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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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Saturday Celebration

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #crazycomments, #DLDay, MMPoetry on March 14, 2015| 10 Comments »

SOL #14

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

I had a rough week physically, fighting congestion and cough and feeling generally yucky. Yet, there are still many moments to celebrate. I like to collect these moments on my phone and look back to see that this has indeed been a week to celebrate.

I have been eliminated from the MMPoetry 15 in round one. I gave it a good shot and now, according to Ed, I am part of the “club.” My students knew I was going to get beat as soon as they read the competing poem by Tiffany Strelitz Haber. It’s hard to compete against Mr McStuffins baking muffins. I am proud of my Poetry Friday friends who moved on to the next round. Good luck! Be sure to follow the next brackets and vote. It’s a great learning activity to do with your students.

My students are slicing away. Friday was Digital Learning Day. Our activity was a crazy comment challenge. I offered candy prizes for comments. (Skittles for single comments and Dum Dums for 10) Two students wrote 50 and got a treat from the lounge. I offered the challenge on Twitter and Holly Mueller’s class took it on.

Because I have small groups of students, I am able to celebrate birthdays with a special treat. Vannisa wanted cinnamon rolls and apples and the apple peeler. I have an old fashioned apple peeler that spins the apples and slices in a spiral. My students love it, and it’s become a favorite for birthdays.

Book gifts are always a reason to celebrate. We had a book fair this week, and Emily’s grandmother bought 3 books for my class library. Two of my boys, Reed and Nigel, knew I wanted Terrible Two (teachers make a wish list), so they went in together to buy it for the class. How special!

On one of my lowest health days, I got a card in the mail from my friend, Jen. She made it herself. Isn’t it lovely? Despite the incessant rain, my nagging cough, and the loser poem, I feel lifted by my students and my friends. Celebrate!

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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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Overlooked

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing on March 9, 2015| 13 Comments »

SOL #9

This week’s photo challenge on Kim Douillard’s site is Overlooked. I had this word in mind as I drove to exercise on Friday morning. The full moon was still out while the sun was rising. The road to the gym was blocked. I was already late, so I decided to take some photos instead. I made them into an Animoto video.

Then I read Michelle Hendrick Barnes’ post on Poetry Friday. An interview with one of my favorite authors, Margarita Engle. Margarita’s ditty challenge was tied to her new book Orangutanka, a story of orangutans in tanka poems. The challenge: write a tanka, a form with a syllable count of 5,7,5,7,7. Then I looked at Heidi Mordhorst’s March poetry project and today’s word is preaCH. Could I work the two challenges together?

Sun overlooks
blessing a lonely smoke stack.
Coulee wildflowers
preach yellow sonnets
while moon graces morning clouds.

–Margaret Simon

I sent my tanka to Michelle and Heidi, so they are posting it today. Three times lucky!

My Juicy Little Universe

Today’s Little Ditty

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Books that make you Cry

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Donalyn Miller, Kwame Alexander, sad books, The Crossover, The Nerdy Book Club on March 3, 2015| 25 Comments »

SOL #3

Recently one of my mentors, Donalyn Miller, presented a two part post on The Nerdy Book Club about books that make us cry and why we love them. I lost my self-consciousness about this years ago while reading aloud Charlotte’s Web for the umpteenth time and crying once again. I decided it was OK for my students to see me tear up.

Some of you may know about my student Emily. She is a fourth grader whose mother died unexpectedly this fall. I wrote about her here and here. She has been reluctant ever since to read sad books. She gave up on Love that Dog when she read that the dog died. She gravitated to funny books like Flora and Ulysses and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

I have been reading The Crossover aloud in my classroom ever since it won the Newbery Award. My boys went crazy over it, hooting and cheering. No other read aloud has brought on so much enthusiasm. They begged for more. The book makes a wonderful read aloud with its rhythmic verse and creativity of language.

When I found out from a friend that there was a (spoiler alert!) death, I became worried about Emily. Should I stop reading? I didn’t think they would let me. I tried to skip a few days, but I knew I would have to keep reading. I tried to buy the book at Barnes and Noble thinking I could just let them pass it around, but it was not to be found. All out on Amazon, too. The only way to finish Crossover was to keep reading it from my iPhone Kindle app.

I decided to just confront Emily with the truth. I called her aside privately. (Actually, she visits me every recess, so that wasn’t hard.) I told her the truth about the book. I asked her permission to keep reading. I told her if she got upset, she could leave the room.

Today was the day. 88% left. Emily knew this would be the day. She was prepared. In the cabinet she had hidden a sign, “RIP Chuck ‘Da Man’ Bell.” She sat close to me, so when I choked and couldn’t get the words out, she read them. The boys were silent. It was a profound moment. As Kwame Alexander wrote in Basketball Rule #10,

A loss is inevitable,
like snow in winter.
True champions
learn
to dance
through
the storm.

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Reading like a Writer

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Augusta Scattergood, It's Monday: What are you Reading? on March 2, 2015| 21 Comments »

SOL #2

Join the IMWAYR meme.

I am a writer. This takes courage to say, and dedication to make it true. I have been working on a middle grade novel for a while. I started it in Teachers Write in 2012. If you are a teacher who writes, put this on your list of summer activities. Led by Kate Messner and featuring many wonderful authors, it’s the best writing camp ever.

So now that I am writing, my reading is pretty much confined to middle grade novels. This week I read Augusta Scattergood’s newest novel, The Way to Stay in Destiny. I had the pleasure of meeting Augusta at NCTE in the fall. We were fast friends. We made an easy connection since we both grew up in Mississippi, and we have people in common. The south is all about who’s your momma, who’s your daddy. Nevertheless, her books are as friendly as she is.

I had a favorite great aunt who we all called Sister, so I was particularly drawn to the character of Miss Sister. Miss Sister runs the Rest Easy (and a dance studio) where Theo is staying with his uncle, a Vietnam veteran. Miss Sister finds talent in Theo and encourages his piano playing. Theo’s uncle is full of anger that Theo’s piano playing exacerbates. Eventually, the uncle works through his anger, thank goodness, and comes to love Theo.

You can find an interview with Augusta Scattergood at Caroline Starr Rose’s blog here.

As a writer, I noticed some things about Augusta’s writing. In each chapter she includes inner thinking by the main character. This inner thinking keeps the reader on track by giving you a semi-synopsis from Theo’s head.

After school the next day, I sit on the Rest Easy’s front porch glider waiting for Anabel. Pushing away what my uncle said about moving, about my name, and about my parents, I stare at the heat rippling off the street. It’s hard not to turn into a sweat ball in Florida. (Ch. 13, p. 82)

After noticing this again and again, I went to my work in progress (WIP) to find a place that I could put in inner thinking/summarizing. Revision can be tedious, but when you are working with a book you like and using a technique you feel confident in, it becomes more like playing. How could I review the previous chapter in a natural way? Here’s my teaser from Sunshine.

Before we leave for Mae Mae’s house, I call Momma to do my daily check in. I tell her all about Sunshine’s new adopted egg, how Ms. Fullilove brought over a fertilized one from Mr. Jim, even about how Harmony will help tend to Sunshine, but I leave out the details about Harmony’s homelessness. I’m not sure yet what she might say. I think it best to tell her face-to-face.

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

I am taking time to read more carefully, to be aware of what authors do to draw me in. I am reading like a writer.

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PsyKu Poetry Form by Kids

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged haiku, Laura Purdie Salas, MMPoetry, new poem form on February 27, 2015| 28 Comments »

Join the roundup with Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe

I have discovered from being surrounded by gifted kids and showering them in poetry that they get adventurous and brave. They try new things in poems. And they invent new poetry forms.

This week I used a picture prompt as I often do. This week’s Robin Update from Journey North was a close-up image of a robin with a berry in its mouth. I introduced Laura Purdie Salas’ latest poetry project, Why-Ku. I haven’t read Mary Lee Hahn’s activities yet, but I doubt one of them is to create your own poem form.

I have a few boys who seem to find every excuse to get distracted from the task at hand, but this time I waited and allowed their distraction to see where this would go.

“Let’s write a Psy-ku?”

“Great! A Sci-Ku with scientific facts.”

“No, Mrs. Simon, not Science haiku, Psy-ku, like crazy.”

While the rest of us worked on poems about the robin, the boys were scheming and making up a new form.

They created a syllable count: 5,4,5,5,5,6,5,7,5,8

Then the poets three headed to our Kidblogs site to try to create the next poetry phenomenon.

Reed wrote, “A new thing that me REED and Nigel have created is called a psyku. This is an out -of-the-world dumb type of writing. You just make up a topic and have it carzyfied! It can be something about a dumb person or a wacky topic.”

I would skate Monday,
With unicorns.
I would skate Tuesday,
With Spongebob Squarepants.
I would skate Wednesday,
With the Greek Roman gods.
I would skate Thursday,
With Godzilla and Bigfoot.
I would skate Friday,
With another bottle of gin.
Nigel, 6th grade

I know the bottle of gin is probably not classroom appropriate, but I had to laugh. They didn’t really know what it was. Who knows? This psy-ku form may become a thing. If you are so inclined to give it a shot, write one in the comments or comment on our Kidblog. Go for it!

Here is a link to our Kidblog site: http://kidblog.org/class/SliceofLifeChallenge/posts

Announcement! I have been selected to be one of the 64 authletes in the 2015 March Madness for Kids’ Poetry. The competition begins on March 10th. I am totally intimidated by the competition, but I am Reaching this year, and what better way to reach than to do something scary. Here is the tournament poster. You can find me in the Passion category. Check Ed’s site for updates.

MMPoetry bracket Round One

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Spreading the SOL Love

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #sol15, #TWTBlog, Bayou Warrior, Slice of Life Challenge on February 24, 2015| 9 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I have been blogging since January, 2011. One discovery that has kept me going (teaching, writing, blogging) is the annual Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge in the month of March. This will be my 4th year taking the challenge along with my students. I am a believer in blogging. I have drunk the Kool-Aid.

I now have the best Professional Learning Community ever. These people are supportive of everything from surviving a bad day to winning awards. My cheering section is large. I want to spread the love.

Carolyn and I met about 5 years ago when we were both newbies in a school. Being a newbie can be uncomfortable, but Carolyn and I found each other and connected easily. Like minds, similar philosophies, everything to make for a lasting friendship.

Now Carolyn and I teach at different schools, but we try to have coffee every few weeks or so. Recently she was sitting in my kitchen looking at The New Yorker on the counter. She said, “You should submit a poem to this magazine.”

I said, “Yeah, right. In a million years.”

She said, “I challenge you!”

So I said, “I challenge you to start blogging and do the Slice of Life Challenge.”

She brought her laptop over on Monday, so I could show her a few pointers. “What should I write about?”

I said, “I don’t even know what I’m going to write about yet.”

Then we both cheered, because great minds think alike. We will write about each other!

Please welcome my friend Carolyn, the Bayou Warrior, to this amazing community. I know she will like it here.

I am truly humbled by her first post. Click here.

The blogging Bayou Warrior!

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From Mardi Gras to Meditation: Celebration

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Writing, tagged celebration, Mardi Gras, meditation on February 21, 2015| 6 Comments »

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

This week started with a celebration. My daughter, Maggie, is turning 30 this month. She created her own party to celebrate on Monday, Lundi Gras, in New Orleans. Friends and family came and enjoyed meeting each other. The greatest gift for me was having all three of my daughters together and happy.

Mardi Gras has a reputation for being quite the wild party. I hung out with my sister and her family. (See Slice of Life post from Tuesday.) We found a spot on St. Charles where families gathered. Everyone around was considerate while cheering for a happy celebration. My daughter’s boyfriend saw a prized LED mask fall at his feet. He knew my nephew would love it, but when he picked it up, he saw this girl atop her father’s shoulders. He handed her the mask. She put it on and wore it for the rest of the night. Practice random acts of kindness.

Nephew Jack sports a celebration mohawk and dangles beads in his father’s face. All part of the fun.

Lent has now begun. I had the traditional ash cross smudged on my head. I am preparing to celebrate a holy Lent, 40 days of reflection and meditation. A quiet celebration.

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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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