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Fish in a Tree

Posted in Books, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, IMWAYR, Lynda Mullaly Hunt on March 16, 2015| 16 Comments »

SOL #16

Join the IMWAYR meme.

If you do not have this book in your library for middle grade students, then get it now. I read Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s first book One for the Murphys and now again with Fish in a Tree, she has drawn me in to love her characters.

I read for strong characters, characters I can believe in, characters who speak to me. Ally Nickerson and her quirky friends are a group I want to hang out with. I was sorry to reach the end and have to tell them goodbye. In my mind, they continue on and do great things.

Ally is in 6th grade and struggles with dyslexia; although, she doesn’t know that her problems stem from a real disability. She believes she is just plain stupid. She plays movies in her head and draws in her sketchbook of impossible things. Until Mr. Daniels comes along and notices her. He reaches out to her and helps her to understand dyslexia. She believes in herself. Every teacher should read this book to meet Ally’s empathetic, caring teacher and see the power you have to change a life.

I recently read a touching post by Lynda Mullaly Hunt on The Nerdy Book Club about her own relationship with her brother which informed her creation of Ally’s brother Travis. Not only was this an awesome post, but Lynda responded to each comment. I spoke to her of my own struggle to create real characters with a deep relationship.

Here is a quote from Chapter 48 that shows how Lynda’s books are about more than the characters and their individual problems. They teach life lessons.

And looking around the room, I remember thinking that my reading differences were like dragging a concrete block around all day, and I felt sorry for myself. Now I realize that everyone has their own blocks to drag around. And they all feel heavy. (p. 245)

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The Voice

Posted in Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged 6-traits of writing, student blogging, The Write Fix, voice on March 11, 2015| 11 Comments »

SOL #11

My students are doing the classroom Slice of Life Challenge. They are impressing me with their commitment to writing every day. This school year I have required three blog posts a week, so they are used to a rigorous posting schedule. The other day I mentioned how many words a first grader had written (178!), and they set off on a self-made word count competition. But it is not the word count or their writing commitment that is impressing me. It is the voice.

Voice is a very difficult concept to teach. Here is a post-it from Writing Fix, a great resource for teaching writing. As one of the six traits of writing, voice should be taught.

From Writing Fix

I have come to believe that voice is something to be discovered rather than taught. All children come with a voice. Enter any school cafeteria and you can hear them roar. Through blogging every day, my students have become more comfortable expressing themselves, and their voices are coming through each piece of writing. Here are some samples of strong voice:

My mom has one of those smart car things or whatever.The kind where you hit a button and use it like siri. Well in my moms phone my dad is labeled as B T.in case you were wondering it means Boo Thing.So nevertheless when she says call b t it says calling Mrs.Simon mobile.So ya Mrs.Simon if you have any missed calls from her that’s why. Reed

So, today I went to the book fair. I got a calculator,pencils,2 books and a pencil sharpener.
I can’t wait to read my books tonight, and I will get a sticker for our chart for reading books.
But, I know what you are thinking ” wow those sound really boring!” They are actually not boring.The calculator is a chocolate scented calculator. The pencils were drumstick pencils. And, the pencil sharpener is …wait for it…wait for it…A MUSHROOM, and the top is an eraser {TALK ABOUT 2in1.} Emily

After, we walked on Bourbon Street. It was so crazy!!! There was this little boy dancing like Michael Jackson, and he was so good. I gave him $5, because that is all I had on me. After, Bourbon we went back to the hotel. My friend and I were doing flips on the bed. It was extra fun, but I almost broke my ne… nevermind that!! In the morning, we went down stairs to eat breakfast. It was free!! Kielan

Read more student posts here.

Now I need to do a lesson on how so is a conjunction. I never realized how many of my students start their sentences with so. I have time for that because obviously, I do not have to teach voice.

My voice is competing today in Round One of March Madness Poetry at Think Kid Think. Please stop by and read some great poems and vote!

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Testing Timer of Oz

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Greg Armamentos, PARCC timer, students, testing, Wizard of Oz on March 10, 2015| 12 Comments »

SOL #10

This post lifts a line from Greg Armamentos. He wrote this most wonderfully expressed lament over PARCC testing.

Before we jam thermometers

into students

to measure

their current temperature,

Before we dig up

the seed we planted

to see if it is growing,

We must set the timer,

But not any timer.

Computers must be off.

Cell phones must be locked up.

No ticks or rings.

No sound but the deep breaths

of our students in the pressure cooker.

The district gives permission, my pretty,

to use the Promethean timer.

Does the great and powerful district know

that the Smart board has no brains of its own,

let alone a heart?

–Margaret Simon

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Celebrate March!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged acrostic poetry, chalkabration, Dr. Seuss on March 7, 2015| 15 Comments »

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

SOL #7

March has come in like a lion, and I have made it through the first week of the Slice of Life Challenge. Time to celebrate!

Some of my students missed Chalkabration last week. So we made winter acrostics. Lani, 3rd grade, says she’s not a poet and yet, she used the word metamorphosized!

Metamorphosized butterfly
Arrives vividly
Rising
Caterpillar
High flying.
by Lani

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! This is our brave librarian who dressed up every day this week as one of Dr. Seuss’s characters. We had special days to celebrate, crazy socks, crazy hair, and mismatched.

Jacob’s mother teaches across the hall from me. She occasionally texts me things he says. This text is an all time winner! My heart swells!

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The Poem in the Tree

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged 15 Words or Less, Laura Purdie Salas, Nature poems, oak tree on February 20, 2015| 11 Comments »

Join the roundup with Linda at Teacher Dance.

I like to keep my poetry in practice, so I often enlist my students in my pet projects. I love Laura Purdie Salas and her blog site. Every Thursday she posts a picture and asks writers to post a poem comment using 15 words or less. Not every Thursday, but many of them, I show her image to my first bunch in the morning. We talk about the image, someone rings the sacred writing bell, and we write.

Yesterday, Laura posted an old tree. I listened to my first grader, the youngest of the bunch, explain to a fifth grader what he needed to do. “Look at the picture. Then use your imagination.” We read Laura’s poem and Jacob said, “I’m stealing the word squirrels.” I swear this kid could lead a writing workshop already!

Old Tree by Laura Purdie Salas

I posted this poem early in the morning. The tree image reminded me of the old live oak in our backyard.

Grandmother Oak

With footholds to climb
Eyes that see time
Stories in my rings
Come swing.

–Margaret Simon

Grandmother oak in the sunset

Then I wrote again with my students.

Stories told
from a wisdom of scars
wrinkled into skin
like crevices on this old tree.

–Margaret Simon

If you would like to play, go to Laura’s site on Thursday mornings. It’s a fun place to be.

Old People

Two old men
bickering every day
scaring nature away.
These old hags
should calm down.
–Tyler, 6th grade

Another poetry practice project I am doing is on another Laura’s site, Laura Shovan of Author Amok. I am joining some fabulous poets writing to sound prompts. Check it out!

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Magic, Optical Illusions lead to Poetry

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, tagged National Geographic photo of the day, Wonderopolis on February 13, 2015| 10 Comments »

Join the roundup with Cathy at Merely Day by Day

This was a week all about magic. We started the week with a visit from Magic Mike, not the one you are thinking of, but a magician from New Orleans. I knew him when he was a teenager performing at birthday parties, and now he is on his way to an international magician competition this summer. One of my students is ~~obsessed~~ passionate about magic. It was amazing to watch the two of them go back and forth showing tricks and slights of hand.

Then on Wonder Wednesday, we looked at optical illusions on Wonderopolis. So today when we used an image writing prompt, the National Geographic image of two penguins in Antarctica, our minds were on illusion.

Jacob is a first grade gifted student fairly new to my class. He often needs more prodding and questioning during writing time so that I have to give up my own writing to help him. Not so today. At the end of our quick write, he announced that he had a poem to share. Five minutes or so earlier he didn’t even have a word written for the word list pre-writing activity. I gave permission for him to “steal” any of the words other writers had shared. I was moved to tears when I heard his poem because I knew it signified a turning point. Jacob is now a writer!

Two Penguins

Two penguins walking in fields of popcorn.
Their love is black and white.
Sliding their bellies on the icy snow.
–Jacob, 1st grade

See image here.

My poem reflects the mood of the class, magic, illusions, and a little bit of Valentine’s Day love. Matthew created a card trick to go with my poem. He turned an ace of spades into an ace of hearts.

Spade to Hearts: A Magic Trick or Illusion?

I see a black spade
on Antarctic ice.
Mountains majestic, jagged, and tall
protect this frigid land
where two penguins
frozen in time
become a symbol
of love.
–Margaret Simon

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Ancora Imparo

Posted in Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Michelangelo, teaching writing on January 27, 2015| 14 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

This weekend I heard a presentation from an independent school principal. She told us that every first Friday the faculty and staff wear t-shirts that display the Italian words, “Ancora Imparo” which translates, “I am still learning.” They use this quote attributed to Michelangelo to show the students and parents that all are learners at their school. At first I felt a little envious. Wouldn’t I like to be a part of a school with this motto? But then I realized that I am a part of that motto.

Last week one of my students, a second grader, was reading about the chicken and the egg. You know, that age old question, which came first? But in the process, we read together that scientists believe that the chicken is a relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. “Mind Blown!” That’s what my kids say when we learn something unbelievable. When the older students arrived, Andrew made an announcement. There was a dramatic reaction. Fun! Learning! And I am right there with them.

When my students write, I write. I let them know my struggles, my worries. They all know I struggle with rhyming. They help me. We are all learners. “Ancora Imparo” “I am still learning.” I never pretend to know all the answers. We discover them together. We share in the learning.

Some days I worry that I don’t teach enough. I coach. I lead. I keep discipline…somewhat. But standing in front writing something on a white board that students copy or read and subsequently learn, that is not my style. I do not need to pine over another school’s philosophy. I just need to embrace my own. Maybe I’ll design my own t-shirt.

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Thesaurus Poetry

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Poetry, Teaching, tagged Billy Collins, Canva, thesaurus poem on January 25, 2015| 5 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

When my students were working on their One Little Words, I discovered how much fun thesaurus.com can be. I was curious if there was a form for thesaurus poetry. A Google search turned up a funny metaphorical poem by Billy Collins. You have to love a sarcastic poem that ends with a love story between two words.

I would rather see words out on their own, away
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.
See complete poem here.

The assignment: Choose a word. Write it in capital letters. Find 4 synonyms. Write those in a second line. (Pick the easiest word to rhyme for your last word.) Then write a phrase that ends with a rhyming word. As a class, we wrote this poem.

MAGICAL
Imaginary, mythical, enchanting, spellbinding
Potions of my mind unwinding.
–Mrs. Simon’s Caneview class

I let the students go. When one or two were getting frustrated by line placement on Kidblogs, I suggested Canva. We have talked about design before. More than ever, I watched them wrestle over design. One student got frustrated that every background cost a dollar, so she said, “I just made my own background.” She used the plain color background and added free icons. She also changed the coloring on the icons. I marveled at her quick turn around.

Digital Literacy should be more about the literacy than it is about the digital. Technology enhanced my students’ poems with design and allowed them to share their work globally. However, the most value was in the play and problem-solving with words and language.

Erin created her own Extraordinary design for her OLW thesaurus poem.

Kielan’s mother is getting married in June. What a sweet gift.

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Digital Plan B

Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged OLW, tagxedo, Wordle on January 11, 2015| 4 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Vannisa used Canva to design her OLW.

Sometimes the best laid plans… Well, you know how technology is. I had planned for my students to use Tagxedo to create word webs for their One Little Word. The work was going well. They were having fun on Thesaurus.com finding synonyms, but when trying Tagxedo, the app was not working properly. I did some troubleshooting. I updated, but we were running out of time. So I quickly moved them over to Wordle. There is a feature for sharing that I had not used yet in Wordle. If you save to the “Public Gallery,” you get a link that the students could put into their blog posts. If Java was working, the link worked.

Sometimes, Plan B is the answer. I wanted my students to find synonyms feeling like this was good literacy work. Placing them into a word cloud was fluff. Either way, they enjoyed exploring, writing about, and designing their OLW this week.

After all I found Janet Ilko’s Slide Share for doing the One Little Word activity. If you haven’t done this lesson yet, you may be interested in her way of teaching it. There are many ways to add digital literacy into the classroom. As teachers, we have to find the ways that work for us and for our students (within the constraints of district usage and computer updates.)

Link to Emily’s OLW Wordle.

Erin’s word is Extraordinary.

Link up your Digital Literacy posts today:

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Bonkers over Bandicoots

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged acrostic, Animoto, Australian mammal, bandicoots, student poems, Wonderopolis on January 9, 2015| 10 Comments »

Find more Poetry Friday at Tabatha’s blog, The Opposite of Indifference.

Do you know what a bandicoot is? I didn’t. Neither did my students. We looked at bandicoots for the Wonder of the Week. After we read the page, watched the video, talked about the words, my new little first grader announced, “Now we write a POEM!” After only a few months he knows how my teaching flows. So, of course we did.

One of my colleagues found the poem Benjamin Bandicoot by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson.

If you walk in the bush at night,
In the wonderful silence deep,
By the flickering lantern light
When the birds are all asleep
You may catch a sight of old Skinny-go-root,
Otherwise Benjamin Bandicoot. (Read complete poem here.)

I asked my students to use alliteration in their titles and use at least 3 facts in their poems. I wrote, too, and settled for the acrostic form. It took me all day to write. Acrostics are not as easy as they look.

Busy
Australian marsupial
Nesting in a pile of leaves
Darkness cloaks
Insects are a delectable snack.
Creature with a ratty tail
Outback wanderer
Over land forager
Terrified of a bush fire,
Busy Bandicoot skedaddles.

Kielan worked more than a day on her poem and even created an Animoto video with it. I love her title, Banjo Boomsnicker Bandicoot.