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More and more, I've been recognizing the need to give students some freedom in their writing lives. Can independent writing time be the answer?

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Beginning to think about Exploratory Notebooks and easing into a research writing unit.

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Beginning to think about Exploratory Notebooks and easing into a research writing unit.

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Putting the Exploratory Notebook into practice...

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We can teach students about improving their writing process and to write with detail and voice by watching Guy Fieri on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

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Last Thursday, I endeavored to explain writing workshop to parents in my district at Parent University. As I drove home after the presentation, I felt unsettled, like there had been a gap in what the parents were hoping to learn and what I delivered. What would you be sure to include in a presentation to parents on writing workshop?

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The Monday morning after Ralph Fletcher’s presentation on Authentic Information Writing at Vassar College, I gathered my sixth graders at our reading area and shared what I had heard and learned....

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Two weekends ago, thanks to Bonnie Kaplan and the Hudson Valley Writing Project, I had the great pleasure of attending Ralph Fletcher’s presentation: “Making Nonfiction from Scratch: How Can We Give Students the Time, the Tools, and the Vision They Need in Order to Create Authentic Information Writing?” I knew it would be a great morning of learning ...

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Have you ever banned a topic from your writing workshop? If you have, you’re not alone…but you may want to think twice about that policy.

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In addition to the link you leave to your slice today, would you mind sharing how teaching writing workshop is better when you're a teacher who is also a Writer?

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If you start the adult challenge no later than Monday, March 4th and properly link your slice of life stories to the daily call for slice of life stories through March 31st, then you will be eligible to win a copy of What a Writer Needs, Second Edition.

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• Encourage students to examine verb choice in novels, poems, picture books, and informational texts. I choose existing mentor texts and  rewrite excerpts using “common verbs” (or, as Krasner would call them, place holders). Students are then challenged to replace these with more precise or colorful verbs.


• Direct your students to consider verb choice in their own writing, and work to find action words that are more exact. As a start, outlaw there is, there are, there were, there was phrases. A better alternative always exists. As do exceptions. Remember the first line of Holes?


• Teach children how to use a print thesaurus or online reference source (such as the Merriam Webster dictionary or Wordnik) for assistance in locating more exact expressions.

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     Asking me about my favorite writing books is like asking me about my favorite movie. I mean really, how can one have a favorite movie? I probably see as many movies as Roger Ebert.  I have to categorize my favs: war/adventure: The Great Escape; comedy: Annie Hall, Airplane, Blazing Saddles; musical: Cabaret, All That Jazz: too bloody to fit in a category: Godfathers I & II, Donnie Brasco, Good Fellas, Pulp Fiction. Also anything with Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep or Johnny Depp. (Yes, I paid money to see Joe and the Volcano in a theater.)

   When it comes to my favorite writing books, I pare it down to three categories of one or two books. (Aren't you relieved?)

   Inspirational books. Marcia Golub is a woman I would love to have as a next-door neighbor. Anyone who can write a book called I'd Rather Be Writing about how those of us without nannies, housekeepers and writing retreats in the Caribbean manage to write anyway, is someone who has my number. Lesson taken away from Marcia' book:  if you have a family and a writing career, you're always going to feel conflicted. Get over it. Oh and don't bother also trying to live the Martha Stewart life (even Martha Stewart doesn't live the Martha life without a platoon of assistants.) Alas, Marcia's book is out of print. I'd loan you mine...but then I don't loan books. (I never get them back.)

   If you have been following this blog for awhile, you probably know that my favorite book after Charlotte's Web is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I re-read Bird by Bird on a continual basis. (All right...I keep it in the bathroom for moment of "unavoidable delay.") Anne is funny and profane (for those of you who object to the occasional profanity in your how-to books, this might not be for you.) Anne taught me two important lessons: 1) first drafts are always crappy. That's why there are second, fourth and seventy-fourth drafts. You aren't going to get it right the first time. 2) You don't sit down to write with an entire story arc in place, any more than you would sit down to eat one of those 64-ounce-steak joints (finish it and it's free....and you have probably just had a coronary so the point is moot). The title Bird by Bird is Anne's shorthand for writing only what you see before you right this minute. Don't worry about that elusive center section, or that fuzzy ending. Write what you see clearly now.

     Craft books.  Darcy Pattison's Paper Lightening: Pre-Writing Activities That Spark Creativity and Help Students Write Effectively was written with the middle school writer in mind. Therefore, it is perfect for me, when I find myself with big story problems I can't solve myself.  There are exercises here for developing characters, settings, plots, dull language....you name it, Darcy and Paper Lightening can solve it. I have always wanted to teach a full-year class just to have the pleasure of sharing all of Darcy's common-sense suggestions and solutions. However, since I am currently relegated to teaching six session workshops, Paper Lightening is my atlas to writing sanity.

     Craft books for kids:  The classic book I hand a student who wants a book "that tells me how to write a book" is Marion Dane Bauer's What's Your Story: A Young Person's Guide to Writing Fiction.
Although this is geared to a slightly younger crowd than Paper Lightening, it was my fiction writing bible in the Vermont College MFA program (and not just because Marion Dane Bauer was one of my four mentors.)  Unlike Paper Lightening, which is designed to be a textbook, Bauer's book can be read and understood without teacher assistance.

    My six-session workshops can be problematic. It is not reasonable to expect any student, adult or child (and I teach both) to complete more than a rough draft in such a short time. I focus on writing exercises that are fun and have the possibility of  "growing" into a larger work. Ralph Fletcher has written more books on writing with kids than I can count, but my favorite is the one he has written for teachers, Craft Lessons. Fletcher takes students Pre-K through middle school through the components of fiction writing. The exercises and lessons can be used as stand-alone lessons. Each exercise is tailored to the skills and understanding of that particular age. My kids' workshops are for grades 4-8, so this is perfect for me. And if you like this book, check out the rest of the Ralph Fletcher bookshelf; you won't be sorry.

    Tune in Wednesday when I share my favorite writing exercise that I did not learn from any of my favorite writing books!

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

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Some announcements:
I updated the storytelling page.  I added a game and check out Mary Wright's blog entry about Kathy Pierce's Memorial Service.
My Dad's pathology report came back clean.
I read a whole lot of books that I never mentioned here, like Also Known as Rowan Pohi by Ralph Fletcher. So here's a review.

Bobby Steele and his best friends, Big Poobs and Marcus, are at IHOP one day, bored and desperate for something to do, when they find an application for Whitestone Prep - the private school in town.  They decide to create a fictional character and apply.  Guess what?  Their creation - Rowan Pohi - gets accepted.

What a hoot!  After celebrating, they consign Rowan and his acceptance letter to a shallow grave.  But Bobby sneaks back and retrieves it.  He is the only one of the three who has the grades good enough for Whitestone Prep and the only one who wants to go to college.   So, why not play along for awhile?  What could it hurt?  After all, the administration at Whitestone would see through the prank right away, right?  And then he'd just go back to public school and rot. 

The subplot of his family life adds a desperation to Bobby's attempt to better his future.  His father  recently got out of jail for abusing Bobby's mother.  Bobby's mother left.  Bobby's younger brother depends on Bobby for afterschool care and meals.  How could someone with a background like that hope to fit in with the richy-rich and squeaky clean students at Whitestone Prep?

For the most part, Fletcher makes this work.  Adults are willing to suspend belief at a private school.  After all, only the right people want to apply.  Rowan/Bobby works hard to be a good student and a good athlete and he has just enough swagger to be believable.  One part of this book that bothered me - and I read the ARC so this might be polished in the final product - was Bobby's essay to win a scholarship.  I thought it read like an essay written by an adult who was trying to write like a teen, which of course it is.  This is a tiny little complaint in a book that is full of tension of the non-violent kind.

Another part that bothered me was an attempt to make Bobby's father more sympathetic.  What he did to Bobby's mother was freaking awful!   But, you know how something wiggles in the back of your mind and just won't quit?  I can't say I think Bobby's father's actions could ever be condoned but the more this thought wiggles in my brain, the more I see where Fletcher is going with this.  Life is never simple. 

So, yeah, if you want a book where the underdog takes on the snobs and might even prevail, read Also Known as Rowan Pohi by Ralph Fletcher.  I wonder where they got Rowan's last name.

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A record number of people left comments about Ralph Fletcher and his new book Mentor Author, Mentor Texts: Short Texts, Craft Notes, and Practical Classroom Uses (Heinemann, 2011).  A special thank you to Heienemann for hosting a giveaway of his new book.  Ellen Arnold was the fourteenth person who left a comment and since her [...]

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     When I was a student back in the last century, there were three things you could count on happening the first day of school;  somebody would throw up, the PA system issued a stream of incomprehensible directives ("First lunch students will eat during second lunch...").  While my teacher figured out the intricacies of her Delaney Book seating chart, there would be our first assignment on the chalkboard, right under "Hello, my name is Mrs. (Fill in the Blank). 99 per cent of the time it was "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." Sometimes this was followed by the threat "Spelling and punctuation count. Must be at least 250 words."

      This assignment was so predictable that after second grade, I started wrting the essay in advance, so I could read a library book instead. The kids who went to the Wisconsin Dells or some place truly exotic like Disneyland had no problem. Kids who stayed home and spent the summer running through the lawn sprinkler or worse, in summer school, (the equivalent of a stint in Sing Sing) stared at their three ring binders, and sweated bullets.  Five minutes into the school year, and the threat of next year's summer school was already nipping at their heels.

     Somewhere between my school days and my daughter's, the "What I Did..." essay had gone the way of the dodo bird. Instead, every morning, she was expected to write in a "journal" for five to ten minutes, using a writing prompt on the white board. I am not a fan of writing prompts. It's hard to come up with a hundred and eighty or so age-appropriate writing prompts, year after year. The kids knew that what they wrote didn't matter, just that they wrote something. Their grade came from the teaching flipping through the journals looking for blank pages or suspiciously short essays.

    Whoever came up with the journal idea had good intentions. Being able to write English fluently is always a handy skill. Unfortunately, journals turn an awful lot of kids off. I wouldn't be a writer today if I had been expected to write on a narrowly defined topic, first thing in the morning. Every morning. By middle school, these journals were used in every class (except P.E.). Six or seven prompts a day would give me brain freeze.

     OK teachers, I am going to give you a writer's workout that will cause you to roll your eyes, gnash your teeth, and call me nasty names (hopefully, not in front of your class.) And yes, it will take more time (in the beginning). Ready?  Let's rev up that creative part of the brain that has probably lain dormant all summer.

Writer's Workout

(This is adapted from Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi.)

   Equipment needed:  Teacher:  A timer, a small legal pad, and writing instrument. Students; the same,minus the timer.

    Plan plenty of time for this exercise; the more students you have, the more time you'll need. Don't plan on multitasking. Your students will need your full attention.

    First, share a couple of your own (short) ancedotes. This serves several purposes. One, students seem more open to learning if they know a little something about you. Something interesting to them.  For instance, second graders are probably not going to care that you like gardening, have two grandchildren and your cat got stuck in a tree last week.

   They may be intereste

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This week’s guest blog post is written by Lynnelle Snowbarger who is in her tenth year of teaching fifth grade in the Jenks Public Schools.  A frequent participant in the Slice of Life Story Challenge, Lynelle also documents her journey with her students at the Bohemian Teacher Blog. Teachers don’t join the profession because of [...]

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Caroline Gonzalez began her teaching career in New York City.  During her 15 years in New York, she taught K, 1, 2, Transitional Bilingual, and Reading Recovery.  She has completed her fifth year of teaching in South Brunswick, NJ and is currently working as an Instructional Support Teacher.  During her time in South Brunswick, she [...]

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I was rereading A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You for pearls of wisdom to lend to one of the reluctant writers in my classroom this evening. Here are some of those pearls that I dug out of Ralph Fletcher’s book that bear repeating. (If you don’t have this book, then run [...]

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I love "go to sleep" books. To this day, I can recite Goodnight Moon from memory because it was such a favorite with my entlings before bedtime. It is still my gift of choice as a baby shower gift.



Am I right in my feeling that children's bedtime rituals are being left behind these days? I hope not but frequently, in schools, I meet kids who live almost separate from their families. Each child has a cell phone for individual communication/texting and a computer and television in their bedroom. On different schedules, families often do not even eat dinner together, much less, share bedtime stories and tuck-ins.

I hope this is not indicative of a wider trend because there is something so important and cozy and meaningful about seeing a child safely off to dream land.




In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck, illustrated by Tricia Tusa, Harcourt 2008

A mother patiently and tenderly sees her little one off to sleep with fragrant flowers on the nightstand, a cozy quilt , and wind chimes. The little girl only likes the color blue and protests at each offering of tea, the quilts, flowers because they are not blue. When the mother turns off the light though, the moon fills the room with a beautiful blue light that Tricia Tusa renders in a soft blue wash.

Averbeck's text rocks as gently as a lullaby as Tusa's scenes grow quieter and quieter.
What a treasure.

Jim Averbeck website




Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Eugene W. Field, illustrated by Giselle Potter, Schwartz Wade Books 2008

I hear my mother's voice when ever I read this poem as it was in my childhood copy of The Bumper Book: A Collection of Stories and Verses for Children. Illustrated by Eulalie (Platt & Munk, 1946.) that she read to us when we were small. The imagery of the wooden shoe remains a vivid childhood memory. Giselle Potter illustrates this classic of childhood using the lines of the poem as part of the action as the young fishermen toss their nets "in the twinkling foam."

Potter includes a note about Eugene W. Field and the history of the poem at the end of the book.

Be sure to read the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast interview with Potter here.
Giselle Potter website




The Sandman by Ralph Fletcher, illustrated by Richard Cowdrey, Henry Holt 2008

A tiny little man named Tor cannot sleep. One day he finds a dragon scale. As he files down the scale's sharp edge, a breeze blows the scale dust into his eyes which results in "a great wave of sleepiness." When he awakens, he determines that the dragon scale sand can be used to help wide awake children fall asleep. Alas, he needs a supply of them to stay in business so he must go to the dragon's lair to get them.

Richard Cowdrey's illustrations called to me the moment I saw the cover. Tor's tiny home furnishings include a thread spool end table, pencil stub window frames, a thimble cup and a soup ladle bathtub. Cowdry was inspired by Tolkien's Smaug for his double page dragon illustration. Dragon lovers will rejoice at his rendering. The dragon scale sand gleams like emeralds and Tor's mouse-drawn cart is just too adorable. There is warmth and a bow to tradition in Cowdrey's artwork. He is the talent that paints the Guardians of Ga'hoole covers.

The Sandman, (like Jack Frost--see The Stanger by Chris Van Allsburg) does not have many stories told about him. In fact, I cannot think of one. This is a nice addition to bedtime canon.

Ralph Fletcher website
Richard Cowdrey website

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My Summer (Professional) Reading Originally uploaded by teachergal These four books have been sitting in my bookshelf for the past year begging to be read. I’ve thumbed through Using Literature to Enhance Writing Instruction and Reading Aloud Across the Curriculum, but haven’t read them with the careful, close reading they deserve. All four books are [...]

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This map was for a book called Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher. (Click on the map to see a larger version.) It's a beautifully written memoir of the author's life as a child growing up in Vermont, with many poignant and funny moments. I enjoyed doing this piece because, first of all, I loved reading the story-- and second of all, when the editor sent me the manuscript she basically said, "Have fun!"

I love it when that happens!

Among other genres Fletcher has written many books about writing craft for young people. I have a few and I'll attest-- his books are helpful for all ages.

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Good Morning:

I don't have a huge amount of time for words today, but I took advantage of the sunshine yesterday morning and snapped some photos. I found that, if I looked close enough, springtime is peeking out all over my yard...

Blossom on my plum tree...



Sparks of yellow on my hill...



Color in my overgrown garden...



Homer enjoyed warming her 12 year old bones in the sun...



Junior posed for a picture...



Have a lovely day~

Until Next Time:
Kim
Garden Painter Art

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I'd like to say "Good Morning", but it's now beyond that, so I'll say "Good Afternoon".

We're freshly home from church and on our way to see "Pirates" and then to dinner. I took a quick stroll through the garden and brought along my camera. While I spent my time looking for signs of budding tomatoes and listening to the buzz of our hummingbirds, Jr. spent his time engaged in his favorite sport of Ground Staring:



and.....



While I'm on the subject of dogs, let me give a little air-time to my good ol' loyal yellow Lab, Homer. She's such a sweet and timid girl. She's getting old now,(she's 11), and it's showing in her hips, but she's still happy:



Now, onto the monstrous squash plant. I literally planted 6 itty bitty plants 3 weeks ago. I snapped this picture and posted it only 3 days ago.....



and now, have a look at it today....



It's growing like bamboo!! I hope that we get a good batch of squash. It can be yummy, but as any good Southerner knows, a squash needs to be breaded and fried and always full of calories!!

Well, I'm off to the movies. I hope this finds all of you having a sunny and "ground-staring" kind of day.

Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls
Kim's Kandid Kamera

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