SOLC 2014: Poetry Friday

March 7, 2014March 8, 2014 Catherine Flynn14 Comments

I grew up next door to my grandmother and have many happy memories of hours spent at her house. Many of those hours were spent in her kitchen watching and helping her cook. So in January, when Mary Lee Hahn shared her poem “Recipe,” I was inspired to write a poem about my grandmother and her kitchen. A list of words and phrases grew, but I couldn’t seem to find a way to organize them.

A few days later, Tricia Stohr-Hunt challenged readers to write a pantoum in her Monday Poetry Stretch. As I read about the structure of pantoums, I began to see possibilities for a poem about my grandmother. Then Fran McVeigh shared memories of her grandmother for her Slice of Life Challenge post earlier this week, and her slice prompted me to go back and revise this poem.

These Recipes

These recipes you knew by heart,

kept safe within a wooden box:

Aunt Ella’s spice cake, Boston baked beans.

Written in your careful hand.

Kept safe within a wooden box,

the recipes of our lives,

written in your careful hand,

tell the story of a time gone by.

The recipes of our lives:

fresh peach jam for morning toast.

The story of a time gone by.

Holidays and birthdays, picnics on the lawn.

Fresh peach jam for morning toast,

Aunt Ella’s spice cake, Boston baked beans.

Holidays and birthdays, picnics on the lawn.

These recipes you knew by heart.

Thank you, as always, to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

UPDATED: My apologies to Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for not thanking her for hosting the Poetry Friday Round Up yesterday. It’s not too late to visit her and read all the wonderful poems shared there.

SOLC 2014: Making Plans

March 4, 2014 Catherine Flynn9 Comments

Like many of you, I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of writing a blog post every day for the entire month of March. Last year, I began the Slice of Life Challenge more or less on a whim. I really didn’t think I’d ever be able to post every day. About half way into the Challenge, I decided I couldn’t stop. This year, I’m totally committed to completing the Challenge, but I need a plan. We encourage our students to make writing plans, to have a notebook where they collect ideas. When he spoke at the Connecticut Reading Conference last year, Lester Laminack referred to a writer’s notebook as “the junk drawer for your ideas,” full of all sorts of odds and ends. Some of these snippets become longer pieces of writing; others stay in the drawer just in case they’re needed some day.

My junk drawer is full today, but my brain doesn’t feel up to the task of sorting through the ideas I’ve accumulated over the past day 24 hours from reading blog posts, books and articles, so I’m going to write them here so they won’t be forgotten.

Yesterday, Fran wrote about memories of home and her grandmother. This got me thinking of some pieces I’ve written about my own grandmother. Maybe I’ll reread them and polish one so it’s ready to share.

A colleague had a baby girl yesterday, and I’m thinking about what to knit for her. I don’t have the yarn I need, and this makes me think that choosing the right yarn for a knitting project is like choosing the right words for our writing. I once taught a lesson on word choice exactly this way. I even brought in different types of yarn to help the kids visualize the analogy!

Finally, I read Tricia’s post on her lovely blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect, about her new dog. She shared “Dog in Bed”, by Joyce Sidman, and that got me thinking about my own dog (and cat) and what I could write about them.

So, I have much to think about, but also many other obligations to take care of this evening. The good news is that I have a plan, and these thoughts will be waiting here for me when I’m ready to write more.

Thank you, as always, to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

SOLC 2014: It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

March 3, 2014 Catherine Flynn12 Comments

Today’s post is doing double duty as my contribution to the Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers.

We’ve all heard of a school of fish and a flock of birds. But what about an ostentation of peacocks?

Collective nouns, those words that turn a group of people, animals, or things into a singular noun, are words that children often learn intuitively as they acquire language as toddlers and preschoolers. The CCSS calls for collective nouns to be formally introduced to students in second grade.

If the goal of teaching these words to young writers is to have them use them in their writing, they need to have “read that language, to have heard it in [their] mind, so that [they] can hear it again in order to compose it.” (NCTE Beliefs About the Teaching of Writing) Although the styles of these books are very different, each one would be a good choice for introducing the concept of collective nouns.

Ruth Heller’s A Cache of Jewels (Grosset & Dunlap, 1987) is an old favorite, one I read to my third graders when I began teaching almost twenty years ago. This brightly illustrated book is still a good model for using collective nouns. Heller includes collective nouns of all kinds, not just those that describe groups of animals.

I’ve found some new books students will enjoy as they learn more of these words. My favorite is A Zeal of Zebras: An Alphabet of Collective Nouns (Chronicle Books, 2011). Woop Studios, a London-based collective (honestly, that’s what the book says!) of four artists, have created “a visual safari through the animal kingdom” (back cover). This oversized picture book is filled with stunning illustrations, unique collective nouns and facts about each group of animals. Some, “an implausibility of gnus,” for example, seemed so improbable that I looked it up. (It’s true, and you can find an extensive list of collective nouns for groups of animals here.) Others are so appropriate: of course it’s “a galaxy of starfish.” Some of the longer words will be a challenge for second graders, but these are the kinds of words kids love learning and trying to use.

One Sheep, Two Sheep: A Book of Collective Nouns, (Little Hare Books, 2010), by Patricia Byers and illustrated by Tamsin Ainslie develops the concept of collective nouns being a group of three or more. Each two-page spread follows the same pattern: “One sheep, two sheep, a flock of sheep.” Charming illustrations provide visual support for the growing numbers in the group described by each collective noun.

Finally, silliness ensues in Rick Walton’s Herd of Cows! Flock of Sheep! (Gibbs Smith, 2002, 2011; illustrated by Julie Olson). This book incorporates the collective nouns into the story of how Farmer Bob’s animals jump into action to save him after his bed is swept away in a flood.

I don’t know if there’s a collective noun for a group of bloggers, but Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth are the best around! Thank you for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

SOLC 2014: Guiding Writing Instruction

March 2, 2014 Catherine Flynn9 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing rubrics lately. All year, we’ve been continuing to incorporate the CCSS into our writing instruction and part of this work has been creating new rubrics. My school purchased the Units of Study by Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project last spring, and we’ve made some minor changes to the rubrics in those units for grades K-5. However, the middle school rubrics have been a bit more of a challenge. Connecticut is part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and they have published rubrics that we’ve used as a guide to create documents that work for us. We found the Smarter Balanced documents cumbersome, so we’ve used the language from Smarter Balanced with the Units of Study format to draft rubrics for grades 6-8.

There has been some disagreement among the teachers, however, about how many categories were needed on the rubric. Ultimately, we felt that everything on the SBAC rubric should be included on ours, but there is concern that the document has become unwieldy.

The challenge is to create a document that includes the standards being taught and assessed, but isn’t so lengthy that teachers don’t use it as a formative assessment tool to determine what our students are learning. As Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan, authors of Assessment in Perspective, have pointed out on their blog, “Assessment, formal and informal, is the window into knowing our students.” Using the information gathered through these assessments to guide instruction is essential if our students are going to grow as writers.

One option is to use the whole rubric for pre- and post-assessments. Then, once learning needs are identified, relevant sections of the rubric can be used as an interim assessment tool to monitor the students’ progress toward their learning goals. Some teachers have found that this works for them; others are not yet convinced.

I know many of you have grappled with this same issue. I’d love to hear if anyone has any other solutions.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Beth for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Feeling Intrepid

February 18, 2014 Catherine Flynn4 Comments

Intrepid isn’t a word I would use to describe myself. And yet, I feel intrepid this week. As I write this, I’m sitting in a hotel room in New York City watching the snow. From this height, I can’t see the street, but I can hear the traffic rushing by on Broadway. I still can’t quite believe I’m here.

I feel incredibly lucky because this week I’m attending the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Mini Institute on Content Area Literacy. After just one day, everything I learned yesterday is swirling around in my brain like the snow outside my window.

Harvey “Smokey” Daniels opened the Institute yesterday morning with an inspiring keynote on what’s missing from the CCSS. “Where’s engagement? Where’s curiosity and creativity? Choice and responsibility? Social justice? Where’s the fun?” he wanted to know.

I’ve often wondered that myself. Daniels suggested that our curriculum should be inquiry based. Turning the curriculum into questions the kids “can’t resist answering,” and creating opportunities for them to do authentic, purposeful work would go a long way toward ramping up the level of engagement AND achievement.

Daniels also questioned the omission of writing as a thinking tool, or “writing to learn.” He stressed the importance of giving our students opportunities to put their thoughts and ideas into words every single day. Teachers can engage students with this work by having “written conversations.” These can be between students or between the students and teacher or other adults. Writing letters is one way to give students an opportunity to express their feelings and develop their voice.

After Harvey’s session, the day was filled with more learning from the incredible staff developers at TCRWP. Amanda Hartman shared strategies for combining reading and writing units with content area teaching. From Lauren Kolbeck I learned more strategies that use literacy skills to support the work of young scientists. And finally, Alexis Czerterko shared ways to incorporating literacy in a unit of study on the American Revolution.

At the end of the day, I felt empowered by everything I had learned. I was energized to begin applying the strategies shared throughout the day to my own teaching. But I’m also excited to learn more. I’m excited about stretching myself as an educator so I can help my students be curious and passionate about their learning. I want to support them as they take risks and follow their dreams. I want them to be intrepid.

Don’t forget to head over to Two Writing Teachers today for more Slice of Life stories.

Poetry Friday: A Poem of Apology

February 7, 2014 Catherine Flynn16 Comments

To My Grilled Cheese Sandwich

~ A Poem of Apology ~

Forgive me.

I did not mean to burn you,

to char you till your crust was black.

But there was a word, a line I was pursuing,

like the birds, outside the kitchen window

searching for seeds in the snow

on this brilliant, sun-filled afternoon.

I hope the birds had more success.

I didn’t find the word;

the line is lost.

Literally up in smoke:

smoke that invaded my thoughts

as it drifted in

from the other side of the kitchen.

Don’t worry, though. I won’t abandon you.

I’ll eat you anyway.

After all, I forgot to buy bread.

Merriam-Webster defines “apology” as “an expression of regret for having done or said something wrong.” I truly did regret burning my sandwich. And although I wasn’t thinking about “This is Just to Say,” at the time, some part of my brain made the connection to William Carlos Williams’ famous poem of apology. You can read more about poems of apology at Joyce Sidman’s website, where she talks about the origins of her book, This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). For apology poems with a lighter touch, don’t miss Gail Carson Levine’s Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It (HarperCollins, 2012).

Please be sure to visit Renée LaTulippe at No Water River for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: It’s Reading to the Core’s 2nd Birthday!

February 4, 2014 Catherine Flynn12 Comments

Today is Reading to the Core’s second birthday! It seems completely appropriate that today is Tuesday, the day I usually participate in Slice of Life, a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. During my first year of blogging, I posted a grand total of eleven times. But last year, I committed myself to blogging, and this commitment has led to many positive changes in my writing and my life.

My life is much richer because of the connections I’ve made through blogging. It was a thrill to met several “slicers” personally during the past year, and I’ve also forged many online friendships. The stories shared by this community run the gamut from hilarious to heart-breaking, and they have inspired me in countless ways.

Not long ago, I visited the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C. to view “Van Gogh Repetitions,” a show devoted to Van Gogh’s artistic process. I never realized that there were different versions of some of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings (five different versions of “The Postmaster” alone!). The changes from painting to painting were sometimes dramatic, but more often were subtle, barely noticeable if you weren’t paying close attention.

(On left, “The Postman Jospeh Roulin,” February-March 1889, Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. On right “Portrait of Joseph Roulin,” 1889. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY)

It seems to me this is the pattern of life, and this has been true of my writing over the past two years. Most changes were minute, and often recognizable only in hindsight. Other changes were seismic; real breakthroughs for me as a writer. Taking part in last March’s daily Slice of Life Challenge was one of these watershed moments for me. I truly felt that I was part of a community, and this made me more confident about sharing my writing. I even branched out and began taking part in other memes, It’s Monday! What are You Reading? and Poetry Friday in particular.

Being a teacher who writes has improved my teaching, both with my students and the teachers I work with. I can help them through the hard parts (and as Katie Wood Ray would say, “they’re all hard.”) because I’ve worked through the hard parts myself. I can show them drafts full of cross-outs and arrows and say, “See, it can be done.”

This generous online community has also enriched my teaching. Blogs and tweets are full of ideas, resources, and book suggestions. My students have Skyped with authors, enjoyed books you’ve shared in give-aways, and benefited in countless ways from your collective brilliance.

So even though it’s my blog’s birthday, today I’m celebrating all of you, my PLN, my friends. Thank you for two exciting and inspiring years. I’m looking forward to many more!

Don’t forget to head over to Two Writing Teachers today to read what others are celebrating today.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

February 3, 2014 Catherine Flynn5 Comments

Take a five year-old’s favorite question, add Eric Carle’s joyous spirit and thirteen of the most accomplished illustrators working in children’s literature today and you have What’s Your Favorite Animal? (Henry Holt, 2014). This book is a glorious celebration of animals and art. Each artist responded to this important question with a short piece of writing and an illustration. The writing ranges from heartfelt recollections of childhood pets to whimsical imaginary pets. Nick Bruel’s Bad Kitty even gets to add her two cents.

The writing that accompanies each illustration is rich with description and rationale. Peter Sís describes “…many families coming with their carps to the river and blue fish swimming toward the ocean. This gave us all hope!” Chris Raschka’s keen observation of the lowly snail gives readers a new appreciation of an animal who’s often overlooked: “But all her life she works her craft, adding to it day by day, until, when she dies, she leaves us something of great beauty.”

These words could describe the work of these artists, who have given the world so much beauty through their books. It seems fitting, then, that proceeds from What’s Your Favorite Animal? are being donated to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The Carle, dedicated to inspiring “a love of art and reading through picture books,” is one of my favorite museums. (Read more about my last visit here.)

What’s Your Favorite Animal? is a perfect mentor text for young writers making their first attempt at opinion writing. The CCSS calls for both Kindergarten and first grade writers to “write opinion pieces.” What better topic than animals, something every child has an opinion about?

I also found this book on my most recent trip to the bookstore:

listography350 — Listography: Your Life in Lists
Chronicle Books, 2007

Lisa Nola, creator of this book/journal explains in a note that the book “is designed to help you create your autobiography.” But I was drawn to Listography for a different reason. It’s ideal for using with kids when they complain, “But I don’t know what to write about.” WARNING! Don’t just hand this book to students; adults are definitely the target audience. Rather, choose an appropriate page and write the topic on the board. Like What’s Your Favorite Animal?, everyone has favorite toys, games, and songs.

This book appealed to me on another level, though. I don’t usually need lists like this for ideas of what to write about. Rather, I can see using this book and these list ideas to get to know my own characters better. I have seen many writing exercises that do just this. But the idea of having this whole volume filled with these lists really appeals to me. I’m hoping they’ll help me find, to use Ray Bradbury’s perfect metaphor, what’s “hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.” Or, in this case, my character’s skull.

Be sure to visit Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers to find out what other people have been reading lately. Thanks, Jen and Kellee, for hosting!

Poetry Friday: Eureka! Poems about Inventors, Snowflake Bentley, and Erasure Poetry

January 30, 2014 Catherine Flynn13 Comments

Our fifth graders are in the midst of an informational reading/writing unit focused on inventions and inventors. While the students read mostly nonfiction during this unit, we also share several poems from Joyce Sidman’s remarkable book, Eureka! Poems about Inventors (Millbrook Press, 2002). In this volume, Sidman, winner of the 2013 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, celebrates in verse the invention of paper, hot air balloons, velcro, and more.

“Food of the Gods” describes the history of chocolate, from Quetzalcoatal dropping “ripe yellow pods of cacao” to Francois-Louis Cailler, who, in 1819,

“…seized upon them,

mixed and ground and tempered,

and by some clean and wholesome magic,

made of them a food–

a wafer of heaven,

a smooth slab of heart’s delight.”

For more about Eureka! as well as a Reader’s Guide and links to information about inventors, visit Joyce’s website.

In the past, the fifth grade teachers and I have talked about having the kids write their own inventor/invention poems, but we’ve never managed to find the time. I had my own eureka moment when I read Dana Murphy’s post about erasure poetry over at Two Writing Teachers last week. Suddenly, I knew this was the way to have our students craft poems about the inventors and inventions they’re studying. This technique is also a great way for students to practice zeroing in on important details and main ideas.

Here is my attempt at erasure poetry to use as a model with students. I chose Jacqueline Briggs Martin’s Snowflake Bentley (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), one of my all-time favorite books to share with students, as my subject. Mary Azarian’s stunning woodcut illustrations for the book won the Caldecott Medal. Although Wilson Bentley wasn’t an inventor like Gutenberg or Elijah McCoy, he did develop the process to photograph snowflakes and became world-famous for his miraculous pictures.

I worked in my notebook, jotting down lines that seemed meaningful as I read the book. As I reread, I thought about the importance of particular events and made decisions about including them in my poem. This kind of thinking can be challenging for students, and writing erasure poems will be an engaging way from them to practice these important skills.

The Snowflake Man

~Wilson Bentley~

born February 9, 1865

Jericho, Vermont

A boy who loved snow,

snow as beautiful as butterflies,

studied the icy crystals

through an old microscope.

Saw intricate patterns,

no two the same.

He wanted to find a way

to save snowflakes,

and tried drawing snow crystals,

but they always melted.

At sixteen,

he read about a camera with a microscope.

“I could photograph snowflakes,” he thought.

At seventeen,

his parents spent their savings

on that camera.

Mistake by mistake,

He would not quit.

Finally, in the second winter,

he figured out

how to photograph snowflakes.

Neighbors laughed when

he waited hours

to find just the right crystal.

Willie said the photographs

would be his gift to the world.

He wrote and gave speeches,

became famous,

and published a book.

A book of his best photographs,

of his treasures in snow.

By Smithsonian Institution from United States (Snowflake Study Uploaded by PDTillman) [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons — Photo by Wilson A. Bentley; Smithsonian Institution from United States (Snowflake Study Uploaded by PDTillman), via Wikimedia Commons

Please be sure to visit Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for the Poetry Friday Round Up.

Slice of Life: Mid-Year Goals and Productivity

January 28, 2014 Catherine Flynn8 Comments

Mid-year goal meetings are coming up, and many teachers at my school are in a panic over the new reflection questions they have to respond to and the lesson plan that is required to be included in their portfolio as an “artifact.” I’ve been meeting with them over the past week, answering their questions and helping them as much as I can. But the paperwork still seems overwhelming when added to our daily responsibilities. This is why I was so happy to find this video about productivity at Brain Pickings Curated by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings is “a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are.” Popova’s posts are full of wit and wisdom, and if you haven’t discovered her website, you’re in for a treat!

I love this video because it’s succinct and full of helpful advice. And even though many of the suggestions are common sense, I feel better knowing that I am not the only person who needs to be reminded about the importance of habit and routine.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reflections to write!

As always, thank you to everyone at Two Writing Teachers for hosting the Slice of Life every Tuesday. Be sure to stop by to read more Slices!

Reading to the Core

Just another WordPress.com site

Category: Writing