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DigiLit Sunday: From Poetry to Science

Posted in Blogging, clmooc, Digital Learning, Gratitude, Teaching, Writing, tagged Emaze, poetry, Wonderopolis on October 25, 2015| 5 Comments »

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When my student Vannisa wanted to write a fall poem, she looked to the skies. She wrote this poem including the science of meteor showers that occur in fall.

As We Fall

As we fall into winter,
the weather chills
and the leaves come down.
They fill the ground with
a fiery red
and blazing orange.

As we fall into winter,
we can no longer watch fireworks
like 4th of July,
but we can watch
the shooting stars of
Orionids and Leonids
and watch the days get shorter
until Spring comes back again.
–Vannisa

She had a blog comment on her poem asking her more about the Orionids. When she was looking for something to research for her Wonder of the Week, I suggested the meteor shower. Each week I have my students use Wonderopolis to read nonfiction and respond by writing about what they learned. They then have the option to create a class presentation using technology.

Vannisa had to expand her research beyond Wonderopolis and this was my intent all along, that some little spark would send my students into real, authentic research.

Click the image to view the Emaze.

Know: Orionids is a meteor shower that occurs in late October. A shooting star is a meteor and not an actual star. The name for the shower is Orionids because most of the comets will be toward the constellation Orion.

Wonder: What Causes a Shooting Star?, Where Is the Big Dipper?, How Many Stars Are In The Sky?

Learned: A meteor is formed from rock that burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to look like a streak of light in the sky. A piece of a meteor is called a meteorite. The Big Dipper is mostly referred to as a constellation, but it’s actually an asterism. Our galaxy has about 200 billion to 400 billion star. Scientist predict that there are 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Based on the latest estimates, astronomers guess that there are 300 sextillion stars in the universe which is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is 1 billion times 1 billion times 3!

Burning Question: How did they find out how many stars there are?
https://www.emaze.com/@AICIROTW/orionids

Days when learning and creativity come together I realize the true joy of discovery. I strive to give my students the open door that will lead them on their own journey of learning, not down a path I have designed, but one they have chosen. It doesn’t happen every day. But with Vannisa and her spark of interest in meteor showers, these two paths converged and made meaningful learning. Through blogging, she was able to share it with others. Win. Win.

Add your own Digital Literacy posts here:

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Celebrating Field Trip Fun

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Writing, tagged Aquarium of the Americas, field trip on October 24, 2015| 5 Comments »

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

The Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans, Louisiana

My students started a count down 6 weeks ago when they first heard we were going on a field trip. The day finally arrived. We boarded a charter bus at 7 AM and headed toward New Orleans.

First stop, the aquarium. They wandered among sharks and jellyfish and even touched a stingray. We watched the feeding of the penguins. We decided to buy a new class pet, a penguin named Ernie after the oldest penguin at the Aquarium.

While we were having lunch, the best daughter in the world walked from her office and brought me an iced latte. A double treat, a chance to give her a kiss and the caffeine that is much needed to sustain a day long field trip.

It’s right about here that one of my students decided to run through the water fountain. I really did not think ahead on this one. I didn’t think I needed to explain to gifted students that water makes you wet. He had to sit in his wet clothes in the Imax theater. A colleague,who was trying her best to calm my anger, told me this would be a logical consequence. (I am now able to see the humor of it all.)

The Imax movie told us the story of Hurricane Katrina. I did end up with one student clinging to me. It was intense. We must tune in the loss of wetlands in our state. This movie was visual proof.

Our last stop was the Insectarium. Here we enjoyed eating bugs. Yes! They were full of protein and covered in flavors.

The butterfly garden was magical. Two butterflies landed on Emily. Now Emily’s usual mode of transportation is running, hopping, skipping, but here in the warm garden, she slowed down and held out her arm. One of these friendly butterflies stayed on her hand for a while. A little miracle.

This morning I am celebrating a full day of adventure, fun, and learning. On the bus trip home, I announced a quiz bowl competition. The Audubon Nature Institute provided resources for educators. We printed out a scavenger hunt for the kids. On the bus, we awarded points for answers. My team didn’t win, but I plan to reward them anyway. All in all it was a great day!

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Text to Self Connections

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Padlet, text to self connections, Voxer on October 20, 2015| 15 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for Tuesdays Slice of Life Challenge.

I largely believe that my blog audience is fellow teachers, but sometimes I meet readers on Main Street, and sometimes they call me on the phone. Both happened to me this weekend. I saw Mac at a local art gallery for Art Walk on Saturday evening. He started up a conversation about reading aloud and how he was happy I was doing that with my students. He told me about how his family read aloud, and he passed it on to his kids and grandchildren, and now even great grandchildren.

I got a phone call from a friend who wanted to tell me that she appreciated the work I was doing with kids to connect reading to their own lives. She shared that she is going through something very difficult, and my posts help her. What? Really? I was moved to tears.

Receiving praise for writing reaches farther and deeper than any other kind of praise because writing is so personal. I want to bring this type of understanding to my students along with the joy and pride of knowing their writing touched someone else. I work to build connections for them. On our kidblog site, we have connected to other classes. I encourage them to find a student from another class to connect with.

We teachers talk with our readers about making text to self connections. Usually these connections seem false. When we make those connections together around a shared text and then share them globally, this writing holds more meaning. The stakes are higher. The voice is authentic.

On Padlet, I posted this question for students to write about in connection to the Global Read Aloud, Fish in a Tree: “In Fish in a Tree, Ally doesn’t tell anyone about her trouble with reading. She has an opportunity in Mrs. Silver’s office and even with her mom, but she resists out of fear. Have you ever had something so troublesome that you just didn’t know how to or were afraid to tell the truth?”

To get them started, I posted my own story.

When I was very young, maybe around 6, I was playing with matches outside with the neighbors. Before we really knew what was happening, the yard was in flames. The blanket for our “campout”, my favorite doll, the pillows from my brother’s bed…in flames. Fear sent me inside. I climbed in my mother’s lap and cried and cried. She got very angry because she was on the telephone. Finally I squeezed out the word “Fire!” and she went running. I don’t remember much after that moment, but to this day I feel very guilty about that accident.

When my students read it, they immediately gasped, “Matches? You played with matches?” My mother now knows the whole story, but I still cannot shake the guilt and trauma of burning the front yard. That spot in the grass seemed to stay black forever.

I sent out a Voxer message to colleagues in California, Ohio, and Illinois. They responded by writing their own stories. So my students had 4 adult models to read Monday morning before writing their own. Thanks Julianne, Julie, and Phyllis.

Click on the image to see the Padlet.

I am excited our writing is becoming richer and holding more meaning. Making connections with text, then having someone else connect to our own writing is a powerful way to communicate and spread kindness and understanding.

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DigiLit Sunday: Student Mentors

Posted in Digital Learning, Writing, tagged book club, Kathleen Sokowolski, Lisa Eickholdt, Prezi, student mentor texts, Voxer on October 18, 2015| 1 Comment »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

This week I joined a Voxer book club organized by Kathleen Sokowolski from the Two Writing Teachers around Lise Eickholdt’s book Learning from Classmates. The conversation is inspiring and thoughtful. I am getting many ideas about supporting the writing in my classroom. I am also able to share in a safe place about my own triumphs and failures.

(We’re only one chapter in, so if you want to join, contact Kathleen.)

In the book, Lisa encourages us to use student work to notice, name, and note a craft move within a student’s writing. Her book features real images of real writing done by kids with all the flaws and the filled in bubble exclamation points. Most of the writing my students do is on their blogs, so this is typed. I actually love this because when I am looking for text to use to mentor a writing move or to teach a grammar skill, it’s there at my finger tips. When I want to feature student writing here on my own blog, I can copy and paste it straight on over.

My students write a Slice of Life story each week. I am trying to push them to elaborate more and one of my students just point blank asked me for a lesson on how to do that. I have not been a huge fan of Prezi as a tool for presentations in the past. The other day I opened it up just to give it another shot. I chose a pre-formatted background, so the rest was easy.

Feel free to share and use this presentation. You may even be able to edit and add in your own student mentor text.

Click on this image to go to the Prezi.

If you want to join this week’s round up of Digital Literacy posts, please leave a link.

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Celebration Saturday

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Writing, tagged #GRAFIAT, Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Padlet, Voxer on October 17, 2015| 5 Comments »

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

“Give yourself the kind of care you would insist on for someone you love.” My Enneathought of the Day. I needed to hear this. I have taken a few naps this week and feeling guilty about it, my body insisted on it. With this advice from the masters, I feel better knowing that I listened and obeyed my body’s needs.

I am celebrating Global Read Aloud! I celebrate the power of reading aloud in the classroom. It does so much to build a community of readers. We are reading Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s Fish in a Tree. My students are gifted. Many of them read early and quickly advanced to a higher reading level. Ally, the main character, is dyslexic. She cannot read. My students have a hard time understanding this. All the more reason we should be reading about it as a community.

Jacob, 2nd grade, said, “If she can talk, why can’t she read?” Ah! He is slowly understanding that his ability is a gift.

We are joining a larger community of readers on Voxer. We are listening to responses from classes in Illinois, California, and Ohio. How fun is that!

And because my students want the chance to Vox, they are being better listeners and writing their notices and wonders. If they write and share, then they get to record their message for others to hear. Powerful learning going on!

Emily sketched her idea of Ally’s head.

My students are also sharing on Padlet. This week they read embarrassing moments and shared their own. Click here to see the padlet.

I am loving these connections and look forward to our reading together over the next weeks. Send me a message if you would like to join in.

My satsuma tree

Celebrate fall: The satsumas are ripe, juicy, and yummy. I love free fruit!

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Writer’s Block

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, reader response on October 16, 2015| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up with my dear friend, Amy, at The Poem Farm.

Mrs. Simon, I don’t know what to write.
Oh, no! I don’t have anything to write about!
I have writer’s block today, Mrs. Simon.

These words echo in my classroom regularly. Why? Because we are all writers. And we all know that writing is hard.

I asked my students to write long about a book we are reading. (Global Read Aloud: Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly HUnt.) You could hear the sighs. For some reason, that bad word…long…sent them into total fear. So I saddled up to the computer connected to the board. After stumbling over the necessary technology to get them to see what I was writing, I set about modeling a long writing.

I actually surprised myself that I could do this on-demand-in-front-of-everybody writing from nothing. But I realized that it all comes from practice. I just started typing and the words came. My students laughed at my typos as I was trying to type quickly. They noticed that my long writing was only 140 words. The assignment became less intimidating.

Yet, one of my best writers sat in front of her computer not typing. And it seemed the longer she stared at the blank page, the harder it got for her to start. I didn’t have a very good answer for her. It happens. We’re writers. We are going to have those days when nothing comes to mind. So I let her leave class with this instruction, “Think about what you may want to write about and we’ll start again tomorrow.” Some writers need time to think.

I know this is Poetry Friday, and you are asking yourself, “Where’s the poem?” Sometimes with writing, you need to write about what you need to write about.

Kielan is a writer. She is in 6th grade, and I’ve taught her since she was in second grade. She’s had her share of writer’s block, but she is connecting with Ally in Fish in a Tree. This is her long writing about how she was bullied like Ally.

In Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s book Fish In A Tree, Ally’s at the restaurant where her mother works. Her mother is a waitress there. While Ally is at the restaurant suddenly her “friends” walk in. Shay and Jessica walk in the restaurant and start talking to Ally.

Ally tries to resist them, but her mother thinks she should talk with them. Her mother doesn’t know what Shay and Jessica do to Ally. They talk to her about the sympathy card Ally gave to their teacher. Something similar like this happened to me too.

I was in 4th grade when it happened. A girl named Emily was in my class. Every time a teacher was near she was nice to me, but when there was no teacher near she was mean to me. When she was nice to me I would reject her and then I would get in trouble.

She sat right in front of me in class and we were kind of enemies. I had to read aloud in class and answer the question. I read the passage right, but I got the answer wrong. Then she got called on and she got the question right. She looked at me, gave me a mean look, and then rolled her eyes. After school she saw me in Mcdonald’s at Walmart. She called me smart, her friend, pretty, and nice, only because my mother was around, but then the next day at school, she called me dumb, mean, her enemy, and ugly. She made me think I was dumb. Just like Ally felt in the story.

I made my own quote. “Trust no one” and “Never trust a phony with anything”.–Kielan

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Redemption

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged mustard seed, redemption on October 15, 2015| 7 Comments »

Join the Spiritual Thursday round up at Reading, Teaching, Learning.

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Mercy on me Every Day

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged confession of sin, mercy on October 8, 2015| 3 Comments »

Join the Spiritual Thursday round up at Reading, Teaching, Learning.

Mercy, we all need it. Every week during our Sunday service I kneel and say the confession of sin.

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

Some days, however, this prayer is incomplete. Mercy is more than forgiveness. Mercy is relationship with God. We need mercy even when we have not left things undone. We need mercy even when we’ve loved our neighbor. We need mercy because we love God with all our heart, our mind, our strength. We need mercy.

Most merciful God,
help me to speak the words of kindness.
Guide my thinking toward goodness.

Help me see the light that shines in everyone’s heart;
I will see You there.

Fill my thoughts with truth; Give me grace to know when
to reach out
and when to step back.

Show me your light; Help me stand in its glow,
not in its shadow.

I need your mercy,
love, and patience
every day.

I am yours and You are mine.
We are in this together.
Have mercy on me.

–Margaret Simon

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Reading Level Injustice

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Accelerated Reader, Choice Literacy, Cynthia Lord, Reading levels on October 6, 2015| 20 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for Tuesdays Slice of Life Challenge.

I opened up my Choice Literacy email newsletter on Friday afternoon, and the subject heading caught my eye, “The Tyranny of Levels.” Exactly what I had experienced that day. For my post title, I did a thesaurus search for a not-quite-so-volatile word and found injustice. My students have been suffering the injustice of reading levels.

Last year one of my gifted students lost her mother. This is a difficult loss for anyone to endure, but Emily was nine. Now she is ten, and the wound is still very fresh. She doesn’t talk or write about her mother. Last year she wouldn’t read any book that was sad. She is not an avid reader anyway and to find books for her has been difficult.

This summer I read A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord. I worked with an online book club, so I did writing work with this book. I knew the book. I have connected with Cynthia Lord on Facebook. She even tweeted to us during our Twitter book chat. Needless to say, Cynthia, A Handful of Stars, and Emily are all close to my heart.

I never once thought to check the reading level. Emily read Rules and wanted another Cynthia Lord book. I did not tell her that the character in A Handful of Stars lost her mother. The book centers around a developing friendship. But Lily’s loss is always there, in the back of her mind, and especially when her new friend Salma’s mother does something motherly. Emily was struggling to finish the book, so I called her over and we read a few chapters together. We both teared up at the line, “It was a mom thing.”

The next day she came in triumphant, “I finished the book!”

I asked, “Did you take the AR test?”

AR is Accelerated Reader. It’s a program designed to test students on their independent reading. I’ve never been a real proponent of the program because the questions are all low-level comprehension questions, but the students receive points and the school has incentives for these points. Since my students read independent books, and it is something they can receive rewards for, I try to encourage my kids to take the tests.

Emily’s eyes looked down. “No, I can’t. My reading level is 4.6 and the book is 4.4.”

I understand the purpose of finding out a student’s reading level, but I do not understand limiting a child’s reading choices by requiring they read within their level range. The school (not the district) bought a testing program that sets the levels and blocks tests that are not within the level.

I believe… I know that reading is not about levels or tests or points. Reading is so much more. I will continue to find books to meet my students’ needs and interests. I have sticker charts up for each child to track the number of books they read. We have a pyramid poster with a whole class goal of 175 books this year, and we are well on our way to meeting that goal. I will not let reading levels limit my students’ choices.

From Choice Literacy, in the words of Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris (with hats off to Kate DiCamillo), “Moral of the story: Holy bagumba, don’t let reading levels flush away common sense.”

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Celebrating Fall Chalk-a-bration

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Chalk-a-bration, Digital Learning, Writing, tagged chalk poetry, Chubby Carrier, fall poems, Malala Yousafzai, Zydeco on October 3, 2015| 10 Comments »

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

Fall is in the air…Whew Hoo! Morning temperatures almost require a jacket. Yesterday morning one of my students exclaimed, “It’s freezing!” I laughed. Because after daily temps in the 90’s, the 60’s feel like freezing.

The sugarcane is at its tallest. I drive to school through walls of tall sugarcane. Soon it will be harvested and the fields burned and the scent of sweet smoke will make fall-scented wind.

My students love the end of the month Chalkabration time. We pulled out the colorful fall colors and chalked poems. We had been discussing imagery in writing, so I was pleased to see imagery in their writing.

My husband and I love to dance. Thursday night we actually skipped our dance lesson to go dancing. One of our favorite bands was playing. The night was perfect. The crowd was amazed by the young rubboard player. She was incredible, dancing and playing along in beat with the band.

Chubby Carrier

A shout out to my blogging friend, Holly Mueller. She wrote about her students responding to Malala Yousafzai’s Nobel Peace Prize speech with a hashtag. We watched the speech this week. My students were enthralled. They created hashtags and wrote passionately about her influence.

My hashtag is #inspirational because Malala gives the best advice in my point of view. Here are some of my tough questions and the answers to them. My first question is ”Why should girls go to school?” This is a question that Malala asked. I would say that the answer to this question is: girls should go to school because they should be and hopefully will be treated like every one else in humanity!!! Why do they even need a reason to go to school???? WE GIRLS MATTER!!! –Lani

#TakeALeap

“We have already taken many steps. Now, it is time to take a leap.” Malala believes that we have a done a lot to fight for children’s right to education. She believes that this should be the last time to fight for education. Every child deserves this because we are the next generation in the world and we can’t make it great if we can’t simply go to school to learn. –Vannisa

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