I am From Poems

Today is one of my favorite days.  I always love this day each year that I teach.  Today the class got to write what I call I am From poems.  To start I had the class cut out two poems.  The first poem is called Where I'm From by George Ella Lyon.

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
          from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
          and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
          with a cottonball lamb
          and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
          to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments--
snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree.

I love this poem.  Then I show the class my version that was inspired by the George Ella Lyon poem.

I am From

I am from the dirt of a thousand ball fields

The sun stained asphalt of tennis court after tennis court

I am from the chlorine of countless swimming pools

The grass stains of all the soccer parks

I am from city after city

state after state

country after country

finally settling down to find a home

I am from a teacher

and a pilot,

I'm from the plains of Oklahoma mixed

with the sun of Florida

I am from a pair made for

each other

I am from a mother who taught

who always had the food on the table

who woke before the sun to get me to morning practice

I am from a father who never

missed a point, a game, a set, a match

who always made the time

in the middle of a busy schedule

I am from the streets of the suburbs

flash-light tag, bikes with baseball cards in the spokes and backyard football

I am from the heart of it all

the Icky Shuffle, the wire to wire Reds, and hit number 4,192

I am from a house of quiet

but always surrounded with love

I am from the shade of the Black Oak

with a view where the Deer Run

After looking at the two poems and discussing what we notice, the class starts to write their I am From poems.  As usual we got together after reading and shared.  The poems the students wrote blew me away.  I think most of the students were proud of their writing and I hope they shared it with you.  If they did not, ask to see their poems.  As usual this writing will be in their writer's notebook.  

A Silent Discussion

A silent discussion...I know it sounds weird, but they are amazing.  Today we got to a crucial part of the One and Only Ivan.  Stella one of our main characters had passed away in her sleep and Ivan had made a promise to Stella that he was going to take care of the baby elephant Ruby.

I did not want the class to just briefly pass over this part of the book so I decided to slow things down and have a silent conversation.  A silent conversation is just what it sounds like.  Students have a conversation with their table and communicate through writing.  The room is silent but filled with conversation.  

I love these silent conversations for lots of reasons but reason number one is the students get to decide what they are going to talk about for the conversation.  Instead of me saying I want you to talk about this part of the book the students could pick any part of the book they wanted to discuss.  Most of our students decided to concentrate on what had just happened.  Then the papers are passed around the table and each student adds on to the conversation.  The papers make their way around the table and the students make the conversation "snowball" by trying to add more ideas each time they write. 

I was astonished at the work the students were able to produce.  Some groups talked about whether or not Ivan would be able to keep his promise.  Other groups talked about Mack, the owner of the Exit 8 Big Top Mall, and whether or not it was his fault that Stella was gone.  Another group talked about whether or not Ruby would be able to handle this event because she had already lost her family earlier in the book.

When we were all done students picked their favorite conversation thread from the ones they had at their table and shared them with the rest of the class.  This really allowed us to slow down and talk about this section of the book.  It did take a good deal of time but I thought it was so important to take this time and let students share what they were thinking about the book.

The Color Walk

Today we took a color walk.

During writing time we have been reading the book called a Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher.

I love reading this book to the class.  It describes how Fletcher uses his notebook as a tool to help his writing.  In the first few pages of the book he writes the line, "If you dig it, they will come."  I love this line and not just for the Field of Dreams"ish" quality of the line.  The idea refers to Fletcher digging a hole in his father's yard that then gets filled with amazing creatures.  "If you dig it, they will come."  

I have tried to tell the class if you write it they will come.  What will come?  Amazing little nuggets of writing.  I think Fletcher is correct, our notebooks are going to be filled with amazing things.  When you give students TIME to write they will amaze you.

Fletcher also talks about living a writerly life.  This was our reason for the color walk.  A writer needs to notice things and write them down.  So today we picked a color and wrote it down.  Then we walked around the school and searched for that color.  Students wrote down quick phrases to describe what they were finding and of course they were amazing because...if you dig it they will come.

I do have to admit the color walk we took today was the hottest color walk I have ever taken, but the class still did an awesome job.  You can find this color walk in the writer's notebook.

We also took some more time to talk about text-to-text connections today.  Instead of a normal text, we looked at some amazing pieces of art.

These amazing paintings were the texts that we used today to think about text-to-text connections.  I was surprised at all the different things the classes were able to say that these paintings had in common. I guess I did not realize how artsy things were going to get in my room with a color walk and analyzing some Edward Hopper paintings, but I really enjoyed the day despite the heat.

Schema

Today we continued to talk about schema.  I had students think of what they knew about chicken nuggets (not too surprising they knew a lot) and then I asked them to think about everything they knew about foie gras (not too surprising they they did not know a lot).  I reminded the students that they had schema for chicken nuggets but not much schema for foie gras.

Schema or background knowledge is another thinking strategy that can help our readers.  I tried to show the students how I make text to text connections while I read another Patricia Polacco book The Keeping Quilt.  This was the fourth Polacco book I have read in the last few days we also have read Thundercake and Mrs. Katz and Tush and My Rotten Red Headed Older Brother.  As I read the book the class and I talked about what the books we had read had in common with the new book.

We will continue to talk about schema the rest of this week.  Tomorrow the class is even going to try and make text to text connections while looking at some famous paintings.  We also looked at some artwork while talking about metacognition and the students did an amazing job, so hopefully tomorrow will be a repeat.

Before we read aloud today I asked the students to fill out a one-word notecard.  We had actually done a one-word notecard on the first day of school where students told me how they felt about coming back to school.  On the one-word notecard today I had the students write down one word they would use to describe Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  On the other side of the notecard the students had to explain why they picked this word to describe Ivan.

I love this little assessment to check if students are understanding a book.  I think it could be something you could use at home during at-home-reading.  The students would not even need to write it down they could just pick a character from their book and pick one word to describe the character and then tell why they picked that word.

We also started social studies today.  The students got to watch an interview with Kevin Plank, the founder of UnderArmor.  When the students were done I had them fill out a page in their Social Studies interactive notebooks listing the things that they think they know about entrepreneurs.  I will try and put a link to this video but tonight I am having some technical difficulties.

The rest of this week we are going to continue to discuss entrepreneurs.  We will think about the characteristics that make an entrepreneur and entrepreneur.  This will kick off our unit on economics.

Hope you are having a nice start to your week.

Ruby Arrives

In the last few days during read aloud a new character joined Ivan at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall.  Ruby is the new baby elephant brought to sell more tickets.  I hope that ours students are talking about this book with you at home.  The book is really starting to pick up pace and I think the students are starting to enjoy the book a bit more than before.

Today we took our claim card that now contained the students first claim and three pieces of evidence to support their claim and started to write.  Before I let the students go, I let the students grade me as I wrote my claim about going back to school.  To grade me I handed out a criteria list for the students.  We talked about how a criteria list can be used to grade almost anything.  To prove the point we made a criteria list for chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese.  Once I thought the class understood the idea of a criteria list I wrote.  I thought I did a nice job but I am biased.

The students have a copy of this Back to School Criteria List that they can use to help them as they put together this first claim.  Hopefully you can find this criteria list and their actual claim in their writing folder.  The criteria list as I explained to the class is going to be what I use to assess the students writing.

And now I get to talk about the conversation calendars that we started this week.  I love conversation calendars.  After reading time each day this week and next week, students will have a conversation with me about their reading.  This conversation is done on paper.  Students tell me about their thinking as they read and then I take the paper home and respond to what the students are telling me about their books.

The conversation calendars allow me to have five conferences with each student in a two week period.  One week the students will respond to me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and then the following week they will respond on Tuesday and Thursday.  The calendars also allow me to see how the students are using the thinking strategies we are discussing in class during their reading time.

These conversation calendars will come home the Friday after we finish the two week cycle, so keep an eye out for them in the Friday Folders.  You can also talk to our students about what they are talking to me about on these conversation calendars.

Schema

Today we introduced the class to our second thinking strategy...schema.  Schema is the background knowledge that students bring to a book that they are reading.  To start I had the students create a T-Chart in their reader's notebooks.  On one side of the T-Chart students got one minute to write as much as they could about Kings Island.  As you can imagine the students quickly filled this side with all the different things they knew about Kings Island.  On the right side of the T-Chart the students were asked to write down everything they knew about sabermetrics.  The class struggled on this side.  Sabermetrics is the statistical analysis of baseball data.  It was clear the class had a large amount of schema for Kings Island but not much for sabermetrics.

Then I asked the students to think about if I handed them two articles to read (one about Kings Island and one about sabermetrics) and they had to decide which would be easier to read.  It was amazing to hear why they thought the article about Kings Island would be a much easier to read.  We are going to continue to talk about how to unlock our schema when we read and what to do when we do not have schema for the rest of this week.  So if you hear the word schema, it just means the stuff you know before you read.

We also spent more time with the claim that we made yesterday.  If you don't remember, the students had to make a claim about whether or not coming back to school was a good or bad time of year.  Since we had already made a claim we needed to collect evidence or reasons to support their claim.  We did this today by having the class create a pro/con list.  I love a good pro/con list.

The students did an amazing job on this pro/con list.  Each student had to create a post-it note with one pro about coming back to school and one con.  We also asked the students to try and jazz up their writing.  I was blown away.  I am hoping tomorrow to get a few more close-ups of the excellent examples of writing.  

When we were done with the list students picked three pieces of evidence that they were going to use to support their claim.  Many of the students used our post-it notes to find their evidence.  Tomorrow I am going to write my claim about going back to school and then the classes will get their first shot at writing their own claim.  

I know I did not share about conversation calendars tonight but I promise I will get to them tomorrow.  Hope you are having a great week!!

Almost forgot to show you the class poem we made last week about summer.  We used our summer 3-in-3's to get these ideas.  

A Big Day

Today was a big day!

In writing we started filling out our heart maps (you can find these in our writer's notebooks).  The heart map is an idea generating technique.  Students think about people, places, or anything in their life that they truly care about and they put it on their list.  Later when students are looking for a writing idea they can look back to their heart map for something that might spark an idea.  We are going to continue to add to our heart map throughout this week and students are more than welcome to add some ideas while they are working at home.  I am hoping to try and take some pictures of heart maps and post them up here this week.

We also started to talk about claims.  Claims is something rather new in my classroom.  In fact it is what I wrote my research paper on last year while I was finishing my Master's at Miami.  Claim is the new trendy word for teaching logical arguments.  To me a claim is anything that you think that can be supported with evidence.  After we talked about claims and evidence students watched a video called the Fun Theory.

The students then discussed what Volkswagon was claiming in this advertisement and the evidence Volkswagon used to support their claim.  I love the video I hope you have time to watch it.

When the students were done with this we had them make their first claim of the year: Yes, I think going back to school is a good idea or no, I do not think going back to school is a good idea.  We are going to continue to work with this back to school claim this week and I will make sure to show you what we do.  

Claims will be a big part of our classroom this year and today was a nice introduction.

Tomorrow I will make sure to talk about the Conversation Calendars that we started today, like I said it was a big day.