Category: Litropolis

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Comprehension is Comprehensive

Students working in our CORE Literature and Writing Discovery Guides will, each week, respond to “comprehension” questions that chronologically review the plot points from the week’s reading. But here, “comprehension” is an exercise that both draws students deeper into the heart of the story and the art of writing. Comprehension is a comprehensive exercise!

Comprehension is the act of making meaning from something heard or read.

Comprehensive includes all or nearly all elements or aspects of something.

There are many skills embedded into this complex activity beyond demonstrating that a passage has been well read. The act of responding to questions with a complete, detailed statement, is an opportunity for students to slow into the story details, but perhaps more importantly, to press into the work of constructing sentences.

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Following are two examples of the vast comprehensive nature of this weekly comprehension activity.

As a teacher, I scan the following sample from a student new to CORE Level 2,  and notice common spelling errors—their, there, they’re as example. Capitalization too—Communists, Navy. But what I notice first is that each response is a complete, simple sentence construction that parallels the question asked. And this confirms to me this is not the place to be heavy handed with the red pen. Refer to the Teacher Helps for more information on complete sentence responses. I might however, write a little note in the comment space on the Assignment Checklist at the front of the student guide for this section:

Here’s a trick I use to remember the difference between this set of homonyms. Here the correct spelling is used in a correct setting:  “their dog” AND “go there” (remember the’re is a contraction: they are)”they’re friends” … create your own trick and memorize the spelling of these!

When a question is asked, students are free to respond independently:

How does Winn-Dixie make Opal’s Father laugh? 

At first, sentence responses might be simple in nature copying the syntax of the question:

Winn Dixie makes Opal’s father laugh because he opens his mouth in a funny way.

[Here the teacher might suggest ways to smooth rhythm and add descriptive details: “Winn Dixie makes Opal’s father laugh when he opens his mouth in a funny way like he’s laughing.”]

Later, as students become more confident, sentences become more fluid, adopting more sophisticated syntax as in this dependent and independent clause:

When Winn Dixie opens his mouth to copy Opal’s father, he laughs.

[Here the teacher might suggest word choice: “Where you use the word “copy” you might try “mimic” instead.”]

The teacher does not need to correct every single sentence stylistically, but rather look for opportunities over time to inspire the writer to try new things. The best writing teacher will look for small opportunities over time to help students elevate their ideas. One or two suggestions modeled to the student over time is more effective than completing years and years of skill worksheets because this activity is the meaningful of work polishing students ideas.

Each year students using CORE Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 Literature and Writing Discovery Guides will compose over 250 true sentences as they comprehend stories in comprehensive ways.  Ultimately the work—the confident, beautiful, fluid work—will speak for itself!

 

~Kimberly

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Pages Enrollment is OPEN!

We hope your summer has been filled with joy and opportunities for continuous learning. We are thrilled to announce that registration is now live for our highly anticipated online workshops!

At Blackbird & Company, we understand the importance of providing resources that foster creativity, critical thinking, and a love for learning. Our carefully curated workshops offer an exciting opportunity for your child to explore a range of subjects while having fun engaging with their peers in a virtual environment.

Who are Pages classes for?

All students Earlybird through Level 4 (grades 2 through 12).

When are the classes?

Classes meet once per week and are scheduled Monday through Friday at various times for convenience. No matter the level, you will be able to find a class that works perfectly with your schedule.

  • Session 1 | 9.11.2023 – 10.13.2023
  • Session 2 | 10.16.2023 – 11.17.2023
  • Session 3 | 1.8.2024 – 2.8.2024
  • Session 4 | 2.19.2024 – 3.22.2024
  • Session 5 | 4.1.2024 – 4.29.2024

Class space is limited, so click through to reserve your space.

Register NOW!

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Meet Ms. Clare

I’ve been writing this summer about our amazing Pages staff and the classes they are teaching.

I’m truly honored to be a part of such a great team.

Some of you may have wondered, but what about you?

 

Clare Bonn

Don’t you also teach Pages classes?

Well, yes, I do!

It’s hard for me to know where to start since I’ve felt like I have shared so much about my classes over this year in my blog posts. I soon found my inspiration in my old dairy from 1984-85. I was in 5th and 6th grade at this time, so you now have an idea of how old I am!

My son Grady is into the book series, Diary of the Wimpy Kid, this year. We will snuggle on the couch and read the books together. On one of these days, I remembered that I had an old diary hidden away. I thought I would show my son so he could see a real diary. When I pulled it out and showed it to Grady, he was so impressed. It is really small—as big as my hand—and it is white with lavender hearts in lines and proudly says “Diary” on the front. It had an old lock that once-upon-a-time time required a tiny key. Now it’s so old it just opens on its own!

Inside, each entry was dated at the top and I wrote in beautiful, neat cursive writing. I forgot I could ever write like that! On June 7th 1984, the day before the last day of my 5th grade year, I talked about the teacher handing out awards. I received one award for reading and one award for creative writing. I don’t remember that day, or the awards, and I don’t remember what I read or wrote that year that triggered all the award giving! But reading that journal entry made me reflect back on my education and feelings about writing. As I got older, middle school, high School, college, I don’t ever remember loving to write. I do remember feeling it was easy. I was always grateful when the test or assignment was to write an essay. It always came easy to me and I was always graded well. What I do remember liking was when I had the chance to free write my thoughts or experiences in a poem or a letter. I enjoyed writing something that was meaningful, where I could express my intimate feelings.

I wrote for so long what was required that I forgot I enjoyed writing.

The hard part is finding the balance between writing free within constraint, finding freedom within all of vast writing domains!

Teaching Blackbird & Company curriculum helped me to remember what I enjoy about writing. I love reading good books, which I get to do with my students every time I teach a class. I love writing my own ideas and that is what I assign my students. Every section of every book we read has its own built in writing prompt.

When speaking at conferences, I’m often fielding the same questions: “How do I get my child to write? ” And, if the child writes, “How do I teach my child the form of writing, without turning them off of writing?”

First, what I have learned using Blackbird & Company is that students of all ages want to write or, may I say, have more motivation to write their own ideas. Most students don’t want to regurgitate information.

The second thing I’ve learned is that anything we learn that is hard requires discipline and encouragement. Writing can be personal and expressive and creative but in can still be a process that feels difficult. Learning to write and let your ideas flow without worrying about the rules helps to ease this difficult process. But the form does matter, it is important to communicate effectively. This hard process can be achieved with warmth, kindness, patience, and respect. This process is important personal work.

My son and I always start with connection before we read and write. We have our own cozy spot together that helps it feel less like work. We put a blanket over our laps, we have the dog curled up next to us. We tell each other what we are grateful for today, or what we are looking forward too, but the time is set aside for my son’s important work.

His ideas are important.

His words and thoughts are valued.

He is a storyteller.

When we encourage our students over and over in this way, they begin the process of believing. And this, in turn, helps the young writer dive into valuing  the work itself.

When we start our work, Grady knows what to expect. Blackbird & Company curriculum has helped me so much with this process, whether it’s my own son or students in class. The structure repeats every week, and at every level, just increasing with difficulty as they move up. Students start to know how to structure writing, “Today I complete Characters and Vocabulary, tomorrow, Setting or Plot. The following day they will dig into Comprehension questions. The other critical point that has helped our process is holding my son to this process. Free, creative writing, is beneficial and I do always leave a time for that, but writing based on great literature is important too. Being able to demonstrate not only comprehension, but to question, to dive deeper into meaning and characters, to write what you think or feel based-off of what you have read, is important work. If we value only one type of writing or learning we greatly limit ourselves, our learning, our thinking, our communication and our understanding of our world.

What I’ve learned from Blackbird & Company, is to set aside time for important work and to push, or lean into difficult things so we can learn, stretch, and grow into our great potential and uncover the gifts inside of each one us.

Now that I have let you know all that I have learned from teaching using Blackbird & Company curriculum, you may still wonder, “Miss Clare, what are you teaching!!!”

I’ve the pleasure of teaching Literature Level 2 and Level 3 again this year! Miss Lori will be teaching Level 2 and 3 as well, but only novels that are tied to a history add-on class. I will also be co-teaching many of the applicational classes with Mr. Søren! I’m very excited about this! We will be teaching Introduction to Composition, Intermediate Composition, poetry, creative writing tied to Operation Lexicon, and even letter writing (how fun)!

I love my job.  I’m consistently learning to read well, write well and think well, right along with my students!

~Clare Bonn

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Meet Miss Lori

“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

~Winston Churchhill, 1948 speech to the British House of Commons

 

I recently had the pleasure to talk with a new member of our Pages team. She is definitely not new to teaching, having taught for over 20 years and having worked with children her whole lifetime in some capacity. She has taught many subjects including language arts and has specifically used Blackbird & Company curriculum in the classroom. But her real area of specialty is history. We have expanded our Pages classes this year to include a history opt-in class to students participating in her Core Literature + Writing classes.  The opt-in classes will dive deeper into the time in History being discussed in the books that are set during a certain time period in history.

“History is all about people, and as a society, we like to know what people say, how people act, and interact. History is my passion.”

~Miss Lori May, History Teacher

Miss Lori talked about the value of being introduced to history through great literature, “We can give students a more personalized account of a certain time period. History can be told through the eyes of a child, this is something we often don’t hear in a history class. History is often told through the eyes and perspective of adults.”

“History is written by the winner, by the person in power.”  ~Miss Lori

Miss Lori pointed out that we don’t often get taught history through the eyes of a child but we also don’t learn history through the point of view of people who hold less power. To really understand history we need to look at events through other people’s eyes. We need to look at our own preconceptions. History teaches us to critically think and ask important questions: Who? When? Why? was this written. Miss Lori pointed out the fact that there are nuances we need to shine a light on and ask, “What was the author trying to say?”

“Great Literature books are springboards into times in history we cannot comprehend.” ~Miss Lori

 

Miss Lori noted her biggest challenge teaching history is really having her students understand what the challenges were during that time. “Everything we teach is relative. Most people have experienced life with a home, and food–their basic needs met.” Miss Lori recently taught anchored to the book, Out of the Dust, to a class of 4th and 5th graders. This book takes place in Oklahoma during the time of the Dust Bowl, seen through the eyes of a young girl. Miss Lori had the chance to dive into the history of the dust bowl, the Who? Why? When? She recalls, “It was so hard for my students to really grasp how much dust was involved and how much covered their bowls, tables, and food. The process of covering all window sills and door jams took time. The face coverings and gas masks that were worn because the dust would fill people’s lungs.”

Miss Lori will start the first Pages Session of this coming school year teaching 1. Out of the Dust (once again) along with, 2. Macaroni Boy, set in 1933, Pittsburgh during the Great Depression, and 3. The Red  Umbrella, set in Cuba during Castro’s revolution.

If you are interested in Miss Lori’s classes, enroll soon because we know they will fill up fast—remember that you will enroll for TWO, both the CORE Literature & Writing class and the History Opt-in. Miss Lori has two sections available during each session for CORE classes (one on Monday and one on Friday). The History Opt-in is offered on Tuesday for both sections.

 

~Clare Bonn

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A Word from Miss Clare

Products – Blackbird and Company

What parents are saying about Pages:

“Thank you for making class so enjoyable and personal. My daughter’s writing has really expanded since being in classes with you.” ~Brit Riddle

“I really appreciate you going through the different areas of reading and writing in class as opposed to having him do it all on his own at home. It sets a good example of what to do (i.e. what to look for and pay close attention to as he reads) and how to do it (i.e. organize his thoughts and get ready to write into paragraphs).” ~Paulina Yeung

I’ve been overseeing and teaching Pages online literature + writing workshops for two years now.

I’ve homeschooled for over 15 years plus taught in the classroom along the journey. I’ve gone to Homeschool Vendor fairs as a parent and a teacher. And I talk to many parents and teachers. I often get asked what makes our curriculum or our classes different. I’m  never sure where to start. But a word that often comes to mind is relationship.

This word makes a difference. I can see this difference when we’re at conference and a parent comes to our booth. Or I get a phone call, or a parent sends in an email with a question. Parents don’t seem to worry as much about finding a child’s history program or science materials. Parents even seem to worry less about pairing math. But reading, and even more so writing, is a whole different story. Reading and writing are essential to understand the world, to communicate with people, understand culture and are vital to learning and exploring all the other subjects. When parents contact Blackbird & Company, they tend to share stories of their triumphs and struggles with reading and writing. For someone who has children who learn differently, or are simply not motivated to read or write well, the work of reading and writing can lead to worry, frustration, sadness, and many a day in tears. I was one of those moms for many years until I discovered Blackbird & Company Curriculum and my very own community of support.

Pages classes are, first and foremost, a Community of Support. We take a great piece of literature and walk students through it for 5 weeks using the curriculum as guide. We break up the reading each week and dive into Character Traits, Setting, Plot, Vocabulary, Plot Questions and Discussion. We end each week with a personal writing prompt that ties into the book. The teacher becomes your student’s editor, teaching all the form needed to become a successful writer while, at the same time, protecting and valuing the student’s great ideas. The time and support we give each student are something I have never seen before in other classes. We communicate with both the parent and student regularly forming a strong relationship based on mutual respect. Both parents and students share their hearts and, consequently, writing skills soar.

Students might begin in a Pages class timidly writing just a few sentences, but by the end they are courageously writing multiple paragraphs. Their ideas are valued and that is motivating. We learn in collaboration and that is encouraging. On the last class of each session, each student presents a final project that they created inspired by the book. This project always involves creativity and might be something built, crafted, written, or researched. this opportunity gives students a creative outlet to dive deeper into application and an opportunity to participate in public speaking.

When parents have their students take a Pages class, both will learn how to pace and structure the work. Parents will learn tips to support their student, and both will experience the rhythm of the guides. Students form relationships with the teacher and their cohort of students, relationships that are long lasting. They engage in meaningful and challenging discussions of literature. They learn tools to write quality, original ideas. They learn to read closely and write authentically.

I am really honored to be the Lead Teacher of the Pages team of teachers. You will find bios of all our amazing teachers on our website soon. Please take a look! We are all excited for this year’s offering which we have expanded to multiple times and multiple days hoping to accommodate more of our families’ varying schedules. We have printed a sneak-peak of our session a year in advance so you can plan!! Come July 5, enrollment will open!

We hope to form a relationship with you and your student(s) and, come fall, become your Community of Support. We look forward to the journey and hope to give your student the needed tools to fill their blank canvas, one idea at a time!

I’m certainly looking forward to reading well, writing well and thinking well with your students!

 

~Miss Clare

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On Fairy Stories and Fear

“If you want your children to be intelligent read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

                                                                                                ~Albert Einstein

I recently came across some of my daughter’s old writing. I believe she wrote it when she was 12 or 13. She is now 15 and a sophomore in high school. She was answering the prompt: “Why is writing important?” She learned that writing is more than just words on a page, it’s how people express how they are feeling. She believes for writers it’s like painting a blank canvas.

Words help us learn and feel or maybe better said, to learn how to feel.

The other night I read to my son Grady before bed. We read one of Grimm’s fairytales, “Rapunzel”. Grady lay fully cocooned in his blanket, over his head, listening. As you probably know Rapunzel was taken from her family as a punishment for stealing the green, leafy, vegetable, rapunzel, from their neighbor’s garden. The garden belonged to a very powerful and wicked witch. The girl, Rapunzel was raised by the witch and was sent away from all people to live in a tower she could not escape, all alone. A prince heard her singing from the tower. He watched the witch visit her and saw her let down her long hair for her to climb. He did the same and soon after many months got to know Rapunzel and they fell in love. The witch discovered that the prince was visiting. She cut Rapunzel’s hair and then sent her far away, alone in a desert. The witch hung Rapunzel’s hair at the tower and let the prince climb up, but once he did, she was there to greet him. She scared the prince from the tower into a thorn patch far below, where the prince’s eyes were torn out. He wandered for years blind and alone until he wandered far enough. He found Rapunzel at last, drawn by her beautiful singing. This fairy tale ends well with the prince being reunited with his love, Rapunzel’s tears healing his eyes and them living happily-ever-after back in his kingdom.

Whenever I read Grimm Fairy tales to my children as they were going up, I always wanted to change what happened. I would naturally edit—the prince losing his eyes and wandering alone, the wolf eating Grandma. What I started to realize over time is that children, like being scared. But there is a difference being scared by books versus movies or television. With books readers can take it as it comes, with language aimed at a child’s imagination, suspense and simple elements building the world of the story. What if it’s actually important to hear that bad things can happen? We can feel pain. We can get hurt.  We can become resilient human beings.

Sometimes in life, in many ways, we wander blind for a period before we find the good, before we can see.

I want stories to end well. I want to eliminate the scary in the world because I don’t want to acknowledge the fear, I feel for my children in the world we live in today. As my daughter wrote so eloquently, these stories have taught me how to feel.

I recently read an article about the importance of being scared. Einstein was quoted: “If you want your children to be intelligent read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” The intelligence that Einstein is referring to is existential intelligence.

Existential intelligence is defined as the sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence, such as the meaning of life, why do we die and how do we get there. The skills are reflective, deep thinking and design of abstract theories.

I saw an interview with President Obama years ago who discussed his great fear for young people losing this ability to be deep, reflective thinkers. In our fast-paced world we are encouraging more and more people to skim through reading material on electronic devices and not to sit and contemplate deeper meaning in what they are reading. In retelling Hansel and Gretel, nearly a century later, author Neil Gaiman asserts:

“If you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.”

The great polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote a reflection on the first edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales which revolutionized storytelling:

“Children like being frightened by fairy tales. They have an inborn need to experience powerful emotions.”

Andersen took children seriously. He speaks not only about life’s joyous adventures, but about its woes, its miseries, its often-undeserved defeats. Andersen had the courage to write stories with unhappy endings. He didn’t believe that you should try to be good because it pays, but because evil stems from intellectual and emotional stuntedness and is the one form of poverty that should be shunned.

I have realized that throughout my life I have gone to great lengths to not feel or face fear. It’s not just the evil in the world but the great unknown. The what ifs. What if I am not smart enough, strong enough, talented enough, liked, or loved enough? What if I am not good enough?

Children’s author-illustrator Jon Klassen was asked how he comes up with ideas for his books? He says, “It’s just born of fear—of creating. It’s been a way of avoiding something I don’t want to do. And the solution to that avoidance lends itself to a story.”

My daughter went on to say that one of her favorite words she learned more about is the word, dumb. She learned it can mean temporarily unable or unwilling to speak. My daughter has a learning difference. She did not learn to read and write at the same developmental stages as her peers. She often felt dumb, as in stupid or foolish. My biggest fear was her feeling this way. So motivated to protect her and put her in her own tower far away, I kept her out of school and chose the path of homeschooling.

My fears came to reality as I realized I did not make her tower high enough.

The beauty in it all, like in our fairy tales that can be scary, is that we see resilience being born, we see paths that can have obstacles, we see hurts and feel fears. My daughter has been hurt, afraid to try, plagued by words. But she has also grown strong, wise, mature, forgiving and compassionate.  Fear comes with gifts.  Fear ear can bring us closer to faith. Faith brings hope, in the good, in mankind, in our individual skill sets. Fear and faith seem to go hand in hand and to be sheltered from one keeps us separate from the other. Today, I read to my kids the whole fear filled story of “Rapunzel”. I don’t have to fix stories for them, and I don’t have to fix life. Life is, we are in it right now, and I wouldn’t change a thing, because if I did, I wouldn’t be the person I am today and I happen to like me. Keep reading fairy tales and all stories that end in tragedy. Let your faith be bigger than your fear and enjoy the journey.

 

~Clare Bonn

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Reading is Key

“Mom, I sat by myself today at the park. Nobody was playing anything I was interested in. I tried to talk to Luis but he never listens; the game always has to go his way. Mom, Tommy says he has been playing football for 10 years, but he just had his 8th birthday. I don’t understand why he won’t just pass the ball. Gabby kept taking Carlos’s hat. She said it was a game but Carlos didn’t seem to like it.”

When Grady is driving in the car with me or sitting at the dinner table or when his head hits the pillow at night this is the usual conversation or maybe I should say download. I realized during this time how much I just needed to listen. Grady needed time to process these different situations and relationships that came across his path during his day.

How confusing, mystifying, uncomfortable human relationships can be—whether we are 8 or 80.

I was recently introduced to an author named Jon Klassen. The words and the pictures are very simple yet carry a lot of wisdom concerning human relationships.

Three books I read Grady over the course of nights were:

1 ) I want my Hat Back

 2) This is not my Hat

 3) We found my Hat

Grady would smile and laugh out loud. In I want my Hat Back, the main character, a bear, is running around asking other animals if they have seen his hat. He asks another character, a rabbit, (who, by the way, is wearing the bear’s hat) and the rabbit, in a suspicious way, says he hasn’t seen the hat. The bear continues his search until he realizes he has seen the hat… that rabbit was wearing it! He goes back to confront the rabbit, “You stole my hat!” There is a long look between the two. Then comes a picture of bear sitting down, saying he loves his hat, wearing it on his head. Then a squirrel comes passing by asking if he has seen rabbit. Bear answers in a suspicious way, “Who me?” “Why are you asking me? I wouldn’t eat a rabbit, don’t ask me anymore questions.” This story ends with no clear ending. Could the bear have sat on the rabbit? Ate the rabbit? Could the rabbit have run off? Really anything is possible.

I read an interview with Jon Klassen and he discussed these micro-dramas from childhood. He used the example of Frog and Toad books. How these two characters had unresolved, uneven relationships, where one of them needed one of them more than the other. The underlying thoughts, “I have friends who could leave me or I have friends I could leave. I don’t like them as much as they like me or vice versa.” I researched the author of Frog and Toad after reading Jon Klassen’s interview. Frog and Toad happened to be my childhood favorite as well. It was interesting to find that Arnold Lobel wrote Frog and Toad based on his experiences from second grade. Lobel was sick and out of school for most of that school year and kept himself busy by drawing. He used his animal drawings as a way of coping with the insecurity of his return and making friends. He used these experiences to write Frog and Toad.

Kids don’t want to analyze these relationships. In stories, like in life at this young age, they want to watch them play out—Jon Klassen reminds: validate that they exist.

Isn’t this part of human nature, to want to feel we are not alone in our experiences?

Jon Klassen goes on to explain that children don’t need to know the motivations of characters and can understand questionable behavior in an unexamined way. Kids don’t ask “why did he do that”, like us adults who like to analyze and pull out the meaning or morality.

How would an author answer the why?

Isn’t that for the reader to get too or not get too?

Is there really only one answer to what motivates human behavior?

Children don’t have to ask all of the whys to understand it can happen. Grady didn’t need to ask why the bunny took the bear’s hat or how the bear got the hat back. He related in the human experience, of having something taken and wanting it back, of finding it and getting it back. This is Not my Hat, shows a small fish taking a hat from a big fish and all his internal thinking about it why he does it. What a beautiful example of what we do as humans when we want something and dance into our internal justification. We laugh while reading because we all relate on some level. No story needs to be added to why stealing is wrong. We can all understand the higher moral value but also total relate with the very human behavior.

We Found a Hat, beautifully demonstrates the inner conflict when two friends find something they both want but there is only one. Our desire for something for ourselves mixed with our feelings of wanting to share and be honest is, again, common human nature. It is rarely just a clean action of what’s right.  It’s a pull and push to serve ourselves and someone we care about.

And then there is Jon Klassen’s book, The Rock from the Sky, that pushes us adults right off the ledge! The book is about what we cannot control.

Where a rock will land. What could happen in our day. What the future might bring. How things we can imagine will change and all the things we can’t imagine and all the questions that go with it, the what, why, how, when and where! There is SO much we can look up for children now, so much on-the-spot-access to information. We can know a lot of interesting facts. But in the case of our lives, the unknown is our future and the daily things that can happen that are out of our control. This book is addressing the fact we don’t know everything and we are not supposed to know. Part of life happenings are luck, timing, paying attention, listening, trusting, asking for help, admitting we don’t know!

So when I sit down to read Grady a book, especially a Jon Klassen book, I remember that Grady has had a full day with really big experiences. When Grady talks I listen. When we read I let the story be felt. I don’t have to pull the moral or give him instruction on who he should be. I watch him smile and laugh and I let the moment be. I give up my adult longing to know why and I sit on the ledge with the unknown. I become friends with the right now and that is enough.

-Clare Bonn

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Flourishing an Idea

Mozart Season Bundle

Aesthetics is a set of principles that inform the outcome of a work of art. Aesthetics taps into that part of our being that connects with beauty. Last spring, after reading The Mozart Season,  knew the section of the story that would inspire the most creativity. I know this because I have seen it here, and here, and here. And when readers stumble upon this three-page passage, well, Section 5 happens.

As the story goes, when Allegra and her mother’s friend, Diedre spend an afternoon in the Rose Garden, well, music happens. Nestled atop a hill in the park is a silvery aluminum sculpture. There are tall columns and arched columns, smaller columns and water uniting them all.

“It was Diedre who started the song. She began slowly, BONG bong Bong bong with her knuckles on the three big columns, walking between them.”

Now I’ve seen some fantastic creative responses to The Mozart Season (some that have won awards), but when this past year, one of my students finished the book and brought in her Section 5 project to share, I marveled that, yet again, it was in response to this specific music-making passage.

And the project she brought in was not only “nique” (as Allegra and her friends would say), but also a perfect opportunity to share some tips to elevate the Section 5 project artistically.

With a cardboard box, some discarded bottles, aluminum foil, a few scraps of notebook paper, one green marker, Scotch tape, and a pitcher of water, my student made a musical instrument! While I have seen many musical instruments (even musical compositions) inspired by this little section of The Mozart Season, this one captured my imagination. Think “don’t judge a book by its cover” for a moment. This homely little project surprised me with rich sounds made from filling the bottles with different levels of water and blowing gently across each the neck. Oh! I was simply tickled, “My favorite Mozart invention so far!”

But the poor dear was in desperate need of a makeover. So I gave the maker a simple lesson.

So following is the simple make-over:

BEFORE

 

  1. To begin, if you are going to use a box (and boxes are a great way to begin), always paint the box! Give yourself a blank canvas upon which you can build your idea. A coat or two of gesso or acrylic paint will do just fine.
  2. Use more than one art medium. Here for example, using green marker and green paint on both folded and crumpled paper makes the viewer read ‘foliage” more clearly.
  3. Give the reader an anchor to the book where the idea originated by posting quotes around the project.

You don’t have to be an artist to make your idea beautiful. And, think about it, ideas are meant to be appreciated. So, go on, beautify.

AFTER

One last thought… There is a trend in all sectors of education to discount the reading of pure fiction. This is not wise. This quiet little story is, in my opinion, powerful proof why we all need to read across many genres, read all kinds of stories. Every time I’ve led students through this purely fictional story set in a very real setting (the competition that Allegra is working toward is a real competition that happens annually in Oregon), they read a few pages and groan. But by the time they get to the end, they have a deep appreciation for the rich story and significant fodder for their creativity to unfold.

~Kimberly Bredberg

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It’s April… Read and Write Poetry!

Try Douglas Florian.

Winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and recipient of an ALA Notable Children’s Book Award, Douglas Florian is the author and illustrator of many children’s books. He believes there is only one rule when it comes to poetry, that there are no rules. Douglas Florian gives credit to his father as his first art teacher, who taught him to love nature. He begins his poems with research of the real thing and then uses that information to create an imaginary poem. Douglas Florian lives in New York City with his wife and five children.

Try Love That Dog.

What is a poem anyway?

I don’t want to
because boys

don’t write poetry.

Girls do.

Meet Jack, who tells his story with a little help from some paper, a pencil, his teacher, and a dog named Sky.

Although this guide includes many of the same elements as the other Level 1 guides, such as vocabulary and comprehension, the format is unique.Each week, your student will be encouraged and guided to write poems in the style of each poet being introduced in the story.

Try Locomotion.

When Lonnie Collins Motion – Locomotion – was seven years old, his life changed forever.

Now he’s eleven, and his life is about to change again. His teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper. And suddenly, Lonnie has a whole new way to tell the world about his life, his friends, his little sister Lili, and even his foster mom, Miss Edna, who started out crabby but isn’t so bad after all

Poetry bundleTry Exploring Poetry.

Discover the poet within you!

This unit will help you discover the craft of writing poems and the delight of reading poetry. Over the course of seven weeks you will be introduced to some of the basic techniques used by poets, explore excellent poetry, and practice writing original poems. Each section is designed to be completed in about two, one hour sittings.