the room as I read.”

“I know you love animated clip art. But dancing bears and exploding pigeons have no place in this essay.”

“In the future, if the eraser shreds the paper, please get a new paper. We have plenty.”

“You know that second paragraph? The one with words you can’t pronounce? Should I Google it?”

“I’m a little worried about your imitation of ee cummings in this college application letter.”

“Kindly inform your parents that their work on your paper resulted in a solid B grade.”

“I believe you once again confused your math project with your writing project.”

“Misspelling your own name on a final paper will ALWAYS result in some lost points. Try to practice.”

“Coincidence is magic. You and your girlfriend/boyfriend’s exact answers on the test is pure kismet.”

“The joy you put into this is assignment is the joy I will have reading it. The pain, too.”

If you have any rubber stamp ideas, let me know.

Peace (on the stamp),
Kevin

March Book Madness: The Body

This is part of my ongoing March Book Madness series, in which I am featuring book reviews and posters from students and myself, and my own family. I have quite a number of advanced readers this year. Here, this student chose a book of short stories from Stephen King, and focused on the novella of “The Body,” which was turned into a fantastic movie called Stand By Me.

I was a bit worried about him reading King, but our discussions assured me that he was ready for it and completely immersed in the books (this is not the first King book he has been carrying around.) He may run into this book again in high school, as I know it is taught in some schools.

Here is his report of “The Body.”

Peace (in the journey),
Kevin

Slice of Life: Counting Cars; Supporting Writing

Slice of Life 2011

(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers)

“Blue one.”

“Yellow one.”

Driving. Driving. My eyes are on the road.

“Black one.”

My ears are on the kids, who are scanning the roadway like vultures for fallen prey.

“Black one.”

“It’s not. It’s a Mercedes.”

“Sorry.”

Driving, driving.

“Blackoneblueoneyellowonebla…”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a dealership.”

“Fine.”

“Yellow one.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

Somewhere, someone in the VW company is smiling. Talk about a viral advertising campaign. “Punch Buggy” is perfectly suited for adolescent boys, isn’t it? They’re usually bored on the drive. They love cars. And punching each other on the arm is just a perfect way to score a point.

Given the recent financial difficulties of the National Writing Project, it occurred to me as I was writing this post that we need something similar for times when we see any kind of writing that has been inspired by a teacher.  It would raise the profile of writing and teaching, right? We could call it “Word Tap.” When you see the writing, you tap someone one the shoulder.

“Creative one!”

“Poetic one!”

“Informational one!”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

Peace (in the game),
Kevin