Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category
Celebrating Sky
Posted in Celebration Saturday, Creativity, Gratitude, Teaching, Writing, tagged #nwpianthology, #sky, journal decorating on August 23, 2014| 5 Comments »
Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
Every week Kim Douillard puts out a photo challenge from her blog site, Thinking Through my Lens. This week’s challenge word was Sky. Last night we went out to dinner near this pond and the sunset grabbed my attention. Using a filter on my phone, I captured this image.
Original photo (iPhonography) by Margaret Simon taken at Sugar Mill Pond, Youngsville, LA.
This was my first week with my students. It was so much fun to be back with them; although, a few were missing. (Moved on to middle school) We read together, decorated journals, and wrote poems about fireflies and cicadas. Two of my students, 6th grade boys, made me rubber band bracelets. My arm is very colorful.
Arm bands made by 6th grade boys.
Front cover of my journal for this school year.
The back of my journal.
DigiLit Sunday: Reflections on Make Cycle #1
Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Teaching, Writing, tagged #clmooc, Animoto, Canva, Connected Learning, Innovative Education, National Writing Project, Thinglink on June 22, 2014| 6 Comments »
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Please join in this meme designed to share our digital learning and challenges. Just as a teacher of writing needs to be a writer, a teacher of digital literacy needs to be a digital learner. Use this button on your blog post and leave a link with Mr. Linky. Please read and comment on other posts. That’s how connectedness and collaboration begin.
Reflection is another means to apply the Connected Learning principles of being Interest-Powered and Production Centered by considering what you’re making and interests are now, and what your orientation is for the immediate future. –Chris Butts, CLMOOC team
I have jumped right in to the waters of two digital challenges: The Thinglink Teacher Challenge and National Writing Project’s Making Learning Connected, a.k.a. #clmooc.
Yesterday’s email from the CLMOOC team asked us to make a list of three things and to reflect on two questions.
1. What I’ve made so far…
How to pick blueberries: Thinglink
Self avatar: Bitstrip
Digital Self: Thinglink
How to be water: Animoto/YouTube
2. What I’m working on:
Poster about writing in Canva: This is a higher learning curve than other apps I tried this week. I struggled and gave up. But I am determined to try again and conquer this!
3. What I want to work on:
Prezi is a presentation site that I am daunted by. I have seen others do great things with it, and I’m sure my students would love it.
Reflections:
What did you learn from what you’ve already made? I learned to be more confident in my digital self. The Thinglink challenge for this week was to make a digital self. I thought I had to draw something. I started working on my ipad with a new stylus and became quickly annoyed. Then I googled avatar and low and behold, there’s an app for that! I was surprised how easy it was. So many online apps can make you feel stupid, but some, like Bitstrips, made me feel smart.
What do you see as the purpose of making this week? The purpose for me always goes back to my teaching and being able to support my students in their digital learning. However, I also discovered that making was fun, and I was compelled to share (and show off). I want to invite you to take the plunge. Jump in the deep end because there are lots of supportive floatie people out there.
I wanted to make a blog icon for the Connected Learning values, so after writing this post, I tried Canva again. It worked better for this purpose. You should try it.
Celebrate Connecting and Creativity
Posted in Celebration Saturday, Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged #clmooc, Animoto, Creativity, Laura Purdie Salas, video, water on June 21, 2014| 9 Comments »
Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
This morning I have weeded the flower bed, swept the floor, and made spinach balls for tonight’s poetry reading and book signing. I am sitting down now and enjoying the rest. I wasn’t going to do a Celebration Saturday post, but why not? I’m happy in my home and should celebrate that in itself.
Because it’s summer and because I like to connect with other educators, I signed up for the Making Learning Connected Community or #clmooc.
Of course, I already feel behind. I participated in the Twitter chat on Thursday night. It moved so fast. But I got a little encouragement about my first make: a How To. I also learned about some new tech tools that I am saving for tomorrow’s DigiLit Sunday post. The best part of any PD challenge such as this is the connection you make with other teachers and makers. (Julie Johnson is a blogger who is also doing the #clmooc challenge. Check out her blog post here.)
I believe that in order to teach my students to be brave in the tech world, I must be brave. Just do it, as they say.
I waited for inspiration. It came late yesterday evening after my dinner was cooked and cooling off. I thought “How to be water,” inspired by Laura Purdie Salas’ new book Water Can Be. I downloaded the Animoto app on my phone, made a video of my cat drinking from the faucet as she wants to do almost all the time, and uploaded water images. This was quick and satisfying.
Today I celebrate connecting and creating. Have a wonderful summer solstice day!
Real Revision
Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Hunter Gibson, Jeannine Atkins, Kate Messner, revision on June 20, 2014| 16 Comments »
Join the Poetry Friday round-up at Jone’s site: Check it Out.
Revision? Ugh! If you are a writer, revision is a necessary evil. Maybe not evil, but definitely necessary. If I am going to urge my students to revise, I must experience it myself.
I have a copy of Kate Messner’s Real Revision in my stack of professional books for the summer. It’s already dog-eared, written in, and sticky-noted. Each chapter ends with a section “Meet Mentor Author…” I decided for this post that I would take one piece of advice and apply it to an old draft of a poem. However, when I got started, I went in a different direction.
I’ve “met” Jeannine Atkins through Poetry Friday. Her exercise in Real Revision begins, “Try It: Jeannine Atkins tries to use concrete nouns- specific, precise words- and verbs that really suggest action.”
I pulled out my poem “Singing the Blues” that I wrote in a wordlab setting. I liked it but felt that it needed work. Jeannine’s exercise helped me attack the challenge, but once I started pinpointing precise words, I also made other changes. This is a good lesson for my work with students. A revision strategy such as this one by Jeannine can be a starting point, but I also should encourage other changes. Jump in with finding precise words, then move on to confirming the theme, changing the order, or adding in senses, metaphor, etc. Revision can be endless. We should teach our students that it can also be fun and satisfying when your writing takes shape and looks like a bird that may fly.
My brother, the performer, Hunter Gibson
Find Hunter’s music on the web here.
Singing the Blues
My mother sang blues in rhythm with her cleaning,
mopped on out to the shade of the oak tree
to cool off and cool down. That Mississippi sun
shone like Jupiter on a summer night.We played with fire.
The front yard burned.
Smoke rose to the gods,
Chatty Cathy and a set of Lincoln Logs—ashes.
Mom cried when she saw her begonias
seared like sausage on a stick.I buried my Barbies in the flowerbed, knelt
beside the snake of Eden—I am a sinner.
I Guess that’s Why They Call it the Blues
echoes from the microphone.Brother now plays the keyboard,
sways his Elton John head
above the noise of a crowded bar.
Does he remember?We were only children, for God’s sake!
What did we know about heat and rage then?
Our phoenix rose long ago.–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
DigiLit Sunday: Trying out Thinglink
Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged amaryllis, ekphrastic haiku, Thinglink on June 1, 2014| 7 Comments »
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Have you heard about Thinglink? I’m not sure where I first heard about it, but I recently was invited by Thinglink to give it a try. From what I did so far, it looks like another presentation site based on images. When I went to the site, signed up, and logged in, I was stuck. There was no place to click to move forward. Finally after some frustration, I hit the back page button and found on the home page the button for Learn More. That took me to a page that had a button for Create. There I was able to move forward and create a page. I uploaded a picture I took on our afternoon nursery trip. Since I had previously written a poem about an amaryllis, I recorded it on Soundcloud and was able to link it to the picture. I also linked an information page about the amaryllis.
I embedded the image here, but the links do not embed. You have to click on the link to go directly to the Thinglink page to get to the links.
Thinglink allows for adding students. I am interested in trying this out with my students, perhaps on a research project or to write about a book they’ve read. Have any of you used Thinglink with students? I’d love to hear about your thoughts and ideas.
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Flow
Posted in Gratitude, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged altered books, Creativity, flow on May 27, 2014| 10 Comments »
Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
For the last two years, I have made an altered book using poems I have written beside my students. An altered book is a hardback book that has outlived its time, been discarded from the library, or left behind at Goodwill. I usually try to find ones with fairly large pages that are sewn, not glued, to the binding. I take out some of the pages and glue a few together to thicken each page and create space. Then I use Gesso and paint to cover the pages. My students have the option to make an altered book for their poetry project.
Here are a few of my favorite pages from my book this year. Vannisa found the sign, “Keep Calm and Write Poetry” that became my front cover. The marbleized paper was made using a technique with chalk and water. I covered some of my pages with gelli-printed papers. When I work on my altered book, I enter Flow, a term Csikszentmihalyi used to describe that zone of creativity one enters when something is at the right level of challenge. Flow is energizing and motivating.
Altered book cover
Page one begins with A for anaphora
Making a collage of printed paper makes an interesting background.
Images fuel my writing.
Hyperlink Poems
Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing, tagged Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, fibonacci poem, hyperlink, manatee, Wonderopolis on May 18, 2014| 4 Comments »
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Sometimes I teach a lesson in writing workshop, and the students apply it right away. Sometimes they don’t. A few weeks ago, a blogging friend (if it was you, let me know in the comments) wrote about using hyperlinks in blog posts. She was doing a research unit with her students. I thought how cool would it be to write a poem and put in a hyperlink. I made the suggestion that my students go on to Wonderopolis (which they love) and read about a favorite topic and write a poem about it including a hyperlink. One of my students even commented, “Why haven’t you taught us this before?” But none of them did it.
Choice is important to me in writing, so I didn’t freak out. On Friday, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater offered a challenge on The Poem Farm for students to write a poem about a manatee. And Friday was my last official day with my students. I thought there would be no way we could fit that in with writing a letter to me and having a popcorn and apple party. Not to mention they were leaving an hour early to go out for Character Day activities. But two students took the challenge. They read Amy’s poem, watched the video, and wrote a poem using a hyperlink.
Later in the day, I had a few other students at school #2 also take the challenge. I tweeted Amy, and she tweeted back that in honor of my students, she would adopt a manatee. How cool is that!
Manatee
You are sometimes known as sea cows.
Shallow, slow areas are where you choose to browse.
You are actually related to elephants,
and you’re big, graceful, and elegant.
The great Manatee is who you are
And truly you are the ocean’s star.
Brooklyn
Image from Wikimedia commons
Manatee, my Friend (a Fib poem)
great
what have
you done to
deserve this treatment
you will be safe soon my dear friend.
–Tyler
Since I will be out of school, I’m not sure if I should continue this round-up. What do you think? Should we keep it up over the summer or take a break and come back with full force in August? Let me know in the comments.
Link up your post with Mr. Linky. Come back and read other posts. Don’t forget to comment. That’s what makes the blogosphere go around.
Celebrating Happy Endings
Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Gratitude, Teaching, tagged altered books, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, magnolia, Margarita Engle, watercolor on May 17, 2014| 9 Comments »
This was my last week with my students for this school year. I always get reflective at this time of year, wondering if I’ve done enough for my students. So yesterday, our last day together, I asked them to write me a letter. I asked 1. What do you remember about our school year? 2. What was your favorite activity? and 3. What was your greatest lesson? For the most part, I was touched by their letters. I just want to share a few quotes and celebrate them.
This year we got to meet Caroline Starr Rose and Greg Pincus! We went to Mississippi! We saw a haunted house! But most of all, we bonded like a family. That was my favorite activity. My greatest lesson is that you don’t have to be famous, or super smart, or handsome, or even popular to be loved. Matthew
My greatest lesson I’ve learned from being here is to not be afraid to make mistakes as a writer and in life. Mistakes will help you to become a better person. No one is perfect and sometimes all of us forget that. Brooklyn
My students finished their poetry projects. They made altered books out of discarded books. They illustrated and glued in their own poems and some favorite poems by other authors. Vannisa put in a collection of some her favorites from the school year, a bookmark from Margarita Engle, A bookmark from Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, and “Keep Calm and Write Poetry.”
Brooklyn’s poetry book cover. Gotta Love Poetry!
Today, I am also celebrating magnolias. They are in full bloom, our state flower, and I went to a watercolor workshop this morning and painted one. I am posting a picture of a real one from my neighbor’s yard and the one I painted. Wish I could also post the scent.
Watercolor magnolia by Margaret Simon.
Magnolia, the Louisiana state flower.
Poetry in Math Class
Posted in Blogging, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Betsy Franco, Math Poetry on May 16, 2014| 9 Comments »
Poetry Friday Round-up is with Elizabeth Steinglass.
State testing is done, so I took the opportunity to shift focus in my small math group. In this group, I teach one 4th grader, two 3rd graders, and one 2nd grader. The resource I used was Betsy Franco’s Math Poetry. In this book, there are mentor texts from Betsy as well as student models. Each type of poetry is explained in simple instructions with a form for copying.
My students wrote a draft on the form and posted their poems on our kidblog site. For a final product, they made accordion books. I am not usually a fan of using fill in the blank forms for writing, but these leave space for creativity as well as the safety of a formula to follow. It was successful for my young students. They enjoyed writing and especially loved posting on the class blog. (If you click on the blog link, you will also see that a group of boys had a good time challenging each other with Riddle-ku poems after Laura Purdie Salas.)
If I were 10 Centimeters Tall
If I were only 10 centimeters tall,
I’d use a sponge as my bed and the softest cotton ball as my pillow,
A remote control car would be my ride
An Iphone would be a plasma screen T.V.
I’d watch out for rats which would be a horrible beast.
But it would be seriously fun if I could be 10 centimeters tall,
I’d be the world champion in swimming in your kitchen sink.
by Emily, 3rd grade
Emily’s accordion book
160 Beautiful Bows (an addition poem)
160 beautiful bows
On a cheerleaders head.
80 of them shimmer in the light,
The other 80 speak to you.‘You can do it’
Together,
They make a perfect couple
Which is a cheerleaders dream.They can have shimmering
Speaking baby bows.
Oh how I, Kielan,
Would love
To have some bows like that!–Kielan, 4th grade
Fractions of Me
1/6 of me is a poet like Shakespeare
I come up with lovely, sweet, and cute poems.1/6 of me is a artist.
I can get inspired by any little thing.1/6 of me is a nature lover.
I hate when they cut down trees.1/6 of me is a singer.
I will sing about anything.1/6 of me is a dancer.
I can dance as grateful as a swan.1/6 of me has a wild imagination.
I see dogs dancing and unicorns kissing.
–Erin, 2nd grade
Erin’s Fractions of Me accordion book
Bridge Opening Ceremony
Posted in Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing, tagged Joe Daigre Bridge, Mayor Hilda Curry, New Iberia, project based learning on May 13, 2014| 6 Comments »
Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
This past Saturday was the culmination of a year long student project. We began working with the group of 6th grade gifted students in August. Each month we met together as a group, 6 teachers and 23 students. In the beginning we immersed the students in the theme we had selected for this year, bridges. We brought in speakers including the chief engineer for a bridge being rebuilt in New Iberia. The bridge had been out for more than two years, and some of our students were well aware of the inconvenience this caused. Barbara Ostuno, chief engineer, piqued their interest in the construction of a real bridge. As discussions over a service project were held, the students brought up the bridge and how we could celebrate its completion. Thus we began to plan a bridge opening ceremony.
In January, Mayor Hilda Curry came to visit our group. She spoke to them about the ins and outs of planning a community event. She explained how the original bridge was built by her grandfather when he was mayor. The new bridge will also be named for him, Joe Daigre. She then invited them to meet with the department heads to talk about their ideas. We planned a field trip for February.
On this trip, we started the day bridging the generation gap by meeting elderly in an assisted living facility. The students played games with them and interviewed them for a later writing project. They wrote essays about their grandfriend and submitted them to the Legacy Project contest.
In the afternoon, we met with the Chamber of Commerce about a ribbon cutting for the bridge opening and with the city department heads. This was incredibly empowering to our students. They gained confidence in knowing their voices were being heard and were important to others. They were having real world experience being community organizers.
Raising Cane’s manager and employees joined the celebration.
As a group, the students decided to raise funds for playground equipment for a local park. They went out looking for sponsors for the t-shirts. They gathered 30 donations of $50-$250 each.
The students presented their plan to the City Council at a regular meeting in March. We even brought some council members to tears as they were touched by the students’ poise and enthusiasm. A few students and teachers represented our project to the school board and received a donation from the superintendent.
All of this work culminated in our event on Saturday. Wearing our student-designed t-shirts, we met at City Hall to walk down Main Street to the new bridge. The bridge is named for our mayor’s grandfather, so it was fitting that she cut the ribbon.
Students spoke and led the ceremony. At last count, the donations and t-shirt profits were close to exceeding $3000. I feel pretty confident that this real world experience will stay with these students for a long time. They will drive over the Joe Daigre Bridge as parents and tell their children about the grand opening celebration that they helped to organize.
Reflections on the Teche 