OWP06

Oregon Writing Project Summer 2006

This summer I had the opportunity to attend  Oregon Writing Project’s  four week course “Teaching Writing in the Internet Era.” I was motivated to spend my valuable summer vacation in this class for a number of reasons. The first motivator was the fact that I would receive nine graduate credits for a very low fee of $1350. On top of that low fee, I would receive a $1000 scholarship! I felt I couldn’t pass that up.

The second motivator was the fact that my goal as a teacher, for the past two years, has been to improve my skills in teaching writing. Last year I read books and started a writer’s workshop in my classroom to assist in fulfilling this goal, and I did see progress in my students, but I still wanted to learn more about helping my students become better writers. I hoped this course would assist me in reaching this goal.

My last motivator, and I’ll admit it was very low on my list, was to become a better writer myself. I didn’t feel it was necessary that I was a good writer to be a good teacher of writing. I thought as long as I knew the conventions, had good lessons and used best practices, I would be able to teach writing to my students.

The course assignments included writing four papers, reading and writing a review for four books, sharing a website in a review with the other participants and teaching a lesson on writing. I was a little worried about writing the papers, I felt confident about the reviews and I was very nervous about teaching my lesson. I’m comfortable in front of elementary school students, but this would be a class of my peers, all of them teachers.

My first paper was easy to write. It was a narrative about an event from my youth. I was uncomfortable sharing it with my response group (three other participants and myself) but found them to be supportive and positive. Working with the group, I felt a little more open to writing my next paper. This paper was about the same event, but from my dad’s point of view. It was a little more creative and I felt good about it.

Some of the feedback I got from my paper made me realize that my writing didn’t hold a lot of emotion. I wrote about the facts, not the feelings. I felt uncomfortable doing that. In my third paper I found a way I could add feelings without feeling vulnerable. I wrote about my daughter and how she felt about seeing her father for the first time in several years. I included some of my own feelings in the paper and I felt this was my best paper of the three.

Other pieces of writing in the course included in-class assignments. I wrote a poem during Pam’s presentation that I rushed home to share with my family. I wrote a descriptive story after Connie’s presentation on using picture prompts that I plan to add to someday. I learned about the writing curriculum, “Step Up to Writing” that several of the teachers in our class use in school. The presentations dealing with this curriculum gave me many ideas to use in my own classroom since we don’t have a writing curriculum.

I am excited to start the school year. I plan to use many of the activities that were shared in my own classroom. I will use the knowledge I gained from reading the book by Fletcher and Portalupi on writing workshops to run my own workshops. I plan to incorporate art into my lessons on writing like Amber and Carol did. I can use sensory objects to create a spark in my kids’ writing like Deborah used in her lesson.

Sharing ideas and knowledge with other teachers is one of the best parts of this course. I have already ordered the books on adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc. that Amber shared. I also ordered the Harris Burdick portfolio that Connie used in her lesson and the book, Rose, where did you get that red?,  that I reviewed for one of my assignments. I can’t wait to try the “Talk, Write, Share” activity with my class that began our course.

When I reflect on my motivations for taking this class, my priorities have shifted. Yes, it was great that I could get nine graduate credits for the low price of $350, but knowing what I do now, I would have paid more. The experience was invaluable. Yes, taking the class will help me with my professional goal of teaching writing, that isn’t surprising. What surprised me is that I am developing a true enjoyment of writing. Where I used to dread writing anything but expository, I am now excited about creative writing and poetry and I’m willing to share that. I believe now that to be a good teacher of writing, it’s best to have the feelings behind the writing as well as the conventions. I credit this course for giving me that.

Hot Fudge Monday by Randy Larson

Hot Fudge Monday by Randy Larson
Kim Perdue
Book Review #4

This book has many activities to teach grammar creatively to young students. I teach fourth grade (right now) and some of these lessons would work with my kids, but some are a little too easy. I could see using them during title one instruction though.

The author suggests you use these lessons to supplement current daily grammar activities, or use them to start longer, creative writing activities. There are eight or more lessons in each section dealing with each of these parts of speech: nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, adjectives, conjunctions, interjections and adverbs. One of the lessons that deals with adjectives has students learning what are “mild” adjectives and when they might be used, and what are “hot” adjectives and why students would want to use them. An example of a “mild” adjective is “timid,” where a “hot” adjective is “gutless.” I liked this lesson and could see how students would use it to help make their writing more descriptive while also learning that you shouldn’t always use a “hot” verb.

Writing Workshop The Essential Guide By Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi

Writing Workshop The Essential Guide By Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi
3rd Book Review by Kim Perdue

If you want to know how to establish a writing workshop in your classroom, this is the book to read.  I have been holding workshops since I started teaching ( a whopping 3 full years I should add,) but never had such a detailed, descriptive account to follow as this book.

Something that I will change about my workshops because of this book is the scheduled time. I schedule in a writer’s workshop most days, but sometimes it’s at different times. I plan to make this block of time consistent now, to allow my students to prepare for this. I didn’t realize how important it is for students to know when they will be able to get back to their writing.

I also will have students share their writing during all phases of the writing process. In the past, I’ve always had my students share when they’re published, but allowing them to share during the process helps them with so many things. They get feedback from their peers which allows them to finish the story, revise it or clarify things. I love this idea.  The book suggests you ask several students, each day during the workshop, to share whatever they have done. What a great idea.

I liked the practicality of this book and also the guidelines that will help me to pull off the writer’s workshop more effectively. One of the guidelines is to have students pull together for 5-10 minutes for a mini-lesson, write for 35-45 minutes, then pull back together for a 10-20 minute share. I think this is a great guideline for a great workshop.

I am so excited to get back to school  My students don’t know it, but because of this class and the ideas and books we’ve been exposed to, they are going to be some fantastic writers!

Tehra's Dream

She had never been so nervous in her life. She didn’t know if it was the airplane or the upcoming visit that caused her jitters, the only thing she DID know was that she was going to get sick. In front of her, in the little pocket on the back of the airplane’s seat, she found it: The small white bag that would save her from embarrassment. She thought about getting up and trying to make it to the bathroom, but she knew it was happening too fast. She’d never make it.

Rose, where did you get that red? By Kenneth Koch

Rose, where did you get that red? by Kenneth Koch
Book review by Kim Perdue

The title of this book came from a poem written by one of Kenneth Koch’s elementary school students. Koch was teaching poetry using William Blake’s poem, The Tyger.  The first ten chapters in this book are about using well-known poetry to teach writing poetry to children.

Not only do the students learn to write poetry, they also learn some wonderful poetry. They read the poem, discuss it, talk about how they could use it themselves and then they try it (in a nutshell!) After  short description of the lesson and how Koch went about implementing it, as well as some of the students’ feedback, there are really amazing examples of poetry from his third to sixth graders at a New York elementary school.

In the last third of this book, Koch lists many poems teachers could use for teaching poetry. After the poem he writes a little about the poem and then gives tips on how to teach it. The last 30 pages are titled Some Poems from Swaziland. They are examples of poetry written by a peace corps worker’s students in Swaziland. She sent them to Koch after she read his last book and used his ideas for lessons.

I enjoyed this book because I have not taught much about writing poetry and it gave me some great ideas about how to teach my students to write it. I plan to try some of his lessons this year in my fourth grade classroom.

MarcoPolo

Kim Perdue

http://www.marcopolo-education.org/home.aspx

I learned about this site during an in-service workshop. Our literacy specialist was running the workshop in the tech lab and we explored the many links it provides but concentrated on the reading and language arts section.

MarcoPolo: Internet Content for the Classroom offers seven content sites (art, economics, humanities, science, math, reading and language arts, geography.) These sites offer lessons plans, assessment tools, interactive student activities, worksheets that are free and downloadable and links to other sites.

The amount of lesson plans (free, remember!) is unbelievable. You can choose what content area, and then narrow it down to what grade level. You can even put in search words to be more specific. Once you pull up the lessons in your category, you can read a short synopsis of the lesson to decide whether or not you want to use it. If you like it, click on the link and you get the whole, printable, lesson plan. Any worksheets or assessment tools can be found at the end of many lessons as well. They also list the standards for each content area.

If you visit this site, the content areas are listed on the right hand side under, ArtsEdge (art), EconEdLink (economics), EdSiteMent (humanities), Illuminations (math), Read-Write-Think (reading and language arts), Science NetLinks (science) and Xpeditions (geography.)

I would recommend this site to ALL educators and students. The site is easy to navigate and very informational.

Grammar Lessons & Strategies That Strengthen Students' Writing by Laura Robb

Grammar Lessons & Strategies That Strengthen Students' Writing by Laura Robb
Book Review by Kim Perdue

I chose this book to review because I have planned to add more grammar lessons to my writers' workshop. I use mini-lessons now during this block of time, and I was excited to get more ideas, especially those that focused on grammar.

Robb's book is geared for grades 4-8 and I teach 4th grade. I think most of the lessons are better suited for 8th graders, but lessons in Parts I and III (nouns, verbs, adjectives, punctuation and editing) can be used as is or modified a bit for the younger students. Part II deals with prepositions, participles, and prepositional and participial phrases. Whew!  I hardly know what those are.  But, I think they can be used to get the younger students used to hearing those parts of speech. I can also use this section when working in smaller groups (for example: TAG groups.)

I really liked this book because it is not just theory. Robb is a teacher and she uses specific examples of how she used these lessons in her writers' workshop. Some of the ideas I plan to incorporate into my own workshop are:

• keeping a log during my writing conferences. Robb uses her log to help her decide what types of things she'll be working on in her mini-lessons or small group lessons. I currently use a log during my reading conferences, but have not kept one for writing
• having short, 1-3 minute conferences with writers. Currently, I have a sign-up for my students to have a conference with me, or I wander around the room, checking to see if anyone needs some one-on-one. It seems like I'm always with the same kids, either those who struggle all the time, or those who finish quickly and want to move on. Using Robb's strategy will allow me to see what ALL writers are working on and check to see what they need help with.
• going along with the shorter conferences, I plan to focus on just one or two things when I conference. Typically I would sit down with the writer and we would go over the entire work (unless it was one of my struggling writers, then we would focus on a paragraph.) Robb states that this tends to " tune"  the writer out and I agree with her. The focus in writers' workshop is not to produce the  perfect paper, but to learn how to be a better writer.
• use student-generated word walls. I have always used a commercial-type word wall, adding interesting words from our read-alouds. Robb's suggestion of having students keep a journal with words (broken into nouns or verbs or other parts of speech) found during daily reading and taking a few minutes each day to gather some of those words for a word wall is great. She has students look over their word lists each day before writing so that they can keep those words in mind and possibly use them in their writing.

I would recommend this book to teachers of 6-8th graders. I plan to look for her books when I add to my professional library later this summer. I love her style, it's easy to read and very useful.

Foggy Drive From His Point of View

He married his high school sweetheart when he was 18 years old. She was, and would remain to be, the love of his life-even after her death and his subsequent marriages.

They had a daughter together. This was the only thing he had left of her. When he brought his daughter home after the car wreck he realized he could not play both mother and father just yet, so they moved into his mom’s house and she took over the maternal role.

Weeks turned into months when one day he stepped across the doorway and heard his little girl, their little girl, say, “Mama.” How could she betray her mother this way? That was NOT her “mama.” He couldn’t allow the woman who had been his heart, the one he had planned to raise children and grow old with, to be replaced, not even by his own mother. They soon moved into their own home.

Trying to care for a young child, only two years old, alone was hard. Emotionally, physically it was hard. He started to wonder how it would impact his daughter. Little girls need a feminine touch, don’t they? His true love was gone, taken by a drunk driver, but their child lived on. Shouldn’t he give her a shot at “normalcy?”

He met his second wife when his daughter was three, at the same car dealership where his first wife once worked. She had a young son, a year younger than his girl. They could become a family. He would be the father her boy needed; she would become mother to his daughter.

Years passed and they had a child together, then drifted apart, then divorced. Again he looked for someone new and again he found her. This time it was different. She was fun and exciting. They loved spending time together. The kids were almost grown; his oldest daughter was now 15. The family that was formed by his last marriage, dissolved in this new marriage. This was all about “them.”

His daughter turned 16 and he gave her a car. That car gave both of them the freedom they craved. She was able to work, attend sporting events without having to get a ride, go out with her friends and shop unattended. He didn’t have to suffer the momentary guilt anymore that he had always felt when he left her behind.

Tonight he was out on another “date” with his wife. His daughter was with her friend, scouting bands for their prom. He loved going to dinner, stopping for drinks and dancing with his uninhibited wife.  He didn’t give his daughter another thought. They partied until early the next morning and headed home.

He stepped into the house as the phone was ringing. Answering, he realized his heart was pounding. She isn’t home yet, it’s so late, something’s wrong, he thought. From across the miles he heard her voice, “Daddy.” Relief, mixed with dread at the rest of the news, flooded his body. At least it was her, not police officers on the other end.

When he picked her up, he knew what she needed. He didn’t yell, lecture, or ask for details. He just hugged her and told her that everything would be okay. He knew she was terrified, devastated by the events that had just occurred, she didn’t need to feel worse.

He dropped her at the house, tucked her into bed and crept out of her room. He had to sit for a moment. He had to take it all in. The car was totaled. His daughter was alive. How had she felt when it happened? Had she cried for him when he couldn’t answer her calls? He wished he had been there the first time she called. He remembered that other, more tragic car accident. Thank God this time was different.

He suddenly felt all the guilt he hadn’t felt in the past year. She wasn’t grown up. She still needed him to watch out for her. How could he have thought any differently?

They both learned a lesson that night. She learned that a car is something to be taken seriously; he learned that no matter how old his daughter was, she would always be his little girl.

The Foggy Drive

Kim Perdue

Junior-Senior Prom!  In just a few months I would be getting my hair done, picking up my date’s boutonniere, making dinner arrangements and donning my pink formal gown. But first, my girlfriend and I were going out to listen to some bands we might want to book for the memorable event. Little did I know that this outing would give me memories much different than those from a high school junior’s prom.

Beth and I had heard about a couple of  bands playing in various places on that drizzly, foggy evening. I thought we could make this more than just an evening of work though. Being a teenager busy with a job, cheerleading and other responsibilities, it was a rare evening that I had to just myself and a best girlfriend. I wanted it to be fun!

I picked Beth up around seven o’clock that night. As she jumped in the car she told me that her parents wanted her home at eleven. Darn! That only gave us four hours. How were we supposed to have all of this fun in four hours? I suggested that we go into Albany first and hit the local hang-out. We could listen to bands later, I wanted to see what “cruising” was all about.

Pulling into Burgerville’s parking lot twenty minutes later, I spotted a couple of cars that I recognized from our home town in the lot across the street. We circled Burgerville’s lot, then headed over into Bi-Mart’s. After driving around the lot a few times, we settled into a spot near our friends.  While bragging about the bands we were going to go listen to, I started to  understand what I had been missing by working or attending sporting events every Friday or Saturday night. I was meeting new people, hearing great stories and being a teenager.

Before we knew it, it was close to eleven! Where had the time gone? Sure we had hopped into someone’s car and cruised up and down Pacific Boulevard a few times but did it really take that long? And we hadn’t listened to one band!

Beth’s parents were very strict. Mine were pretty lenient so it was hard for me to understand her hysteria when she realized the time. She made it clear that it was time to go. Not even one more cruise!

Driving home, Beth was frantic. She watched the clock as it got closer and closer to her curfew. Thinking she could get home on time, she asked me to turn down a dark farm road I had never been on before. The fog had settled in and drizzle still fell around us.  I felt anxious about this route  but Beth said it was a shortcut and I didn’t want my friend to get into trouble.

I had only been driving for a minute on that road when I came to a ninety degree  corner. I was driving way too fast. I hit the gravel in the corner, flipped my car and landed, top down, into an irrigation ditch. For what seemed forever, I sat suspended, held by my seatbelt, upside down. I thought that I could smell gas. Beth wanted to pray! I told her that we needed to get out of the car. We unbuckled ourselves and tried to open the doors but they were being held closed by the sides of the ditch. There was glass everywhere. I turned around and realized that the back window was shattered. I told her to follow me and we crawled on the roof, out through the back window, and into the irrigation ditch.

Out in the street, Beth and I started to walk. We were both crying, I think for different reasons. She was still worried about getting home late and I was scared.  Scared about the damage I had done to my car, how we were going to get home, and most of all, what my dad was going to do.  I just wanted someone to hug me and make it all go away.

After walking for what seemed an eternity we finally came to a farm house. There were no lights on but we rushed to the front door and knocked  hard. A lady who had obviously been sleeping answered and let us in to use the phone.

I called my dad first. He wasn’t home and there were no cell phones in 1980.  Beth called her parents. They were home, in bed. They drove over immediately to pick us up. Beth was wrapped up in their arms before I knew it, and I was standing, shaking in shock, wanting my daddy.

When I finally reached my dad he came to get me right away and at last I was the one being comforted. He took me home, bumped up and bruised, but alive. I had worried about what my dad was going to say or do. His punishment to me? The next day he drove me to where my little yellow Opal had been towed and made me take a good  look at it. It was a mess. I can’t believe I survived.

Now that I’m a parent I realize that my father knew I had already been punished. Seeing my car made me face the reality of what I had done.  I try to make my kids’ mistakes into lessons like he did. I hope they understand that and pass it on. As for the prom, we had a great band and I made other memories that night. But that’s another story.