I Am What I Am

I just had a book group finish one of my favorite books Because of Winn Dixie.

If you have not read this book, I highly recommend you give it a read.  When the students were done reading, I wanted them to show me their thinking about the book.  This time I had the students write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  

During my graduate program with the Ohio Writing Project at Miami University I took a class on writing multi-genre papers.  One of the assignments was to write an "I Am Who I Am" poem.  At first I did not think that I would enjoy the assignment.  When I gave the poem a try I wrote the poem in the voice of Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  I instantly fell in love with the style.  Later for my final project in the class I wrote an "I Am Who I Am" poem in the voice of Piggie from Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie series.

When I have the students write these poems I always give them a copy of my original Ivan "I Am Who I Am" poem.  Here is the copy of the poem that I give to the students:

I am what I am and I am a gorilla     I am what I am The One and Only Ivan     I am patient as stones    nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days      in my domain     put on display     only company my Not-Tag, a dog, an elephant, and a little girl     

I am what I am I am an artist    an artist who paints to hide the pain     an artist without an audience      except for a little girl     an artist who can see the beauty surrounded by so much ugliness    

I am what I am I am a prisoner   a prisoner who just realized their prison    a prisoner who committed no crime     a prisoner who forgot the other side

I am what I am I am a friend    I am a friend      I am a friend who made a promise     I am a friend who made a promise he cannot keep     I am a friend who lost his friend

I am what I am I am a rememberer     I remember what they did to my parents    I remember what happened to my sister Tag    I remember the roller coaster and the trip through the drive-thru     I remember the dumpster that they dumped my friend into

I am what I am I am a protector     I am the protector who must not let it happen again    I am protecting her to keep my promise    I am protecting her to protect myself

I am what I am I am a silverback      I am a silverback strong and mighty      I am a silverback who must protect his friends     I am a silverback who paints to gain her freedom    I am a silverback with a message     I am silverback with no words even though they would be easier     I am a silverback      

HOME

I am what I am I am scared     I am scared for it is all new      I am scared I miss my prison     nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six days     I am scared in this new domain

I am what I am I am free      I am free as a gorilla can be in a zoo     I am free to be with the others     I am free to be an artist     I am MUD

I am what I am I am The One an Only Ivan      

After that I let the students go and write their own poems.  For this project I wanted the students to write their poem in the voice of Opal or Winn Dixie.  Here are some of my favorite bits from the pieces:

I am who I am I am Opal a little girl who is lonely

I am who I am I am a daughter of a preacher and a mom who left me long ago

I am who I am I am lonely I am a girl who needs a little company in my life

I am who I am and I only know

ten things about my mother but the

most important thing is I know that she

loved me very much

I am who I am and I need a little company in my life

I am who I am I am a do I am

a dog named Winn Dixie I am a dog that 

was lonely and lost and beat up

I am who I am I am a special dog

I am a special dog who becomes 

a little girls company and friend

I am what I am I am a girl.

I am a lonely girl.  I have a dog.  I have

a dad that stayed and a mom that 

ran away.

I am what I am a owner of a 

dog    A dog that looks like a piece of wet carpet

MOM

I am what I am a question asker

I ask about my mom    I ask about the hurt

I know I will be happy,

My company a preacher, a girl,

two ladies, a man, and sweetie pie Thomas,

with two bald headed boys.

I am what I am I am a friend     I am a friend

to a helpful little girl     I am a friend

that will follow you from place to place

I cannot tell you how much I love this writing. 

I hope that you are all having a great week. 

The Reds are on the Radio

Nothing beats driving home from school today and getting to listen to Marty call a game.  I love listening to baseball and having the voice of a Hall of Famer call the game only makes it that much better.  I cannot tell you how excited I am about baseball being back.

This is a new part of my classroom that I am so excited about using.  I stole this idea from Mrs. Buskirk who stole the idea from someone at Berry.  The idea of the board is to have a place to assess what the students know.  For example today after we had spent time thinking about putting the steps of how a bill becomes a law in sequence, the class had to answer a question.  The students took a post-it note and wrote the answer.  Then they brought the post-it note to the board and stuck it in their spot. The board allows me to quickly see who understood and who needs a bit more practice on the topic.  

We also used the board to share our favorite sentences from our at home reading.  This is a way to check up on the students, but I see it more as a way to check on my teaching.  If students are not understanding a concept, the board will tell me and I can reteach.  

I hope you are all having a great week.

Share Time

It is hard to pick my favorite part of the day.  I could pick the conversations that we have after read aloud.  The class raising their hands wanting to share more and more about what they are thinking as we read.  I could pick the moments when we race to find a word in a dictionary or race to put the steps of how a bill becomes a law into proper sequence.  The energy in the room as we race to show what we know.  I could pick from a million different parts of our day.  Lately, though, the best moments have come at the rocking chair when students share their writing.

I wish we could let everyone share each day but unfortunately we do not have the time.  Students rush over to show me what they have written.  Today the students had even more to share than usual.  I had notebooks left on my desk, so I could read the writing while students were getting ready at the end of the day.  I even had a student come see me before school to share what she had written last night.  I read notebooks as students lined up waiting to leave.  I loved reading all this amazing writing.  I thought I would share a bit of some pieces that I have heard over the last two day.  This first bit of writing is about a football game.

They mocked us, trash talked about us, they said we couldn't do it.  Because a team with 14 players can't beat a team like them in second grade because they said they were the best.  A year later the game is here the rivalry that has gone on for years and I joined that rivalry against Springboro.  We came toe to toe.  Head to head at our home field.  Ready to defend our turf.  And we did we took it to them.

I love this opening.  That list to start the writing is just amazing.  Also the toe to toe and head to head, sounds amazing.  Here is part of a piece on a lumberjack.

One two three the lumberjack chips pieces of wood.  One two three wham, boom, crash.  Trees fall one by one.  The echo of the axe comes flying like a bird through the black and mysterious night.

These are just two examples of some of the amazing examples I get to hear each day.  I know I could not write like this when I was in fourth grade.  Our students constantly amaze me with their thinking and their writing.  I cannot wait to see all the writing I have waiting for me tomorrow.

Hope you are all having a great week.

Volume

I found this picture today on a tweet from the Prairie Lands Writing Project.  This picture is the perfect thing I needed after listening to Penny Kittle talk about volume.  What will make our students better writers?  What will make anyone a better writer?  Writing....More Writing....Even More Writing.  

Today I talked to the class about our Red Pen Writing.  Every Monday and Wednesday from now on I am going to ask the students to write for ten minutes at home in their writer's notebooks.  They can write about anything.  They can write in any style.  I just want them to write.  We are going to call this Red Pen Writing because I bought a massive supply of red pens for the class.  When they are writing at home on Monday and Wednesday, I want them to write using their red pen.  If they lose the pen, all they need to do is ask for another pen.  

You would think that most of the students would have been upset about me telling them about Red Pen Writing.  I know that not all students are probably excited about this new idea but some of my favorite questions today when we were talking about our Red Pen Writing included: "Mr. Tarr if we want to write for more than ten minutes, is that OK?" and "Mr. Tarr if we want to do Red Pen Writing on Tuesday and Thursday and Monday and Wednesday, is that OK?"  

I love our class.

We also got a new teacher in writing today...Jane Yolen.

I love Jane Yolen.  She is an amazing author. 

We are going to spend the next few weeks noticing things in Jane Yolen's writing.  This will be very similar to what we did earlier this year with Cynthia Rylant.  To introduce Mrs. Yolen to the class we read Owl Moon.  I typed all the words from the book out for the students.  I wanted them to see the beautiful words that she used as I read aloud.

When we were finished listening to the book, I read the story again and had the students think about their favorite lines.  The students used pencils to mark their favorite parts.  In the end we forced the students to pick just one line or part and highlight the section.  Then we went around the room and students read aloud their favorite sections.  The read aloud sounded very similar to a poem in the round.  Tomorrow we will have students write their favorite parts of the book on sentence strips and we will work on making a class Owl Moon poem.

After all this, it was time to write.  I showed students how I was going to lift a line from Owl Moon to start a bit of my own writing.  The students could try this technique or write about a time they did something special with someone they loved or write about anything they wanted.  The students went off and they wrote.  The writing as usual blew me away.  Tomorrow I will share some of the amazing pieces that students shared at share time.  

Hope your week is off to a great start.

Dublin Literacy Conference

On Saturday I got to attend the Dublin Literacy Conference in Columbus.  It was amazing.  I love the chance to listen to other teachers and experts in our field share their ideas.  I went to Dublin thinking that the highlight of the day was going to be Penny Kittle (who was amazing), but the real highlight was the turnout by Lebanon teachers.

Teachers and principals from Donovan, Bowman, and Berry seemed to be everywhere.  I even went to a session where the spectacular Megan Ginther (fifth grade teacher at Berry) presented her ideas on literacy contracts.  I was amazed at the dedication of these teachers and administrators who gave up a Saturday (and a beautiful one at that) to better their craft.

I loved my conversations throughout the day: talking to Mrs. Reuber about former students and understanding just how much she knows and cares about her students, thinking of ideas with Mrs. Nemo about how to reset our focus to make our students love reading, reconnecting with Mrs. McHenry about books and writer's notebooks, being reminded by Mrs. Winchell that it is always about putting students first, chatting with Mr. Waspe about ways we could connect the amazing things that are going on at Berry with the amazing things going on at our other schools, and all the other conversations I had throughout the day with other Lebanon teachers.

Penny Kittle was the keynote speaker of the day.  I also sat through two session where she talked about conferring and writing.  I have been looking through the notes that I took through her sessions and the notes are filled with brilliant nugget after brilliant nugget.  The two main pieces I will be taking away from her presentations are let the book do the work and volume.

Let the book do the work is such a simple idea.  It means if you really want a student to read and fall in love with reading, you have to find the right book for that student.  I know we have been reading some amazing books this year (Flora and Ulysses, The One and Only Ivan, Flotsam, and countless others) but I really want this to be the focus of the rest of my year.  I want to get that one book into the hands of the students that will make them fall in love and see the power of reading.

Volume...I will talk more about volume later this week.

These conversations and sessions were priceless and will only make me a better teacher.  Conferences like these recharge my batteries.  I hope the class is ready for this week, because I am going to be ready to go when that bell rings tomorrow morning.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Olympic Commercial

I love the Winter Olympics.  I am not exactly sure why but I love the Winter Olympics. I cannot skate.  I cannot ski.  I cannot snowboard.  I can barely sled down a hill without a major injury, but I still love the Winter Olympics.  This might explain why I picked an Olympic commercial to look at today in class.

Before we could look at the commercial, I had to revisit our claim from yesterday.  If you do not remember, we had looked at an advertisement for Pop-Tarsts.

The class had told me yesterday that this ad was making two claims: Pop-Tarts are fun to eat and Pop-Tarts are healthy.  I wanted to look at that second claim.  We always talk about supporting a claim with evidence, so we decided to look at the nutritional label and ingredient list to check the evidence of the claim.

I had the class read the nutrition part of the label first.  They were looking for evidence that Pop-Tarts were healthy.  The class quickly concentrated on the amount of sugar in the Pop-Tarts.  Then I had the class read the ingredient list.  According to the ad Pop-Tarts are "baked with real fruit."  The class searched the ingredient list for fruit.  We did find fruit but we were surprised to find apple and pear listed in the fruits that we found.  Even more surprising was the fact that Pop-Tarts contained less than 2% of these fruits.  Looking at the ad you would think there was a lot more fruit in these Pop-Tarts.  Then the class talked about whether or not they thought Pop-Tarts was being truthful with their advertisement.

Now back to the Olympics.  I wanted to keep thinking about this idea of claims so I showed this commercial to the class.

Just like yesterday I had the class keep a list of what they saw or heard or read during the commercial.  The class made a great list noticing lots of little things about the commercial.  Then we repeated the process of having the students write down the claim of the commercial.  

One thing I like about looking at these claims is that students can often find more than one claim in a text.  Most of the students focused on similar claims.  One claim that I heard over and over was that the ad was claiming that it is alright to fall or fail or crash as long as you keep trying.  I love this message.  I constantly tell the students that making mistakes is alright.  This commercial I think really drove that point home with some students. The students were able to tell me they thought this was the claim because in the beginning of the commercial everyone was falling, but by the end they had become olympians.  

Many students also thought the commercial was claiming that moms are responsible for turning us into the people that we become later in life.  The students talked about the moms putting ice on injuries and helping their children off the ice and lifting little ones out of this snow.  Then at the end of the commercials you see the moms in the crowd watching their children shine at the olympics.

I think the class is doing a great job of finding claims and evidence in the texts that we are looking at in class.  

I hope that you are all having a great week.

Looking At More Claims

I loved the warmth today.  We got home from school and instead of having to run in and turn on the fire we went outside and rode bikes.  I am done with winter.  I know that there will be more winter, but I got my first taste of warmth and I want more.

Today during school we looked at an advertisement for Pop-Tarts.

When the students were looking at the advertisement, I asked them to create a list of everything they saw.  The list was great as usual:

• I see red background
• I see words made with pop-tarts
• I see plump, juicy blueberries
• I see red, red strawberries
• I see the words baked with real fruit
• I see green and purple grapes on the vine
• I see the words made for fun
• I see frosting and sprinkles

The list went on and on and on.  I finally had to stop the class so we could take the next step.  For that next step I had the class think about what Kellogg's was claiming.  I made sure to remind the students  of the list we had created to help them to figure out the claim of the article.  I also wanted the students to tell me what in the advertisement helped to make the claim.

I was amazed how the class was able to figure out the claim of the advertisement.  I had many different answers but I will try to sum up some of my favorite, "Pop-Tarts is claiming that their pop-tarts are healthy.  They have pictures of fresh fruit and the words baked with real fruit.  They are also claiming that pop-tarts are fun.  The ad has the words made for fun and some of the words are spelled out with pieces of pop-tarts."

I wanted the students to think about why the ad had two different claims one of health and one of fun.  I asked the groups to talk about this at their tables.  I was glad to hear at every table the answers the healthy claim is for the adults and the fun claim is for the kids.  

I think this thinking that both classes was able to show was remarkable.  I cannot wait to think and share and write more claims in the next couple of weeks.

I hope your week is off to a great start.

Hero

Our hero unit is starting to pick up steam.  Today we started to read about Jason our second literary hero.  It was great to see the class make connections between Jason and Hercules.  As we are reading the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, we are having the students stop at the end of every few paragraphs and talk at their tables or in their groups about the most important words.  

The students are doing an amazing job of finding the important words in the text.  When the students pick a word, they have to have a reason why the word is the most important.  It is fun to listen into the conversations at the different tables about the most important word.  Some of the time the tables will all agree but I like it when they disagree about the word they are going to pick.  Then the students have to use the text along with their thinking to prove why their word is more important.  These mini-debates allow for some great discussions about the text.

In our read aloud our hero squirrel Ulysses started to fly today.  Threatened by a waitress at a doughnut shop he leaped and started to fly around the diner.  

The moment was important in the book because of the reaction of Flora's father George.  When George saw the squirrel flying around the restaurant, the way he reacted struck us as strange.  I thought the moment was a perfect time to stop and let the students do some extra thinking.  

The class took some time and wrote in their read aloud notebook.  It was amazing to see what the class was able to share about what they were thinking about this important moment in the book.  I cannot wait to see what happens next in the book.

I need to keep it short tonight.  I hope you are all having a great week.

The Pro/Con List

Nothing beats a good list.  I have my grocery list.  I have a list of albums I want to buy (very long).  I have a list of books I want to read (just as long).  I have a list of ideas I want to try in our classroom.  I have a list of things I have to do around the house (this one is my least favorite).  Lists seem to surround me and lately I have noticed a lot of lists in our classroom.

We have been keeping a list about what we know about Flora the main character in our book Flora and Ulysses.  In one book group we have students keeping a list of what they know about Preacher and Opal.  In another book group we have students keeping a list of things they know about Pacy.  In our reading about heroes we are keeping a list as a class of the characteristics that we think heroes possess.

In class today we added one more list a pro/con list.  I love a good pro/con list.  A good pro/con list can make decisions so easy.  This week our class has been thinking about the decision of making the school year longer.  The reason we are thinking about this idea is we read an article from TweenTribune (great site for nonfiction texts) about how Governor Christie wants to make the school year longer in New Jersey.

We read this article on Monday and I asked the class the question...Why can't the governor just do what the governor wants?  This question is going to guide us throughout the next few weeks as we think about state government.

I remember when I was young I thought that governors and presidents just got to make all the laws.  I want our students to understand this is not the structure of our government.  I want them to realize that our government separates powers so that one person does not have all the power.  I want them to realize why this is a good thing.  I think the Christie article is perfect to help students understand this principle.

Now back to our pro/con list.  After reading a few more texts about extending the school year, I asked the students to create a pro/con list about the topic.  The list was amazing.  On the pro side students listed that more school would better prepare them for college or a career, more school could help them compete with other students from other countries around the world, and that more school could help students retain information instead of losing the information they learned over a long summer break.  On the con side the class listed that lengthening the school year would allow for less time with family, less time to travel, less time for the brain to rest after a long school year, and many other wonderful ideas.

Then in groups the students looked at the pro/con list and thought about what they were going to claim.  Most of the students stuck with their original claim of not wanting to change the school year, but I did have a few students change their original claim and say that we should extend the school year.  Tomorrow we are going to use the pro/con list we made to add evidence to our claims.  Then students are going to stand and deliver their claim to the class.  I will fill you in on that tomorrow.

I hope you are having a great week and that your lists of things to do is not too long.

Finishing our Poetry

Our students have been working so hard on their poetry.  I have been so impressed with so much of the poetry that I have got to read.  Last week the students got back their first drafts.  I had taken them for about a week and written them a page of comments.

I love this idea of giving comments in the middle of the process.  I know when I got my comments back when I was in school the comments always came too late.  My paper was had been graded but at least now I knew what I could have improved.  This is why I love giving my comments in the middle of the process.  Students have an opportunity to look at their writing and make changes that might improve the piece.  It is quite fun to see the decisions that the students make as authors to make the poems shine.

We are also typing our final drafts.  I think this might be the most exciting thing to the students.  We have the laptop cart for the week.  Today the students just got a few minutes but tomorrow they will have more time to work on composing their poems on the computer.  Last week we had spent time with the laptops going over some basics.  We talked about saving, what the red underline means, how to get to the next line, and so much more.  By now the students are experts.

The class has also been reading poetry.  We have spent the last few days looking back at some of the poems that we have shared.  I know that most of the class has their favorites but the two poems that I have loved this year are "Plowboy" by Carl Sandburg and "Wolf" by Georgia Roberts Durston

PLOWBOY

AFTER the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.

The Wolf

Georgia R. Durston

When the pale moon hides and the wild wind wails,

And over the treetops the nighthawk sails,

The gray wolf sits on the world's far rim

And howls: and it seems to comfort him.

The wolf is a lonely soul, you see,

No beast in the wood, nor bird in the tree,

But shuns his path; in the windy gloom

They give him plenty, and plenty of room.

So he sits with his long, lean face to the sky

Watching the ragged clouds go by.

There in the night, alone, apart,

Singing the song of his lone, wild heart.

Far away, on the world's dark rim 

He howls, and it seems to comfort him.

Hope you are all having a great week!

The Voices In Our Head

First of all sorry about not blogging at the end of last week.  I will try to catch back up this week.  

The title of this blog post seems very dark, but I promise you it is not.  This summer I was rereading a professional book by Cris Tovani called I Read It, but I Don't Get It.  

This is how I would have described myself as a reader in high school and college, I read things but I really did not get what I was reading.  Things would quickly change for me with a few books that I read that taught me the things that good readers do when they read.

In Tovani's book she talks about the voices we hear inside our head when we read.  I love this idea of the different voices we might hear when we read.  I had never been told as a student that I should have multiple voices interacting with the text as I read.  The main voice we hear is the words of the text...our voice reading the book.  This voice is important but I do not think it gets you to comprehend the text.  It is those other voices that say things like, "What does this remind me of?" "What is going to happen next?" "Why is the character acting this way?" or any of the other questions that good readers are constantly thinking while we read.

I keep trying to talk to the class about the different things that our happening inside my head when I read.  I think too often students just believe they have to say the words of the text and they are reading.  I call this television reading.  All the students have to do is sit back and watch.  Real reading is different, real reading is more like playing video games.  The player is required to think and interact with the game.  Hit the "A button" to jump, the "B button" slide, and the "Z button" to crouch.

I hope that as you see our students reading you can ask them what they are hearing inside their head.  Are they thinking?  What are they thinking?  Did they start to think about getting a snow day and they need to go back to reread a section they missed?  You could also share what goes on in your head as you read. 

Hope you all had a great weekend.  

Conversations

I think that conversation is such an important part of a classroom.  I love it when our room is filled with conversation.  During read aloud we will constantly have students turn and talk about the book we are reading.  I think these conversations help with comprehension.  Students can bounce ideas off other students, they can hear different view points, or they can allow students to confirm an idea they have about the book.

One of my favorite ways to spark a conversation is with a silent conversation.  We have used these silent conversations a few times before and I have even blogged about using them before.  The idea of a silent conversation is simple...students have a conversation on paper.  One student writes an idea onto a piece of paper.  That piece of paper gets passed around the circle with other pieces of paper.  Students think about what other students have written and then add their thinking to the pages.

I think these silent conversations really allow some reluctant students to enter into a conversation.  I also love how the silent conversation allows students to disagree with others or even with me.  Too often I think students (while at school) are reluctant to disagree.  During our silent conversations students disagree in such a respectful way.  I hope the more we practice these silent conversations the more we will see these skills translate into our other types of conversation.

The silent conversation we had today centered around Hercules.  Some of the conversations revolved around what was Hercules hardest labor, is Hercules a hero, can heroes do bad things, and why does Hercules keep stealing even though he knows it is wrong.  It was so much fun to see how these different ideas forced students to share what they had learned from their reading and then add their own thinking to that text.

Today before school even started I got to have a great conversation about the book Notebook Know How by Aimee Buckner.

This is a book that a few of us Language Arts teachers have got together to read and discuss.  Today our discussion centered around the idea of helping students find ideas in their writer's notebooks and then get those ideas ready to draft.  It was great to hear what different teachers do to help their students think about how the ideas they have been creating in their notebook could be turned into projects.   

I hope you are all staying warm and having a great start to your week. 

Looking at Graphics

Today we started to talk a little about the upcoming Winter Olympics.  The newest Time for Kids has some great articles.  We did not have time to look at the whole magazine so we started by looking at a bar graph.  The bar graph showed the five most expensive olympics.  I was surprised to learn that Sochi was at the top of the list almost spending 50 billion dollars.

The class analyzed the chart and I simply asked them to tell me something that they noticed.  In an instant they all seemed to notice that the spending was increasing as the games became more modern.  This was simple to see, but then I asked the students to come up with reasons why the cost of Olympics was on the rise.  The answers blew me away:  newer technology might be used which would be more expensive, cameras are now HD cameras and might cost more, the countries might be having to make the events safer which would cost more money, more people might be coming to the games which would mean bigger venues which would cost more money, and the answer that amazed me security is being increased at Sochi which might be the reason for the high cost.

Then in Social Studies we continued to talk about federalism.  The class looked at this triple Venn Diagram.

I realize that might be small but this is a great visual text that shows how powers are divided between the different levels of our government.  Again I was amazed to see how quickly the class was able to comprehend this complex text.  

I love how we continue to look at these types of texts but also can still spend time reading more traditional texts in our class.  I know when I was younger when I did my at home reading it was always straight out of a book, but do not forget other types of texts.  If you find a great graph or pie chart in the newspaper, you might read that one night for your nightly reading.  I know I keep finding more and more of these examples of texts in all kinds of publications.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.