Pre-writing to Inspire Poetry

Two weeks into the poetry unit and the creative juices are (mostly) flowing. This is my favorite unit to teach and I think that has a big effect on the quality of the kids' work.

For the first two weeks I've taught figurative language, imagery and poetic devices. We've read at least one poem a day from my former students. This is always a great hook: they read the work of kids they know and think, "Hey, if she could do this, I could do it!"

We do some pre-writing and return to our pre-writing from the beginning of the year. We return to the Heart Map (an Atwell activity) where students mine their hearts and memories for things, people, places, events, hobbies, animals, etc. that are important to them or have influenced them in their lives. We created our Heart Maps at the beginning of the year and kept them in our journals.

We did another mapping activity at the beginning of the year to brainstorm ideas for personal or literary writing. We drew maps of a house or place in our memories - this activity came from George Ella Lyon, former poet laureate of Kentucky. After they draw their Memory Maps, the students focus on one room of the house and list all the memories they have of that room. From there they free-write and wait for an idea for a poem to surface.

For another pre-writing activity, we also read George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From," and organized the precise nouns on a web graphic organizer. To help the students understand precise nouns (as opposed to general), I use the example of "a tree" as compared to "an old, knotted oak" or "an sticky pine tree." Once we identify the nouns Lyon used to show (rather than tell) where she's from, the students complete their own web to show where they are from. I circulate and push them to make their details more specific, their descriptions richer and more concrete. We focused a bit more on "show-don't-tell" and when I confer with the students, that's one thing I often look for.

With just this front-loading and pre-writing, here's a student's rough draft that he sent home with me tonight:

Great-Grandpaw's Attic

Climbing into the attic
Of my great-grandpaw's old house
Investigating everything
Like a thief find the jewels.

Towers of old torn up boxes
Stacked up so high
Filled with the memories
Of a man we call pepaw.

Old silver war medals
Kept in lock boxes
All dirty and smudged
From my fingerprints

The train set you made me
For the 10th Birthday
You never saw,
Complete with figures
Of both me
And of you, too.

- William

Clearly, William was inspired and he "got" the idea of the precise noun. Here's another student for whom some other inspiration is needed:

I am from the food
in the kitchen the
cool-aid in the refrigerator
the fresh smell of mac'n'
cheese the taste of green
beans makes me go back
for more. And rib's
going on the grill

- Joseph

For students like Joseph who haven't been inspired by the above activities or the poems I've shared with them, I plan to use some spoken word poetry tomorrow. Synthia Shelby, our school's literacy liaison with the district, popped in my class the other day and did a quick spoken word poetry session with them. I saw many of my reluctant writers perk up and pick up their pencils. And it was within fifteen minutes of the end of the day to boot!

I found this fabulous website to share with them tomorrow: SpokenWordz.info. I'm excited to play Nikki Giovanni's "Hands: For Mother's Day" and "All Eyes on U - For 2Pac Shakur," Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman," and Sage Francis' "Spoken Word From Poetry." We'll listen to these, discuss and return to our own poetry, while I circle the room and confer with students.

Beyond Google; Beyond Wikkipedia

Nettrekker is a safe way for students to do their research on the web. It pulls up legitimate articles in all content areas, and all resources are reputable and educational. It's not a free service, unfortunately, but contact your technology rep or key administrators to see about getting a school subscription.

New Websites to Aid Instruction

Yesterday I sacrificed a Saturday to attend a mini-conference put on by the Louisville Writing Project, our local chapter of the Kentucky Writing Project and National Writing Project. It was really no sacrifice at all, because the presentations and conversations with like-minded teachers of writing were so inspiring and motivating, I feel completely refreshed and ready to plan and further innovate my instruction. (Getting up at 6:45 on a Saturday, no matter the reason, was still a bit of a struggle.) Because one of my areas of growth in the classroom is my use of technology, I found one presentation on "Tech-Savvy Gimmicks" to hold kids' attention of particular interest. The presenter was Elizabeth Gleeson, fellow seventh grade language arts teacher in Jefferson County and a recent participant in LWP's summer writers' workshop. Here're the goodies from her presentation and beyond:

Survey Monkey

This (free) website offers teachers the ability to create anonymous classroom surveys, which can be effective for gathering honest feed-back on instruction. Gleeson recommended creating a "teacher report card" to help teacher's gage students' opinions on a lesson or unit's effectiveness. Other uses she listed:

• peer-revision to identify patterns
• pre-assessments to gather baseline data
• student reflections (as well as "teacher report cards")
• student use for gathering data to support in persuasive writing
• cross-curricular application for use in math class to graph data
• parent surveys
• department surveys
• faculty surveys

Flocabulary

This is a powerful teaching tool (also free) for the urban classroom in which lessons on grammar, current events, and vocabulary are made accessible and engaging when put to a hip-hop beat. Gleeson recommended embedding music in PowerPoint or SMART Notebook software if accessible.

Go to "Free Teacher Downloads" to access the goods.

Half.com

Here's the answer to starting a classroom library from scratch: on Half.com, books are cheaper than they can be found on Amazon.com or walk-in used bookstores.

Write for Amazon.com

As a writing teacher who religiously adheres to the principles of the writers' workshop method, I am constantly looking for ways to get my students' work published. In the Times Magazine today, there was a short article on writing reviews for Amazon.com - of course! During the persuasive unit next year (which is sadly past for this school year, but I may be able to circle back to it toward the end of the year...), I plan to have my students choose products and write reviews for the real-world audience of Amazon.com patrons. The authenticity of the assignment, the use of technology and the choice of which CD, book, game system, or whatever they decide to review are sure to motivate my students to write and revise at their full potential.

CARE for Kids in the News

Some have asked for more info on the CARE for Kids program in JCPS. Here's an article from Edutopia.org about the district's program. Enjoy!

Elevating the Teaching Profession

Read this great article by Arne Duncan, Obama's Secratary of Education, in NEA magazine just before the holidays. It's super exciting to have strong leadership in national policy - hopefully deeds will follow words.

Seating Chart Requests

Every six weeks my kiddos get a new seating chart. I love seating charts. Secretly, so do my students: they hardly ever complain. I think my kids need the comfort of knowing where to sit each day, besides the fact that a seating chart gives me the power to reduce bullying, harassment, cliques, flirtatious folly, giggling, games of "pencil break" and "bloody knuckles," and, of course, talking.

Still, a seating chart doesn't have to be top-down tyranny. This is where choice, that ever important ingredient for a democratic classroom, comes into the recipe. In my classroom, students get to make written requests for where they would like to sit in the room. By giving them voice at the fore-front, I'm preventing arguments or huffing-and-puffing after the seat assignments are delivered.

Here are some requests:

(Note the printed name and signature above - and its adorable-ness.)

Some are more practiced in the art of persuasion than others, but still each student makes his or her point loud and clear.

I also allow my students to request classroom jobs, as these change every six weeks with the seating chart.

This one is my favorite. It's a fairly accurate map of my classroom, showing the student's desired seating arrangements.

Despite all my best efforts to include their voices in the process, there is inevitably someone who is unhappy the day new seats are assigned. So, I always begin like this: "I tried to honor as many as requests as I could. When one request contradicted another, I used my best judgement as to who would sit best near whom. If you come to your new seat and find you cannot sit by the person next to whom you assigned, please write me a note and leave it in the 'Question & Comment' box. Do not make a face or react in any way to your new seat, or your request (and future requests) will not be taken into consideration."

Then I walk around the room and say all the new seats while the kids stay seated. When I finish they all move at once, quickly and quietly, to their new seats. I find this reduces the chaos that so often plagues the middle school classroom. Which, after all, is what a seating chart is meant to do.

Changes in 2010

Among my many New Year's resolutions, I'm including a return to blog posting. During the weeks surrounding my wedding, I got out of the habit of posting and never quite got it back. Two months later, it's a new year, and I have many ideas to share with teacher readers and anecdotes to share with non-teacher readers. Giddy-up.