How Will You Celebrate April's Poetry Month?

• Poetry a Day Challenge - Join me in writing a poem a day - any length - long tomes or poems that fit in your pocket - just write. If you want to join the challenge, here's day 1's poem on my mana'o for educators blog. Leave a link to your blog on the comments and I'll link it back in on this blog.

• Go to the excellent Scholastic site to get ideas for your classroom, including a webcast with poet laureate Jack Prelutsky.

• NCTE's read.write.think site has more resources on writing poetry in class like shape poems and links

• My must see site Favorite Poem has citizens, both famous and not yet famous reciting their favorite poems.

• Poem in your pocket day (April 26, 2012) asks people to keep a poem in their pocket. This site has all the resources you need for this event.

Poems are safe in pockets
A hidden world
Carried around
Next to last week's lint
A secret treasure
A comfort from harsh words
An escape from mean stares
A lovely surprise for your mother
on washing day

The Seven C's of Effective Teaching - Jersey City, NJ, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post - A Professional Networking Community for Educators

The Seven C's of Effective Teaching - Jersey City, NJ, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post - A Professional Networking Community for Educators

Cisneros Talks About the Impact of Teachers on Young Writers

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros is my go-to writing "textbook" for multiple levels. If you're looking for models of good writing, this book of vignettes is a great place to start.

In "The Collegian," Cisneros talks about her growth as a writer and shares the power of a middle school teacher to inspire her to be a writer.

Cisneros told the attentive crowd that her artistry didn’t translate into writing until she was in middle school when a teacher inspired her.
Cisneros pointed to the value that a teacher can have in the development of their students.
“I thought she was being mistaken — so I better not disappoint her,” said Cisneros. “My grades went up because this teacher had faith and belief in me. That’s when I began writing poetry at that time.”

Write With Your Students

Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years." -- Thomas Edison, 1913

Rebecca Alber in her Edutopia blog reminds us that almost a hundred years later, many are still echoing Edison's words.  But in the midst of the wave of educational technology geared to making our jobs "easier," we cannot forget that all the ed tech developments cannot and will not replace the "process of learning or the planning of teaching." 

Technology will never replace the need to be literate. Reading and writing continue to be essential, even with technology. 

A computer program, or a web 2.0 tool cannot have the lasting impact that a good teacher can have on the students.  To help our students become writers, we need to write side by side with them. 

I love this picture by Karla Pitts because it reminds me of my early writing memories. My mother was an English teacher so when she brought home essays, I remember bringing out my own paper and writing "comments" in the margins. Those early writing memories are just as important as the memories of our Saturday afternoon jaunts to the Manoa Public Library.

When I first started teaching, our technology consisted of an overhead projector and boxes of transparencies that we wrote on with our vis a vis pens. When it was writing time, I got my students writing because I wrote too. I became the queen of the one transparency draft. 

When it came time to do writer's group, I always used one of my drafts and the students would help me figure out where I stumbled, where I wandered off, what questions I needed to answer, where my piece should go. One of those transparency drafts, with several periods helping me revise, edit and even title the piece became my poem "Max Is Hea" published in Bamboo Ridge's Growing Up Local. When I got the acceptance letter, I of course read it to all of them. They were proud parents of that piece because they saw that piece grow up from that first initial draft on the transparency that was more like a bulleted mix of images. 

There is something soothing about grabbing a favorite pen or pencil and just feeling the energy and concentration transfer down your arm, to your fingers and onto the paper. Although most of my work is on the computer now, when I want to figure something out, I must get my Samurai #9 mechanical pencil and let the confusion and frustration work its way out of my fingers in a way that can't be accomplished by tapping on black and white squares. 

National Writing Project has been saying it for years. As writing project teachers, we see it in our classrooms all the time. Students who come from writing project teachers' classrooms are better writers. Fact. There's no magic pill, no program or curriculum to follow. My students have been published, their pieces have been used as prototypes for state writing samples, they have used their writing to win gold medals in competitions. 

Want to know the secret? 

Write when they write. Share first to show that you have the same struggles. Expect more, give more.

Online Journal Seeks Manuscripts and Issue Proposals

Online journal seeks manuscripts and issue proposals

WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom is the refereed journal of the Worlds of Words, an organization dedicated to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world. WOW encourages thoughtful dialogue around literature so that children and adolescents can reflect on their own cultural experiences and connect to the experiences of others across the globe.

You can submit to the journal in two different formats.  We publish 1-2 issues a year that contain individual manuscripts and 2 issues a year that are submitted by a specific literacy community.

Submit an individual manuscript as a vignette/classroom story:

·       Describe classroom or library practice (K-12) that connects children and literature in ways that promote intercultural understanding.

·       Take the form of a story or vignette that one educator might tell to another to share the responses of students to literature.

·       Include student voices where appropriate through quotes of student talk, examples of student work, audio clips, or video clips.

·       Include charts, graphs, student artifacts, bulleted points, and/or figures wherever possible to vary the format and enhance the content of the article.

·       Be less than 2000 words.

·       These manuscripts will be sent out for review by our editorial board, with decisions made within four months.

·       Visit www.wowlit.org to see examples of individual manuscripts in Volume 2, WOW Stories

Submit a proposal as a literacy community for an issue of the journal:

·      A group of educators from a school, library, project, writing group, or university course can submit a proposal to put together an issue of the journal.

·      Determine a theme/topic from the community’s work together related to using multicultural or global literature with students to create intercultural understanding.

·      Submit a 2-3 page proposal that describes the topic and provides a schedule for developing the vignettes along with the names of the authors who will contribute and the name of the contact person.

·      Issue begins with a short introduction of the focus for the issue and introduces the literacy community,

·       Issue contains 5 or more vignettes around the theme.

·       Visit www.wowlit.org to see examples of a community-based journal issue in Volume 1, WOW Stories

Submit all manuscripts and proposals electronically to wow@email.arizona.edu. See wowlit.org for specific submission guidelines. 

Manuscripts and issue proposals are accepted at any time.

For specific questions or inquiries, contact Dr. Janine M. Schall at jschall@utpa.edu. 

Free K-5 Literacy Workshop with Kathy Collins

Save the Date!

You are invited to a Literacy Workshop with Kathy Collins, author of Growing Readers: Units of Study in the Primary Classroom

When: Saturday, February 25, 2012

             9:00 AM - NOON

Where: UH Hilo, UCB 100

Rates: 

• LWP Alum - FREE
• Teachers - $35.00 [includes membership to BICTE]
• Education students - $10.00

RSVP: by February 15, 2012 (limited to first 100 participants)

to Avis Masuda (ammasuda@hawaii.edu) OR Michele Ebersole (mebersol@hawaii.edu)

This workshop is sponsored by the Lehua Writing Project, the Big Island Council of Teachers of English and the UH Hilo education department.

January Continuity: Non-Fiction Writing and Reading Comprehension through Drama

Ha'uoli makahiki hou! Some LWP members spent a fabulous Saturday at Kealakehe with our gracious hostess Shawna Fischer.

SI 2011 alum Jessie Garcia and SI 2009 alum Cathy Riehle did the demo lessons and our hostess (SI 09) did the invitation to write.

Using Lucy Calkins' nonfiction writing book as a resource (from the Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum), Jessie went over the packet she uses with her primary students to get them to create nonfiction books.

With her young students, they start with topics that they already know about, like caring for a dog, but older students can use this same format to create non-fiction books based on their research.

Cathy warmed us up by having us use our bodies to exemplify certain vocabulary words like droop, stomp, etc.

She then read an excerpt to us from Chicken Soup for Little Souls: Best Night Out with Dad
Our groups were tasked with dramatizing certain key words/concepts - like loneliness and disdain as a way to kinesthetically understand the reading.

Did you miss something wonderful? Yes, but stay tuned. There's an opportunity for more professional development in February and it's manuahi for LWP alum.