OWP06

Web Review

Pam Schmieding

http://owl.english.purdue.edu

 

Even though I’ve taken a graduate level grammar/syntax class two summers ago, I still have to stop and think through what the differences are with (for example) gerunds, infinitives, and participles. It’s not like I use those terms in the classroom regularly. I use less technical labels, but I still want to remember the differences.

OWL’s website allows you to move around quickly from term to term to refamilarize yourself with the nomenclature. The definitions are pretty good too if it’s not familiar at all. I spent some time just clicking around to remind myself of different things (oh yeah, I remember now…).

 

Among other references, there are MLA and APA references guides. I always have to go back to the guides for the rules with the different needs for citing work. Examples are as easy to reference as a click. There is even tutorial help if you get stuck—at no cost.

 

I found this site to be very user friendly. I’ll go back to it for refreshers.

 

 

 

Pam Schmieding

Book Review #4

 

Larson, Randy, (1993). Hot Fudge Monday, by Randy Larson. Fort Collins,CO: Cottonwood Press.

 

If you were a pop can, and had just been squished, how would you describe it to your psychologist? This is an activity on writing vivid verbs in this book. Not your standard fare when it comes to grammar. It just might keep LA students alert for 50 minutes whilst learning what an active verb is. Hmm, what a concept.

 

The author’s intention is to use humor to counteract grammarical catatonia. He’s partitioned it out into eight chapters, each focusing on a part of speech: verb, noun, preposition, adjective, conjunction, pronoun, interjection, adverb. As the students use the language in off-beat ways, they practice it, thereby honing their language/grammar skills. All’s fair in love and grammar.

 

 

The Arms of Literacy

Pam Schmieding

Paper 4

 

The Arms of Literacy –To Reach Out and Involve, or To Entangle and Drown

 

We believe ourselves to be an inclusive nation. We strive on many levels to pull in the outcast, to strengthen those with weak skills, and to protect those who cannot help or protect themselves. One of the main focuses currently is the push for literacy. To most Americans, this means getting people of all ages to read English better, faster and more fluently. However, as anyone with a hand injury can tell you, we are not simply right or left handed; we are two handed. And so it is with reading. The other hand is writing. Without fluency in both areas, a person is severely hampered in where and when he/she is able to go.

 

As a middle school teacher, I have the opportunity to teach students the writing process. Most children, by the time I get them in my classroom, know how to read words. How well they can comprehend the material and then use it in other places is still being developed. It is my joy to teach kids how to think through that process and to practice it. In the teaching field, we call it Best Practice, i.e. the process of modeling, sharing, guiding, scaffolding, and providing a safe place to practice and revise. It’s a lengthy and detailed process. This process can be taught to everyone, and carried to excellence, achievable to those with a true gifting in the use of language. 

 

I have found tools to use in my classroom, both through the writing of papers for myself in class, and in the sharing with colleagues in the Oregon Writing Project this summer term. Even though elementary and secondary teachers were sharing their favorite lessons with each other, the basic writing elements were communicated and absorbed into new strategies to be used on many educational levels. Being able to talk, teach and edit together has reminded us again of the process, and how to fine-tune it to our own grade levels. There is entirely too little of this type of working together that is available in such a wonderful format. It reaches out to us, involves us in the joy of creative writing process ourselves, and lifts us up, encouraged again.

 

A big reason teachers bog down during the school year is because of the strain of a “teaching to the test expectation.”  It’s taken over the way we think through lesson plans. Teachers want to wake up/shake up sections of new, fertile student brains, and have students breathe life into their writing samples. We find instead that we’re worrying about whether TESA, etc., will accurately let their lights shine well, or how the school will look in some district report card. Does it serve the students best? Or is it just one more way for the admirable goal of literacy and closing the achievement gap holding a larger and larger portion of students away from that goal… entangling them in the bureaucratic process, and deferring them from an exploratory reading/writing learning process. It’s one of my concerns today. Will children’s test scores improve one way only to engender nonpassionate readers, writers, inventors, philosophers, etc? We need the passion. We need the colleagial cooperation. We need to rediscover the joys.

Critters In My Bedroom

Pam Schmieding

Critters in my Bedroom

Every cat has a unique personality. Gracie, a Bengal, has personality in spades. She has a wild side. It's in her genes. As a teenage cat, she'd come up behind my head while I was seated or lying down in bed, and chew on the hair right at the crown. It felt like she was pulling two or three strands out at a time. She'd wrap her paws around my head, one paw on each side, and hold my head so I couldn’t get away. It was an odd sensation.

One night after Dan and I had gone to bed and just drifted off to sleep, I felt that same sensation on the crown of my head. Gracie! How'd she get out of the laundry room? Since she hogs the bed, she sleeps in the laundry room at night. But it seems clever ol' Grace had learned to open the door for a midnight snack.

I lifted up on one elbow to grab Gracie and looked at the head of my bed. A small, pinched, beady-eyed face looked back at me from a distance of only 6 inches. Damn! That's not Gracie!

I sprang out of bed yelling, "Dan! Turn on the light! DAN! There's a face behind the bed." My husband, still mostly asleep resisted doing anything. I, in the meantime continued to yell about the face behind the bed while pointing in the last known location of the face.

"What face? What...are you dreaming? Umf..whaaa", he mumbled on. His confusion would've been comical under different circumstances. Right now, it seemed that hours went by in seconds, and that face was still unapprehended. I raced to the laundry room to fetch Gracie. Surely this wild cat would take on The Face and deliver me. Aggravatingly, Gracie, too, was a sleepy lump. To her credit, she caught on faster than Mister Master that Mistress Master was wound up.

Dan was painstakingly slow turning on his bedside lamp under the direction of his deranged wife. Gracie and I stood at the foot of the king-size bed and slowly peered around my side to see what there was to see. At the very same moment, the teensy, flesh colored face leaned from the head of the bed to see what the heck was making all the noise in the middle of the night. We all (that is Gracie, the critter, and I--since Dan was still not out of bed!) shrieked and ran for it. Gracie, now growling a low slow growl, and I bolted for the upstairs bedroom furthest from that spot, while the critter ducked back behind the relative safety of the bed.

I dove for the upstairs with the cat in my arms. She was only too happy to be leaving the area. We shoved ourselves under the comforter and were immediately joined my now fully awake husband who screamed, "What the hell was that!" Since my heart rate didn't allow for much more breath and speaking than the bare minimum, I replied in clipped tones, "I don't know, just get rid of it!" Nearly the entire living contents of the house (not counting flora) were now hyperventilating in a small upstairs’ bedroom. Dan sucked it up and went hunting. In his absence, Gracie and I concentrated on returning our vital signs to some semblance of normalcy.

In what seemed like 30 or 40 minutes, Dan came into the room and proudly announced that he’d solved the mystery. It turned out the critter was a baby opossum looking for a place to climb up and be snuggly. He assured me that it had been removed, and that it was once again safe to get back in my own bed. Oh, I don't think so, buddy, I harrumphed. I needed details! I'm not going back willy-nilly into the Pit of Critterdom until satisfied that little junior wasn't going to attempt another climb into my surrogate hair!

Dan relayed the tale of locating the hapless critter on its hurried (for a opossum) way back out the front door from whence he evidently came. It was making its break for it when Dan got his large, man-sized salmon fishing net and attempted several scooping motions to nab the little guy. The baby opossum, finally captured, was then gently dumped into the bordering flowerbed in hopes of joining back up with its own family group. At least that was the intention that night.

Two years later, Dan confessed that the wayward opossum had come back the very next night for another nocturnal stroll. Without letting me know (I don't know if Gracie ever knew either) he utilized the fishing net once again. Now with some experience and practice, he scooped up the dense creature, ran across the street to the neighbor's yard, and in the best tradition and form of a javelin thrower at Hayward Field, chucked the opossum over their fence. He said with chagrin that if the number of bounces were some sort of indication, we’d not see the likes of him again!

To my knowledge, we've been opossum free ever since.

Nitty-Griity Grammar

Pam Schmieding

Nitty Gtritty Grammar, Book Review

“Nitty-Gritty Grammar” by Edith H. Fine and Judith P. Josephson. September 2004. Scholastic

This book is not simply a resource for all those pesky grammar questions adults have regarding grammar. It would also be a nice inclusion as a regular strand in a LA classroom. If not everyday, then on a regular basis, a mini-lesson could be done and reinforced with this up-beat grammar book.

The format of the book includes many comic strips that help introduce the particular grammar subject for that chapter. The strips illustrate the concept, and the ambiguity that results when the improper punctuation/grammar is used. There are easily 55 separate mini-lessons that could be presented throughout the year. The format of the book lends itself well to having a lot of fun with it too. It wouldn’t be such a drudge!

The age appropriateness is late elementary to early secondary. I can see how it can be used as well with younger students as well, as long as they are past a certain decoding stage.

Eats, shoots & Leaves

 Pam Sschmieding, Book Review #2

 “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynn Truss is subtitled “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.” It may be zero tolerance, but it is full of humor. Truss was an editor for many years. She’s probably seen it all when it comes to punctuation. She has her pet peeves (it’s, its, et al), but her stickler attitude will feel right to you.

 Her book mainly deals with the apostrophe, commas, colon and semicolon, dashes (including the ellipsis), and hyphens, giving each about a chapter. At the end there is a little section on conventional signs. It’s obvious she has fun doing what she does. This would not be something you’d want to use in the classroom, although many of her examples of misuses of the punctuation marks would be good for that purpose. However, as in many syntax examples, the younger and/or less fluent reader may not see the error unless explicitly spelled out. It’s a lot like getting a joke, or just perceiving a nuance.

 I should mention one caveat here. Truss writes with the rulebook of the British system that is just a bit different from the U.S. system of punctuation. Yes, Virginia, there are two different standards in some cases. Truss does, however, delineate the differences most the time.  No wonder we get so screwed up sometimes!

The Art of Stealing Raspberries

Pam Schmieding

The Art of Stealing Raspberries

      Ah, the sweet mysteries of life.  At some point in our young lives, things that simply are begin to complicate and become more sophisticated, and therefore increasingly take on airs of mystery.  This sadly progresses to the teenage state where the opposite sex is a complete mystery.  It is unfortunate some adults never grow out of this condition.  Be that as it may, Lucy wasn’t concerned with who her boyfriend would be one day.  She would have died for that information later, of course, but now at six years of age, she was more single minded.  And that focus was raspberries--God’s gift to mere mortals in the summertime. 

      In the dead-end street neighborhood where Lucy lived, there was a sad dearth of raspberries.  Perhaps it was because not many had a truly refined taste when it came to the berries.  It was far too easy to be a fan of strawberries.  They were in the commercial fields on two sides of her neighborhood—a dime a dozen.  Blackberries grew with abandon in the borders of every field and property line everywhere she went.  Though each was good in its own way, and one must admit, excellent in pies, they didn’t measure up to the divine flavor released to her discriminating palate.  The problem was this; Lucy had no raspberries growing at her house.

      Two neighbors did have these luscious morsels planted in their gardens.  Most things are fairly simple to six-year olds.  Either things are or they’re not.  However, to Lucy, the mystery was that these particular berries were planted in someone else’s yard and not her own.  A slip up of mystic proportions existed here.   To solve this dilemma, Lucy simply turned off her conscience momentarily while she pilfered someone else’s berries. It was a simple solution to an otherwise sticky situation to a girl who considered herself a very good girl.  It’s the art of assuaging guilt.

      As it happened, Lucy had a little sister named Emma.  What really tweaked Lucy the most was Emma’s habit of filching Lucy’s treasures whenever she got the chance.  This drove Lucy to distraction, especially when Lucy’s mother didn’t seem to take the offenses very seriously.  Her mother would simply retrieve the purloined objects and hand them back to Lucy. Emma didn’t have to endure spankings, spending the afternoon in her room, not even did she have to go to bed without dinner!  To Lucy, her mom’s solution seemed to only encourage ol’ sticky fingers herself.  Things were clearly not right on this score.  Lucy had a clearly defined sense of right and wrong when it came to her stuff.  When it wasn’t her stuff that she wanted, well, it came under the mystery banner.  Mysteries can come in very handy at times.

      If Lucy’s mother (had her mother even known!) had suggested to Lucy that her secretive gorging in the neighbors’ yards was the same kind of stealing that Emma was involved in, Lucy would have been flabbergasted.  They were not the same!  Lucy was an artful dodger.  She knew exactly what she wanted, and stealthfully waged war on the watchful and rightful owners of the berry patches. 

      Lucy’s favorite patch was owned by the Andersons.  Lucy had to give it to Mr. Anderson; he did know how to dress his vines.  It made picking so much easier.  He also had the biggest, juiciest raspberries around.  Clearly, it was worth the effort.

      The effort was in the form of a face-off of sorts every Sunday morning when the Andersons went to church.  Lucy was an early riser. She was often up and in her play clothes before anyone else in her house was even awake.  She would position herself on the street corner that separated her house from the Andersons, and wait for them to drive off to their early morning service.  She adopted her most angelic pose, hands clasped behind her back, sun shining on the back of her head giving it the semblance of a lighted halo in her white blond hair.  She never actually made eye contact with the departing car full of Andersons, but she was aware that Mr. Anderson was sizing up the situation.

      Mr. Anderson knew with almost certainty that his raspberries disappeared with regularity every Sunday morning.  It was uncanny, really, how all the berries that were on the brink of being ripe the day before simply disappeared by the time he got back from church.  He had his strong suspicions that Lucy was the culprit and not some band of marauding crows as his wife had voiced.  Nope.  It was Lucy-- little angelic, raspberry-stained-cheeked Lucy.  But he was never there to catch her in the act.  Maybe he’d get a guard goose.  That’d fix her.  Seemed like a lot to go through though just to keep a little girl out of your berry patch.  Still…

      As Mr. Anderson left each Sunday morning for church, he prayed that Lucy would at least leave him some of his prized fruit.  He also prayed she would outgrow this pitiful lapse in conscience before her high school years.  He gave her the beady stare he’d practiced in the bathroom mirror the night before while he brushed his teeth.  He wanted to stare out the message, “I know who you are Missy!  And I know what you’re up to too!”  He drove slowly down the street silently communicating his “eye message” while Lucy irritatingly looked the other direction.  It was the odd Dance of the Raspberries--an artful one for both Lucy and Mr. Anderson.

      Years later, Lucy planted her own raspberry bushes.  She fussed over where to put them, and decided that she’d not hide them, but put them in a spot that showed off the jewel red fruit.  Yes, she knew that would be tempting fate, and that some Sunday mornings when she returned from church her almost ripe berries would be reduced in number substantially.  In the whole scope of things, the balance was restored. Although Mr. Anderson was past caring, the art of the thing was at stake.  And she had a feeling that what was fair was fair.  It was all part of the great mystery.

       

Stephen King On Writing

 Pam Schmieding

Book Review on

Stephen King

On Writing

 

 I’ve never read a single Stephen King novel. He’s not my thing. However, if you read just one, this should be it. Ironic high praise it may be, but he makes simple sense that’s hard to dispute, and he does it in both memoir and expository form—in that order.

 His first thesis is that all writers must first be readers. There is no shortcut to writing without the voracious reading component. He has no patience for those who whine about wanting to be writers, and yet can’t find the time to read. King confesses that he doesn’t write to get a paycheck. He writes because it makes him happy-- completes him. He’d write even if he never got paid. The paycheck is gravy.

 Once that is settled, his second thesis is that the ideas are already there; they just have to be “uncovered.” The metaphor he uses is a paleontologist that carefully uncovers a dinosaur’s bones one sweep of the brush at a time. King doesn’t have some magic formula for getting good ideas. He contends that when you make yourself available to life, and give yourself plenty of reflective time, things occur to you. Then the real work of brushing off the “find” deep within the recess of your imaginative mind begins. Intuition is huge.

 His last big hint is to write the first draft about as fast as you can get your ideas down. On the second draft, take at least 10% of it out. Everything that does not advance the story—boot it. Writers want to tell everything, especially when they don’t know how to move to the next step (like a blab-blab-blab form of treading water). However, not everything is necessary. Be brutal. Kill your characters. Get on with it.

 King writes with self-deprecating humor about his long trek to being a successful writer. He’s no weenie-writer. He’s had his hard knocks in life including the 1999 accident with “the blue van” that ran him over. He was hit while still in the process of writing this memoir of the craft. In both his writing career, and his accident recovery, he impressed me in his determination. 

I may even read me one of them there novels now.

Kindred Spirits

The last summer before my daughter was married found the two of us touring Napa Valley wineries together with the help of my Californian sister.  It was a “girls week out.”  No men allowed.  My daughter, Becka, was getting married in a couple of months, and the two of us decided we needed to go on one last road trip together.  A letting go thing.  Something like a bonding trip in reverse.

Becka had foresworn all alcohol while she was a youth pastor in the time before her wedding.  This vow had taxed her somewhat, but this particular week, she was out of state, and off the hook.  She wanted to investigate wine.

I wanted to relate motherly wisdom whilst seeing scenery go by.  You know, those clever little insertions of “speaking of sex,” and so on.  My imagination was more fertile than my boldness.  Although sex did come up (no pun intended), we talked more about memories, relationships, and what makes communication good.  In all truth, that suited me fine.

What wasn't fine was my inability to navigate well.  I'm directionally challenged at best.  Luckily, we were fortunate in our choice of guide in the selection of my sister who lives not far from Napa. She has had the opportunity to rummage through the wine country on many occasions, and extended her acquired expertise to Becks and me for the week.  She not only knew how to get to the wineries and home, she also had a good idea of which places to hit first, and which ones to drive right on past.  As it happened, that day in Napa turned out as a bonding experience not only for my daughter, sister, and I in a warm sisterly companionship, it also linked us fondly with a whole room full of total strangers.

Growing up, my family could not be described as understated.  We were almost always the loudest table at the restaurant.  It was a happy loudness, but raucous nonetheless.  Whenever my sister and I get together to this day, we pick up on the freedom to share our excitement with those around us.  Becka, naturally, being raised by me, acquired the “funny in public” gene.  We encourage bonhomie wherever we go.  Usually, people are only too happy to enter in.

We already had gone to two tasting rooms that day, and, on a whim, stopped at a beautiful winery with European touches to its architecture.  The Tuscan flavor of the gardens spoke our name, and we turned down the drive.  The tasting room was small, but the expert behind the counter was friendly and free with his information about wine, decanting, the land, and all things enticing.  We pretended to know most of what he was talking about by nodding our heads with a “Well, yes, the tannics” while we stored the info for the next winery’s impartation of knowledge.  We hung our noses over the glass rim, we swirled, we slurped.  We even swallowed.  We munched oyster crackers delicately between sips so our palate would maintain integrity.  We were good.

Just as we moved from the drier offerings to the sweeter, my cell phone rang, buzzing my right buttock.  I, at first, thought it was the first two wineries contribution to my nervous system.  While walking outside for better hearing, I fished my phone out of my pocket and answered the call.

“Pam, this is Doug Gaultney.  Do you remember me?’  I lied and quickly assumed the professional tone of someone who doesn’t remember said person, especially after several “tastings” and said, “Of course I do.  Hi!”

“Say Pam, our circumstances have changed here recently.  The person we offered the 7th grade position to has had a family emergency, and has had to give up the job we just offered her.  I’m very happy to be able to ask you to take the teaching job.  I know it’s only a week before report time, but I’m hoping to see you become part of our staff.”

This all sounded like “Shurm a murff and little oft top diddle.  Whadya say?”  As he got going on to the job offer, my ears fine tuned to what was actually being communicated.  I was going to get my own class room, get paid to go to work everyday, not have to interpret obscure sub plans, all this only to knock my self out with a steep learning curve for the next year of my life.  It sounded like a little piece of heaven.  Of course I said yes and reentered the tasting room.

I ambled back into the tasting room and, true to the family talent of sharing our world with all in hearing distance, I announced, “I just got offered my first teaching job! And I said yes!”  My sister immediately started crying crocodile tears and wiping them clumsily from her cheeks.  Becks squealed with delight and did an uninhibited jumpy dance.  Even the salesperson behind the counter indulged in a tear or two and effused his congratulations.  Everyone in the room rejoiced with us and my new career as a classroom teacher as though we’d been travailing towards this goal together for years.  Glasses clinked together all around in toasts to my future.

What started out as a continuation of my motherly “letting go”, merged into a time of deeper bonds connected with new family memories that were shared with kindred spirits.  No pun indeed.