Reflections on the Teche

DigiLitSunday: Digital Design

January 29, 2017 by margaretsmn

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Digitally enhanced iPhone image

A few weeks ago, I set up a plan for the month of January DigiLit posts. I promised to tweet the topic on Thursdays. I have not fulfilled that plan. I have been barely making it with a tweet on Saturday. Forgive me. I’m adjusting the plan somewhat. I’ll place the topic for next week in the current DigiLit Sunday post and tweet a reminder on Saturday. If you are writing posts, or want to join us, please go to the Google doc to add your information and your topic ides.

I enjoy playing with photographs on my phone using various photo-enhancing apps. The technology available to us today allows for regular people like me to make cool, professional looking photos with a click.

My students have discovered that in their Kidblog, they can change, manipulate, add features, etc. to their avatars. While this is fun, it can take away time from focusing on the real stuff of blogging, the writing. What place does digital design have in our classrooms, if any?

I struggle with this question. I think it is important to encourage creativity in the classroom, but where does creativity end and just fooling around begin?

My answer has been in setting purposes for digital design and creativity. When my students work on blogging, the design for their posts must serve a purpose. The design should communicate. Setting backgrounds, changing fonts and font size, manipulating images should communicate a tone or theme.

What are some ways you encourage digital design in your classroom? Join the conversation with the link below.

I am blogging for Kidblog. To see my latest post on Tapping into the World of Wonder, click here.

Next week’s topic comes from Maria Caplin: Increasing student vocabulary beyond definitions.

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education | Tagged Digital design, Kidblog | 4 Comments »

Celebrating Poetry and an Invitation

January 28, 2017 by margaretsmn

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

There are those weeks that seem to go on and on, yet offer nothing to be celebrated. Sometimes I have to look harder to find the bright spots. I am actually ashamed that I felt this way yesterday because this morning I looked through my mail and found so much to celebrate.

I signed up for a poetry postcard exchange. I thought the giving and receiving was over, but this week I got three more poetry postcards.

New Year poem cards from Sylvia Vardell with a Wonder Woman stamp.

Poem from Donna Smith:
Listen to the sounds
crunching, munching, lunch a foot
Leaves nourishing earth

Handwritten poem and card from Kim Urband:

Summer Storm
Stone-gray clouds steal azure sky
Lightning stabs, singes
Liquid silver glazes hills
Relinquishes to Rhapsody

–Kim Urband

This sweet, uplifting message from Joy Acey:

My body feels electric like new years fireworks
blazing in starlight.
I want to raise my arms
to twirl and dance in the moonlight.
Poetry fills me
and runs out of my pen.
May the force be with your poetry.
–Joy Acey

And an invitation to my daughter’s wedding in March. Here we go again!

This week I read aloud Preaching to the Chickens about John Lewis’s childhood. I wanted my students to know his name and to have a better understanding of the fight for civil rights. This book is beautifully illustrated. One of my students, Madison, was inspired by the paintings to draw her own yard of chickens. I love the personalities of each of her chickens.

Chickens by Madison, 3rd grade.

I didn’t have to look very hard to find these celebrations today. What are you celebrating?

Posted in Books, Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Teaching | Tagged Donna Smith, Joy Acey, Kim Urband, Poetry Postcard Exchange, Preaching to the Chickens, Sylvia Vardell, wedding | 12 Comments »

Poetpourri

January 27, 2017 by margaretsmn

Poetry Friday round-up is with Carol at Beyond Literacy Link

Challenges can be fun. Challenges can be…well…challenging. Donna Smith posted a challenge to write a poem using all the lines given out by the visitors to her blog. She collected the following lines:

Buffy Silverman: ferocious women who never bring you coffee
Donna Smith: always leave a wild song
Linda Baie: dreaming women do art in poetry
Buffy Silverman: where wizards and wolves rush by in a blur of green and gold and gray
Kay McGriff: ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones
Linda Mitchell: waking the world to a new day
Margaret Simon: steam that climbs like smoke from a fire
Carol Varsalona: fearless women reach out, connect, and find joy in life’s intertwined moments
Tabatha Yeatts: little chest to put the Alive in
Joy Acey: wear loose clothing and a smile
Jan Godown Annino: I feel like there should be more stories out there for girls, and I try to tell them
Mary Lee Hahn: ferocious women do not exaggerate
Brenda Harsham: make a ferocious dinner that eats masks, drips truth and saves softness for dessert
Keri Lewis: radical at their core
Kiesha Shepard: ferocious women would rather drink the wind
Diane Mayr: out of endurance, exaltation

One of the rules was to break the rules, so I did. I didn’t use all the lines.

Here is my poem:

Dreaming women
wake the world
reach out
to find joy in life’s
intertwined moments.

They write stories
where wizards and wolves
rush by. Their stories
sing like steam
that rises, smoke from a fire–
a wild fire!

Ferocious women
never bring you coffee.
They make a ferocious dinner,
save softness for dessert
and a smile.

Take advice from us:
Ignore the awful times.
Dream on.
Leave a wild song.
Drink the wind.

To see other poetic responses, go to Donna’s site for the link up.

Now for a very important announcement: The winners of Here We Go! If you see your name here and you haven’t gotten an email from me, please send me your address by email.

1. Jane Whittingham

2. Joanne Duncan

3. Leigh Anne Eck

4. Linda Mitchell

5. Kimberley Moran

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing | Tagged collaborative poem, Donna Smith | 20 Comments »

DigiLitSunday: Balance

January 22, 2017 by margaretsmn

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

stones-1372677_960_720

The image above makes me imagine metaphorically that I am that big green rock holding in balance the different colors of my students. Teaching is a delicate balancing act. As teachers, we must set goals for our students, individually and collectively. Our job is to get on the train every morning and move down the tracks to that goal. (Excuse the mix of metaphors.)

Sometimes one student can topple the whole balancing game. We must stop whatever it is we are doing and pay attention. Focus on needs rather than goals.

This week I had to call on a colleague for help. I was not meeting a student’s need, and I wasn’t sure where to go next. I had tried many directions, but none were working very well. This is humbling. However, I found strength and comfort in the shared experience. Reaching out when you feel defeated is tough to do. I am so grateful now that I did. My student is better for it. I am better for it.

My students write every day. Writing is a brave act. So different from answering questions or working out a math problem. Writing is personal and hard.

This week one of my goals was teaching essay. The kind of essay that testing will require in which the student writes about a literary element (in this case, theme) comparing two texts. We worked with a nonfiction article and a poem.

During a conference with one of my students, I read aloud to her what she had written. “Blah, blah, blah” was her response. “I can’t stand writing essays. They’re so boring!” After our chat, she typed up her boring essay. I had to laugh when I read it. She began with, “Hey, world. Listen here!” And at a later point, she wrote, “Now that is awesome!”

My students need to be able to express themselves. Sometimes these expressions come out in loud exclamations, quiet tears, or interjections. No matter the goal, needs may throw us out of balance, or may be the very thing to keep the balance.

Please join the conversation by leaving a link below:

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing | Tagged goals, needs, writing | 6 Comments »

Poetry Friday: Here We Go!

January 20, 2017 by margaretsmn

Poetry Friday round-up is with Violet.

here-we-go-books

I am pinching myself today. I just got my shipment of Here We Go, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong’s latest Poetry Friday project. These two amazing women have been gathering poets in anthologies for years. I met them a few years ago at NCTE at the Children’s Literature Lunch. They handed me the Poetry Friday anthology for Science. This is how they are. Their goal is to get poetry in the hands of teachers who will pass them on to children.

At NCTE 2016, I saw Sylvia and Janet in a hotel restaurant. They were eating breakfast. I just walked right on up. This time they handed me You Just Wait. We took a picture with my class’s mascot, Jack. Before we said good-bye, I said, “I want to write a poem for you.”

janet-and-sylvia

“Well,” exclaimed Janet, “It just so happens we need one more poem for our next book coming out before the inauguration.”

“In this book, we want to empower the voices of girls. Do you think you could write a poem from the point of view of a young girl who wants to do something she’s been told she can’t do?”

“Of course I can!” I didn’t really say that. I said, “I’d like to try.”

I had no idea my poem would be next to poets like Naomi Shihab Nye and Carole Boston Weatherford. I’ve long admired Poetry Friday contributors such as Michelle Heindenrich Barnes, Kate Coombs, and Robyn Hood Black.

I absolutely love the format they have used for this book! The subtitle is “A Poetry Friday Power Book.” Included are 12 powerplay prewriting activities, 12 anchor poems, 24 new poems to join them together,12 power2you writing prompts, and 12 resource lists for young writers and activists. The poems work together to create a story of community, bias, acceptance, and activism. Each “Power Pack” can be used by an individual writer or by a teacher with her class.

Please join me in celebrating this new book by leaving a comment. Janet and Sylvia sent me 5 extra copies to give away. Leave a comment by Friday, Jan. 27th to be entered into a random drawing for a free copy.

powerpack-5

girl-grit

response-poem

Posted in Writing | 27 Comments »

Slice of Life: Bookstore Magic

January 17, 2017 by margaretsmn

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

New Orleans Little Free Library

I took the opportunity of an extra day this weekend to visit my daughters in New Orleans. My cousin and his family met me for lunch on Monday. Then we headed over to Blue Cypress Books, an uptown used book store. I listened while my cousin’s wife read aloud to her second grader. I pulled favorite books off the shelf to suggest to the 5th grader. We made our book stacks.

“Mom, how many books can we get?”

“When it comes to books, we don’t set a limit. We look at which ones we really want to read.”

I wandered over to the poetry section. Have you ever had a book call out to you? Say, “Here I am waiting for you!”

I picked up “A Year with Rumi” and opened to January 17th. How did Rumi know that this was the poem I needed today? Book magic happens in used bookstores.

rumi

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I also bought two quote magnets. Bookstore magic.

bookstore-finds

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing | Tagged Blue Cypress Books, Little Free Library, Rumi | 16 Comments »

DigiLitSunday: Fake or Real?

January 15, 2017 by margaretsmn

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Personally I have become very suspicious of news lately. The skeptic in me is showing. On social media, I hesitate to click through to a website for fear of ad invasion or some pop-up wanting me to sign up, and then there’s the creepy fact that everything you search becomes part of your history and everyone knows. I placed an order on Jet.com and for a week, every website I went to popped up a Jet.com ad. Really? Modern day commercials geared to who some cyberspace robot thinks I am.

How do we protect our children in these times of everything is news, real or fake? When the topic came up, I originally thought I didn’t need to worry about it. Our school district has safety blocks in place; however, lots of fake news sites have ways of circumventing these blocks. And in the name of good research, my students were finding them. Time for a talk.

Armed with chart paper, I wanted to find out what my students already knew about the difference between fake and real news stories. Here’s what we came up with.

fake-real-news-chart

Then I asked my students to pick a story on the internet that they are interested in investigating and write about their findings. One student made an interesting discovery when she wanted to find out if Donald Trump supports LGBT rights. She was confused by the reports and the images of Trump holding an LGBT flag. Which is true? In this case, both. So now we are on to another issue, what do we believe by the actions and the words of a person in politics? My response was yes, it’s confusing, so write about that!

Kevin Hodgson tweeted a Google slide show that he created for his students. I plan to show this next week to keep the conversation open.

I don’t have all the answers. This world of news at our fingertips, real or fake or just plain confusing, can be daunting. I want my students to be discerning citizens. So I keep the doors open. We wonder. We question. We look for answers.

Please add your link to the conversation below.

Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, Writing | Tagged fake news, Kevin Hodgson | 13 Comments »

A Case for the Acrostic

January 13, 2017 by margaretsmn

Poetry Friday round-up is with Keri at Keri Recommends

On Tuesday, I posted a Canva image that I had created with an acrostic poem about my One Little Word, Cherish. Michelle Haseltine commented, “Such a simple poem and yet, so beautiful and touching. I am not usually a fan of acrostic poems, but you have me rethinking my position, friend.”

So I decided to make a case for the acrostic poem.

noun

a series of lines or verses in which the first, last, or other particular letters when taken in order spell out a word, phrase, etc.

I understand the argument. This form is simplistic and can confine the writer and stifle creativity. However, if we let it, a form can challenge the writer to search for unique language and a stronger meaning.

This week, we worked on our One Little Word projects. I showed my Canva acrostic as a sample. We talked about words and synonyms, making use of the online thesaurus. Type in your word and click on synonyms to find more words. Some of my students took this task seriously and found new and unusual words, like vivacity and whimsical, as their chosen OLW.

Dictionaries were on hand for finding words that started with a given letter. When Jacob came to the letter R in his word, Inspire, he read rainbow, and created the following line.

jacob-rainbow-quote

Some students stuck to the one word for each letter, but some created phrases. Emily decided to make each line have a simile. This pushed her to think not only about her word choice, but also about what each word meant to her One Little Word.

Acrostics are simple, but it can be a good pattern for word play and a deeper search for meaning.

vavicity-olw

whimsical-1

Kaiden oneword.jpg

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing | Tagged One Little Word, student acrostic poetry | 23 Comments »

Cherish Acrostic

January 10, 2017 by margaretsmn

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

An activity I like to do with my students for One Little Word is an acrostic poem. We use the dictionary and thesaurus to find synonyms. While I worked on my own acrostic, I thought about the different ways I want to Cherish. I used Canva to create an image of my poem.

cherish-acrostic