Category: Writing

Poetry Friday: Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

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Sonnet 30

William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;

Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,

And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before;

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All loses are restored, and sorrows end.

I’ve been thinking about this sonnet for the last week or so for a number of reasons. I love the phrase  “sweet silent thought.” And while the speaker is brooding for much of the poem, to me this phrase implies time to contemplate new ideas. Having quiet, unhurried time to think is a rarity these days. Just as by the end of the poem, the speaker has achieved peace thinking of his friend, taking this time to think can bring us peace. (Both literal and figurative!)

This poem has also been on my mind because of a story I’ve been working on. The main character is grieving over the loss of her mother, and by the end of the story I want her to come to the kind of reconciliation with her grief that this speaker has. Whether or not I can accomplish that for her is another story, but I’m going to try.

In the meantime, I think I’ll listen to Kenneth Branagh read this lovely poem once more:

http://www.popscreen.com/v/7adx9/William-Shakespeare-Sonnet-30-Kenneth-Branagh

Be sure to visit Keri at Keri Recommends for her inaugural Poetry Friday Round Up.

Routines, Writing, and Excellence

Catherine Flynn6 Comments

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

Phil Jackson was interviewed on NPR about his new book not too long ago. He talked about the importance of practicing the fundamentals of basketball and how his teams  always started practice by working on the nuts and bolts of the game. Jackson related this to a story about Pablo Casals, one of the greatest cello players ever. When asked about his playing, Casals stated “I go through my fingering for an hour before I start playing a piece of music.”

This got me thinking about the fundamentals of writing. I don’t think we give students enough time to really practice the basics or build stamina for writing. We need to be more mindful of our established routines and ask ourselves “Is this activity/assignment helping the students become better writers?” If the answer is no, then we need a different routine.

The importance of keeping a writer’s notebook/journal has been underscored for me recently. For the past week, I’ve been participating in TeachersWrite! by responding to daily prompts. Some of this writing had nuggets taken from my journals, thoughts I’d jotted down without any specific purpose. Giving our students time to write each day about what interests them gives them the opportunity to practice the fundamentals in an engaging, meaningful way. Who knows what nuggets they’ll come up with when given the opportunity.

Providing our students with a daily opportunity to write about topics of their choice has the added benefit of getting them to think like writers. Since I’ve been writing regularly, I find myself observing the world differently. Telling students that they should see the world with “wide awake eyes” (Did Lucy Calkins write that? I can’t remember where I read it.) and actually getting them to do it are two different things.

A daily writing routine, one that offers students a period of time to just write, whether they respond to a prompt, take that prompt in their own direction, or just write about what’s on their mind, is critical if we want our students to be writers. Not just effective writers, but passionate writers. Writers who learn about themselves and the world through writing.

After I first heard the Phil Jackson interview and started drafting this post, I got side-tracked by work. In the meantime, Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts posted “The Do-Re-Mi of Writing,” a thoughtful and practical piece about students improving their writing by having them go through their “scales,” just as musicians do. Be sure to read their terrific post.

Maria Popova also recently wrote about the importance of habit in “The Pace of Productivity and How to Master Your Creative Routine” on Brain Pickings. She gives lots of examples of famous creators, their daily routines, and the excellence they achieved through habit.

Thank you to Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers for hosting this weekly Slice of Life Challenge!

Poetry Friday: The Cities Inside Us

Catherine Flynn10 Comments

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I’m participating in Teachers Write! this summer, so I’ve been thinking about writing a lot this week. (If you haven’t heard about  this fabulous online summer writing camp for teachers and librarians, you can learn more on Kate Messner’s blog.) With all these thoughts whirling around in my head, it seems appropriate today to share a poem that speaks to the writer in all of us.

“The Cities Inside Us”

by Alberto Rios

We live in secret cities

And we traveled unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize

But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.

They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city

Inside us…

Read the rest of the poem here.

By Herkulaneischer Meister via Wikimedia Commons
By Herkulaneischer Meister via Wikimedia Commons

Be sure to visit Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s Poem Farm for today’s poetry round up.

Sometimes…

Catherine Flynn14 Comments

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Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for Living a Life” advises that we should “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

I thought of this when I read today’s quick-write on Kate Messner’s Teacher’s Write blog post. I’m often astonished by the beauty of the fields around my house, especially in summer. I’ve written about this in my journals over the years, and Kate’s post inspired me to turn these observations into a poem.

Sometimes, on a summer morning

Grandpa Stuart’s fields are touched

by the rays of the rising sun

so just the top of the grasses

glow in the yellow light.

Goldfinches perch on purple thistles,

breakfasting on seeds.

Sometimes, a deer wanders into the field,

interrupting their feast.

Startled, they rise as one

into the air, darting and diving,

chittering as they fly

before settling down

to the business at hand:

harvesting the glorious sunshine

captured in those thistles.

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One of Grandpa Stuart’s fields at sunset. It was hayed this week, so there are no thistles.

What astonished you today?

This post is doing double duty for today’s Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers. Thank you, as always, to Stacey and Ruth for hosting!

Time for Teachers Write!

Catherine Flynn3 Comments

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I’ve been largely absent from Twitter and blogging for the past week or so. The swirl of end-of-the-year activities and responsibilities, plus helping my niece get ready for a bridal shower she hosted on Saturday, demanded my full attention. But today is the last official teacher day (kids finished last Friday) and it’s the first day of Teachers Write, a fabulous online summer writing camp for teachers and librarians hosted by Kate Messner and friends. So it seems appropriate to kick off this summer of writing by setting some goals. Goals and objectives are nothing new in education, but lately it seems like they’re the new black.

Last summer I followed the posts and prompts at Teachers Write and I did a fair amount of writing in my journals.  But I didn’t share a lot online. This year, I hope to share more of my writing here. Notice I said hope. I am my own worst critic. I want my writing to be perfect the first time I write it. I know this never happens. I’ve read countless writing books and interviews with authors reassuring fledgling writers that first drafts are always terrible. I also know that I am not the only person who feels this way, as many of the comments on the Teachers Write Facebook page say pretty much the same thing. Allowing myself to just write is something I’ve gotten better at, but I still have a long way to go.

While I’m posting some of this writing, I’d like to improve my blogging skills. After a year and a half, there are still some technical details related to my blog that I’d like to master. A friend told me to move my picture to the top of the page, but I have no idea how to do this. Sometimes a picture stays where it landed because I can’t figure out how to move it.

Another goal I have is to keep a regular writing schedule. This has gotten easier for me over the past few months. Participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers really helped me with this. There are days, however, when life intervenes and not a word is written.

And that brings me to my final goal: Not to worry. If I don’t I polish up that picture book draft from 2004 or turn it into an early chapter book, it will be waiting for me next year. If I don’t post some writing one day, I will the next. Any writing I do is an accomplishment.  Going through this process helps me clarify my thinking. It also provides me with tips and tools to share with my students when they are stuck. Most importantly, being a writer makes me more empathetic to my students as they struggle to find an idea, a word, a voice.

Dr. Thomas McMorran, Connecticut’s Principal of the Year for 2012, was the speaker at my school’s Eighth Grade Graduation last Friday evening. His speech was witty, down-to-earth, and full of wisdom. He stressed the importance of caring for one another and being fully present in our daily lives. McMorran urged everyone to “Be here, right now.” This summer, I hope to do just that: to be here, with all of you, writing and learning together.

A huge thank you to Kate and all the authors who will be participating in Teachers Write this summer!

Is Test Prep the Mint of Education?

Catherine Flynn7 Comments
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via Wikimedia Commons

This morning as I was weeding my garden, it occurred to me that the mint that had overrun my herb garden was like standardized test prep. As schools across the country do their best to prepare students for the new CCSS-aligned assessments, test prep is running rampant. Just as the mint in my garden has choked out the basil and parsley, test prep, and the tests themselves, threaten to take over the school day, leaving no time to savor novels, delve into a character’s motivation, or write a deeply personal narrative.

I grow a variety of herbs in my garden because each herb has its own distinct flavor and use. The amount of the herb I use depends on what I’m cooking. The same is true for teaching. We have a wide variety of instructional resources and strategies available. As professionals, we take great care to make thoughtful decisions about which resource or strategy will best meet the needs of our students.

We have to nurture our students so they’ll become independent thinkers and problem solvers. If they are going “build strong content knowledge,” “comprehend as well as critique,” and “value evidence,” all specific goals named in the Common Core State Standards, they have to read and write all kinds of literature and informational texts. As Grant Wiggins wisely points out, “the test is not what you should be practicing; meeting the standards is what you should be practicing.” Providing students with a steady diet of random passages and multiple-choice questions, like those shared by Vicki Vinton on her blog, To Make a Prairie, will do nothing to encourage a student’s curiosity or creativity. We can only do that by providing our students with the rich, robust learning opportunities they deserve.

The mint from my garden adds wonderful notes of flavor to many dishes when I use it appropriately and judiciously. But a steady diet of mint where it doesn’t belong will turn anyone off to its delights. Let’s not turn our students off to the joys of a literate life by overwhelming them with test prep.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? Picture Book Pairs

Catherine Flynn2 Comments

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Last week my school held its spring book fair. I have loved book fairs for as long as I can remember. All those new books, beckoning, begging to be picked up and read. This year I found some real treasures.

Three Hens and a Peacock (Peachtree, 2011) by Lester Laminack and illustrated by Henry Cole, was the first to catch my eye. This is the story of an interloper in the hen house and how he upsets the routines of life on Tuckers’ farm. By the end, life is back to normal, and the everyone has learned a lesson about not trying to change who they are.

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This book reminded me of Just Plain Fancy (Bantam Books, 1990), by Patricia Polacco. Polacco’s story is set on an Amish farm, where the unexpected guest arrives in the form of an egg. Two little girls have the responsibility for caring for the hens, and when they find the unusual egg, they add it to one of the nests in the hen house. Imagine their surprise when they realize that this bird is no hen!

Pairing these books would be a good way to address CCSS Anchor Standard 9: “Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.”  This work begins in Kindergarten by having children “compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories” with prompting and support.

Actually, all of the books I found at the book fair could be used to meet this standard. How Do You Hug a Porcupine? (Simon & Schuster, 2011) by Laurie Isop and illustrated by Gwen Millward, answers this very prickly question. The boy who wants to attempt this, shown scratching his head on the cover, tries several very creative ways to protect himself from the porcupine’s quills. This book is a perfect mentor text for young writers. They could come up with their own solutions to this problem, or they could pose a similar question to answer.

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This book initially got my attention because several of my students had just finished reading The Hug, by Sharon Fear. This book is part of the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention series and is published by Heinemann. There are several stories about the main character, Moosling, in this series. Moosling is a loveable moose who gets himself into one predicament after another. In The Hug, Little Pins needs a hug so his good friend Moosling figures out how to give him one.

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Speaking of moose, Kelly Bingham’s Z is for Moose (Greenwillow, 2012) has gotten all kinds of good press, but somehow I hadn’t read it yet. Hilariously illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, this book is a must-read. The book trailer is just as funny as the book.

I would pair this book with Q is for Duck: An Alphabet Guessing Game (Clarion Books, 2005) by Mary Elting & Michael Folsom with pictures by Jack Kent, for more mixed up alphabet fun.

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What treasures did you find at the book fair this year?

Be sure to visit Jen and Kellee at Teach Mentor Texts to find out what others are reading today.

Poetry Friday: “Poet’s Checklist”

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

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An acrostic poem, according to Poetry4kids, is “a poem in which the first letters of each line spell out a word or phrase.” The word can be anything; colors, animals, names, and more. Acrostic poems have been around since antiquity, and they are still popular today in schools. (I wrote more about sharing acrostics with students and how they support the CCSS here.)

On this last Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month, I want to share one of my favorite acrostics. This poem, by Patricia Hubbard, appeared in the May, 2003 issue of The Reading Teacher (Vol. 56, No.8). I think Hubbard perfectly captures the process of writing a poem.

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Poet’s Checklist

Always start with ideas that sing in your heart.

Choose sharp, juicy, whistling words.

Rhyme is fine, but it must shine.

Over and over and over–write, read, revise.

See, touch, taste smell, listen to your poem.

Too sloppy? Recopy.

Ideas dance on the polished page.

Celebrate–you are a poet. Share, speak, sing.

by Patricia Hubbard

Please visit Laurie Salas Purdie at Writing the World for Kids for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

Poetry Friday: Apple Blossom

Catherine Flynn4 Comments

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“Find something you love, and write a poem to celebrate it.”  X.J. Kennedy

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Blossoms 3 by Liz West, via Wikimedia Creative Commons

Usually at this time of year, the apple trees in my yard are loaded with blossoms. This picture was taken in 2010:

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My yard, as seen from my office window.

Because of the cold weather this spring and damage to the trees during Hurricane Sandy, they are still bare.

I love these apple trees and the masses of blossoms they produce each year. We don’t harvest the apples; they’re small and bitter.  The neighborhood deer, however, have quite a feast in October! I look forward each year to their beauty and promise.  I’m waiting patiently for them to bloom, but in the meantime, I followed Kennedy’s advice and wrote a tanka to celebrate something I love.

soft rosy petals

cover tree branches like snow

gossamer petals

dance in a soft gentle breeze

delicious promise of fruit

© Catherine Flynn, 2013

Be sure to stop by Live Your Poem for the round up of poems. Thank you to Irene Latham for hosting today!