On Tuesday it was nice and bright, not too windy--the perfect day for 1st grade geographers to go out on the playground, well away from the portable classrooms, in search of natural features and human-made features. After they completed their labelled sketches, I allowed them to play for a while, and encouraged them to play among the natural features--trees, stumps, raspberry canes, bushes, vines, tall dead grass--at the edge of the woodchipped playground and sports field, which was dotted with large muddy puddles. It took them some minutes to realize that there was fun to be had away from the "mungke bars," but soon they figured out quite a few things to do. One of my more reticent English learners provided the rhythmic backdrop to the children's efforts.
wood work
hup! hup! hup! hup!
one twig two twigs
three twigs four
throw them down and pick up sticks
hup! hup! hup! hup!
big stick bigger stick
bigger stick branch
help me carry this big long branch
hup! hup! hup! hup!
I got it I got it
we got it we’re strong
hup two three four carry this log
chuck ‘em down stack ‘em up
sticks and twigs
chuck ‘em down stack ‘em up
branches logs
hup! hup! hup! hup!
build a bridge across this bog
build a bonfire pile of wood
we did this work we did it good
hup! hup! hup! hup!
~Heidi Mordhorst 2011
all rights reserved
Later I discovered that a) despite the calculated distance, this important work disturbed all the 3rd and 4th graders in the portables who were taking their high-stakes state assessments and b) practically everything I let them do is not allowed at recess. I took some great photos of the kids working cooperatively to carry 15-foot limbs and lay them across the boggy spot on the field , but it's also not allowed for me to post them here...so here's a stock photo instead, which does not nearly capture the joy of this half-hour.
From Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods:
"Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order."
From Playing for Keeps by Deborah Meier, Brenda S. Engel, Beth Taylor:
"Leaving no time or space in education for children’s [creative] “playful” efforts to make sense of the world risks the future not only of poetry and science but also of our political liberties. The habits of playfulness in early life are the essential foundations upon which we can build a K–12 education that would foster, nourish, and sustain the apparent “absurdity” of democracy."
I wish you a playful day, and I'll see you over at Liz in Ink for the Poetry Friday Roundup.
The poetry version of last week's first-grade effort to grasp character traits...
On the outside, you can see my physical traits:
"I have tanish-pinkish sgin."
"I have krly eyelashs."
"my body is tall"
"my hair is shtrayt"
My words and actions show my character traits on the inside:
"I am a little shiy."
"I am prsistent."
"I take care of my frands"
"I have lost of ideas"
"I am ewnec. there is only one me in the wrld."
And an open letter to colleagues:
As we survey our reading asessment results and think about how best to meet the needs of children in our classes, I want to raise a few points that I think sometimes get insufficient attention in our “data-driven instructional model."
The students we work with are 5, 6 and 7 years old. They are all, to a greater or lesser degree, egocentric, and they live in the here and now of their daily experience. They come to us as children first, and no matter what their academic ability they share the fundamental needs we all have: the need for security and comfort, the need to be known (and yes, loved). That’s partly why we have chosen this job, because we’re good at making little children feel at home in our classrooms--their home away from home.
Our students come to us second as individual learners. Each one has his or her strengths and weaknesses, and part of being a good learner is growing into a sense of where you have the power to help others along and where you might need to ask for help. We create heterogeneous classes because that’s what the world is like, and part of a good education is learning to be an effective participant in a diverse community. (In fact, I believe that’s the whole point of public education in a democracy, which is why, even as a reading teacher, I tend to start my planning with the social studies curriculum in mind).
Third on the list, our students come to us as readers--and now they all have a nice fresh label attached. In my first grade class, for example, I have two boys who are alike in many ways—mischievous, not as intrinsically motivated to “do school” as we might wish, and within 6 months of each other in age (which is quite a lot, really, when you’re only 72 months old). They have both moved from Level 5 to Level 8 since the beginning of the year, but I will not be putting them in the same guided reading group, because they are very different learners.
One is wired to decode pretty well, but he has a hard time focusing on the ideas behind the words, and in general his problem-solving skills are not strong. He needs a lot of support in reading for meaning, and a slower pace will also be a benefit as he struggles with some unfortunate family circumstances. I’ll put him with the Level 5/6/7’s because there he can have a chance to shine a little and the comprehension demands will be manageable.
The other boy is much more attentive to life generally, more observant, has shown himself ready and willing to rise to a challenge as long as it wasn’t actual reading. However, he’s been very conscious of his struggles in comparison with classmates, and now that he’s making some noticeable progress, this is the moment to put him with a snappier group of thinkers, to capitalize on his competitive tendency and to maximize his growing investment in becoming a reader. I’ll be putting him with the 10/11/12’s--for now.
And then there are the books. We know that all Level 8 books are not equal, and just because both boys read the Level 8 fiction selection successfully doesn’t
This is rather a good little poem and is even more fun as a song--and it's certainly the right way to begin [ahem-TWO!] new reading classes full of children with first names from Farhan to Manuel, from Dayrin to Bronx, from Fumiya to Jaisa.
How nostalgic it made us, singing it blearily before dawn with my freshly-minted middle-schooler, for the days of nursery school and Dragon Tales...
The Hello Song from PBS "Dragon Tales"
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
When you meet somebody new
The first thing you should do
Is say hello, hello, hello, hello
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Cause when you wanna make a new friend
Give a great big smile
And say "Hi, hello, my name is
[Zak! Wheezie! Ord! Cassie!]"
And before you know it
You'll have a brand new pal
True-blue, till the end
A brand new friend, say it again
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Say it high
Say it low
Say it fast
Say it slow
Get up on your feet
And to everyone you meet
Say hello, hello, hello, hello
Hellllllo!
Check out all the goodies at the Poetry Friday round-up, hosted today at
Susan Writes by (funnily enough) Susan!
Today (behind the times as always) Kay Ryan is my hero. The poem below is what made me go looking for more; it's one of those included in Poetry Speaks to Children. When I included it in a collection for my first-graders--whom I thought would appreciate the bear-forest-wolf-stick fairy-tale flavor--they were generally baffled, and a couple even said they found it creepy. And it's true that when I went looking for another of Ryan's poems that might speak to younger children, I couldn't find what I was looking for.
Bear Song
If I were a bear
with a bear sort of belly
that made it hard
to get up after sitting
and if I had paws
with pads on the ends
and a kind of a tab
where a tail might begin
and a button eye
on each side of my nose
I’d button the flap
of the forest closed.
And when you came
with your wolf and your stick
to the place that once was
the place to get in
you’d simply be
at the edge of the town
and your wolf wouldn’t know
a bear was around.
But there's something about her style that we who write for children can learn from. Her poems are compact; they look tame and accessible on the page, written in complete sentences and in a conversational register. Read "The Fabric of Life," though, and see how dense and challenging it is, and how she encourages engagement with the big ideas by skillfully passing them through a prism of humor, and how that bent light opens our eyes.
The Fabric of Life
It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven. We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—
hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
attacking threads
far beyond anything
we would have said
connects.
From the biographical note at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/: "Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” " They may not start with imagery or sound, but listen to this irregular gorgeous turtle music:
Turtle
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing-case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only le
There are good reasons (mostly relating to overload) that I haven't posted since April 23. I don't think there's anyone out there faithfully expecting to hear from me every Friday, but still I feel sorry about not meeting that expectation.
Oh, wait--there IS someone faithfully expecting to hear from me!
This surprises and makes me glad:
of course it is my mom and dad!
Below is the poem that should have gone into the charter school application (right around Academic Design Section 12.b, "Provide details regarding the school's plan to build and maintain appropriate home-school partnerships"). I knew what the poem meant but not what it said, so I couldn't track it down until I opened up my box of books about families and found the Trumpet Club poster I've had since the 80's. My first-graders are doing some work about family traditions, personal history and autobiography, so I put up the poster and we started reading. Most of them memorized it in two days--and I think I have too, finally!
Andre
I had a dream last night. I dreamed
I had to pick a Mother out.
I had to choose a Father too.
At first I didn't know what to do.
There were so many there, it seemed:
Short and tall and thin and stout.
Then just before I sprang awake,
I knew what parents I would take.
And this surprised and made me glad:
They were the ones I'd always had!
~ Gwendolyn Brooks
First I must express right up top my gratitude to Kate Coombs at BookAunt, to Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect and to Gregory K. at Gotta Book for their generous and careful attention to my work during this month of poetry festivities. Apart from anything else, I just love the feeling of being part of this community! Thanks to all who make it be.
My classroom is a little community in itself: surrounded by books (since it used to be the Reading Specialist's headquarters), I am one of four teachers who use it daily. I arrive as another, exemplary "Reading Initiative" teacher is finishing with her second-graders, and as I'm wrapping up my first-grade teaching session at 12:30, two ESOL teachers are preparing to conduct their small groups (often simultaneously!). We do pretty well at sharing our slice of real estate, and all this eavesdropping on other teachers is very educational. It's had other influences, too, and tomorrow morning I'll take the ESOL Praxis exam to become certified to teach ESOL as well as general education.
Meanwhile, as our public charter school Founding Group prepares for a Q&A session with the school district's review panel, I come to the section in our application on provision for students who are speakers of English as an additional language. Here's the poem by Gregory Djanikian that opens this section:
How I Learned English
It was in an empty lot
Ringed by elms and fir and honeysuckle.
Bill Corson was pitching in his buckskin jacket,
Chuck Keller, fat even as a boy, was on first,
His t-shirt riding up over his gut,
Ron O’Neill, Jim, Dennis, were talking it up
In the field, a blue sky above them
Tipped with cirrus.
And there I was,
Just off the plane and plopped in the middle
Of Williamsport, Pa. and a neighborhood game,
Unnatural and without any moves,
My notions of baseball and America
Growing fuzzier each time I whiffed.
So it was not impossible
Poetry immersion continued this week with more children's choices: "Nightmare," a spider poem from Hey There, Stink Bug! by Leslie Bulion, chosen by Christopher; Sophia's selection "I Know Someone" by Michael Rosen collected in My Song Is Beautiful; and Kate's choice of "Violets, Daffodils" by Elizabeth Coatsworth from a lovely large-format collection that I'll get back to you on. Rafael chose "Schools Get Hungry Too" from Kalli Dakos's The Bug in Teacher's Coffee which I'll be going back to when we talk about voice, and yesterday Ella picked "Monday's child is fair of face" collected in The Barefoot Book of Rhymes Around the Year, which I've owned since my years teaching in London. We all enjoyed coming back to this one which popped up in our read-aloud Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, a classic English series by Catherine Storr which is not well-known here but very worth tracking down.
Meanwhile, there's some poetry action going on in my son's own first-grade classroom and as a result I enjoyed a peak moment this week: close to an hour snuggled in bed on a rainy evening with my two children as we all simultaneously wrote color poems following a form that Little D had used in class--he in a brand-new writing notebook, I in my umpteenth writing notebook, and Bigger D on her laptop (when did she learn to type so fast?). This is the one he brought home from school, specially copied out for Mommy the poet.
Black and Me
Black is the deep black night and Great Ape's
pound
Black is a great wolf's howl
black is a spider creeping
black looks like a slick fur coat
black sounds like an echo in a neverending
hole
black smells like smoky black coal
black feels like the threatening black spikes on a
steel gate
black tastes like the smoky taste of smoked
salmon
black makes me feel brave and swift
black is an old ghost in a tavern
~Duncan, age 7
Much later I realized I had missed Glee....like that mattered.
I got so inspired by all the April festivities in the Kidlitosphere that I've imported "Thirty Poets, Thirty Days" into my first-grade classroom. Of course we've been enjoying poetry all year, but now we're riding the poetry wave! On April 1 we were on Spring Break, so I had to choose the first six poems to catch us up. I took them all from Poetry Speaks to Children and have put the CD that goes with that gorgeous book in the listening center. Now, however, the children are each taking a turn to choose the Poem of the Day--a power which they deeply dig! So far Katana has shared "Covers" from Nikki Giovanni's The Sun is So Quiet and Vivian has selected "ME I AM" by Jack Prelutsky, collected in My Song Is Beautiful by Mary Ann Hoberman. I'll keep you posted on what else goes up onto our Poetry Calendar in the hallway!
Here in the D.C. area the weather has been a little extreme. Not that many weeks ago we were buried under more than two feet of snow, "proving" in the minds of some folks that global warming is a myth. Now, for the past few days the temperature has been near 90 degrees, which sounds like climate change to me (although my brief research shows that in years with 90* April days, we do tend to get more snow...I wonder how that works?). Right now in my yard are blooming simultaneously forsythia, daffodils, periwinkle, tulips, hyacinths, weeping cherry, bleeding heart, dogwood and even some of the azaleas! Makes me want to sleep outside--except for "Marlon," the suburban raccoon who's hanging around and apparently aspires to becoming our pet. It's a little creepy.
In the spirit of unpredictable weather, I offer up this poem by David McCord, which was an ideal opening for the public charter school application's section on Special Education.
Snowflakes
Sometime this winter if you go
To walk in soft new-falling snow
When flakes are big and come down slow
To settle on your sleeve as bright
As stars that couldn't wait for night,
You won't know what you have in sight--
Another world--unless you bring
A magnifying glass. This thing
We call a snowflake is the king
Of crystals. Do you like surprise?
Poetry Friday is at Random Noodling with Diane Mayr...
Can't get enough of "natural light" at this time of year, and if it's not sunlight, then I'll go for wood fire or candle flame or . Here's another source, by Kay Ryan, making me want to brush up on my hagiology.
He Lit a Fire with Icicles
for W. G. Sebald, 1944-2001
This was the work
of St. Sebolt, one
of his miracles:
he lit a fire with
icicles. He struck
them like a steel
to flint, did St.
Sebolt. It
makes sense
only at a certain
body heat. How
cold he had
to get to learn
that ice would
burn. How cold
he had to stay.
When he could
feel his feet
he had to
back away.
~Kay Ryan
I can't quite go cold turkey, but here's my candlelighting poem reworked with fewer empty connectors. My first-graders memorized this without effort after three readings. I think that's a good sign. (I still don't know how to get Blogger to respect my indents so I'm putting ellipses in their place. It's not ideal, but...)
We Light a Candle
see how the wick waits
.....cold........curled
hear how the match scrapes
.....hiss........burst
see how the flame leaps
.....tongue.....leaf....horn
now how the light creeps
.....comfort
.......................is born<
On Tuesday it was nice and bright, not too windy--the perfect day for 1st grade geographers to go out on the playground, well away from the portable classrooms, in search of natural features and human-made features. After they completed their labelled sketches, I allowed them to play for a while, and encouraged them to play among the natural features--trees, stumps, raspberry canes, bushes, vines, tall dead grass--at the edge of the woodchipped playground and sports field, which was dotted with large muddy puddles. It took them some minutes to realize that there was fun to be had away from the "mungke bars," but soon they figured out quite a few things to do. One of my more reticent English learners provided the rhythmic backdrop to the children's efforts.
Wonderful poem, Heidi, had fun marching right through every line.
The "obsession with order" is quite disheartening. Nice to hear you sanctioned some important outdoor nature play time with your students. :)
I much sympathy for the 3rd graders taking high-stakes assessments. I have one of my own. He is taking the whole thing very seriously and has requested eggs for breakfast all week because they are brain food. That said, what craziness we are engaged in play in nature is not allowed at recess? I think the twig brigade had a very good experience. THey learned much about cooperation and physics and biology. I consider that valuable information.
It sounds like a fabulous recess!! Long live the the free stick brigade! I love reading your poem out loud and channeling that joy.
It's your birthday? Happy Birthday, Heidi! Our birthdays are only five days apart. Hope you have a playful year.
I'm just giggling to myself at the a) and b) endings to your story. We are sisters in accidental subversion and disruption. It's a long story, but I, too, disrupted a neighboring class during testing one year, and I, too, have utilized (against all/ignoring all "rules") the woods and wildness at the edge of the playground for play and learning. HUZZAH for play and learning!!!
First, Happy Birthday! (I think the comment I attempted to leave yesterday got swallowed in cyberspace.) Love your poem. LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS is part of the reason I posted a series of interviews with nonfiction nature writer friends on my blog last month. This month I'm doing a nature walk/poetry workshop with fourth graders - wish us luck! :0)
I just listened to two women in my handbell choir discuss education -- one works in a preschool after-care program, the other is a grandmother who was complaining that her granddaughter isn't "doing" anything in preschool: they just play. She's not even learning her letters or addition tables. She is 3. The aftercare woman agreed they should look for a "better" program. I could not contain myself and chimed in about the importance of play. They humored me.