Category: Momologue

This time in the school year can be particularly difficult—a sort of doldrums. Everyone has been working hard for many months and summer still feels quite a ways off. You’re starting to feel the pressure of all that you haven’t accomplished…or wanted to. Standardized testing may be looming. The weather around Southern California becomes a confusing mix of sweater days and t-shirt days and at least for me, the urge to purge kicks in strong with garage sale season right around the corner.

With April being National Poetry Month, why not infuse your last weeks of school with a focus on the wonder of words. Poetry is at the same time economical and extravagant. It has the power to unlock a child’s voice and encourage writing skills in ways that prose and essay writing simply cannot. My own daughter has a stunning gift for poetry that would never have been unearthed had we not delved into reading and writing poems at a young age. Don’t be intimidated, jump in, be creative and have fun. Try to incorporate a little something into everyday.

• Revisit past four&twenty posts for some ideas. A personal favorite uses chocolate bars as inspiration for writing poems about place and taste! 

• Participate in Poem In Your Pocket Day on April 14. I love the idea of having a poem on hand to sponatneously share with family and friends throughout the day.

• Great Poems to Teach lists important poems, some with audio readings. Poetry 180 also has a compiled list of poems geared towards high school students—one for every day of the school year. Both are helpful for getting to know famous poets and various forms.

• Start a book club with friends using our poetry-focused, litertaure discovery guides. Younger students can explore animal poetry with our Douglas Florian guide while Love That Dog and Locomotion both tell profound stories through the use of verse.

• Use technology to share poetry with the world! Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, PowerPoint, Flickr, iMovie, digital cameras….the possibilities are endless.

• Here are some really creative ideas for word play from The Crafty Crow. Click through to Austin Kleon’s inventive newspaper blackout poems. What a great exercise in eliminating words to find the poem that was hiding there all along.

• Embark on our Exploring Poetry unit. Read about it here from a blogger-mom who did!

• For a creative lesson idea, read The Poetry of Words recently written by Kim for Heart of the Matter.

• Plant a PoeTree.

Most of all, enjoy learning, exploring, discovering, and creating with words!

– Tracey

 
Q. What sticks with you from your research of famous women?

A. Hannah: I remember clearly being confused about Polio when we read about Wilma Rudolph, but so impressed that she did not let this mysterious physical handicap stop her from winning gold. I remember making prairie bonnets and dresses when we read about Laura Ingalls Wilder and being thankful that she bothered to share her recollections of pioneer life with me. I remember wishing I could have been a stowaway in that plane with Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt. I remember thinking how awful I would have felt in Faith Ringgold’s shoes when that teacher told her to give up her dream of becoming an artist because she had no talent… imagine that! Vivid among these memories is having the privilege of meeting Faith Ringgold and being able to share this thought with her in person. I remember making an appliqué wall hanging of Faith Ringgold inspired by her many quilt-paintings hanging in museums like the one I saw at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I remember my mom reproducing my quilt in miniature so I could cut and paste the images onto greeting cards. I remember handing a stack of these cards tied neatly together with a bow to Faith Ringgold and showing her the quilt I made. I remember that the artist not only autographed my copy of her brand new book, The Invisible Princess, but also applauded my artwork. Research of famous women was an ongoing elementary assignment. That was more than ten years ago. After all this remembering what I remember most is that the assignment still matters.

A. Evelyn: I loved doing art projects to go with our write-ups on each famous woman in history. I clearly remember working on my watercolor of Amelia Earhart one night and showing it off proudly to my brother and his friend. I remember when Hannah and I sat together and traced drawings from the book about Wilma Rudolph and learned about her inspiring story of perseverance. I remember working on my art project for Faith Ringgold—it was a canvas divided into three sections depicting things I love—cooking, my friends, and art—and illustrating scenes that were important in Faith’s life. I remember specifically learning about how an art teacher told Faith Ringgold she could never become an artist because she didn’t know how to paint mountains. I thought that was so unfair because Faith had never even seen mountains before. Getting to actually meet Faith Ringgold and show her my art project, well, how many kids get that kind of opportunity? I was recently reading my college art appreciation book and I noticed artwork by Ringgold and I said to myself, “I’ve met her!” I remember learning about the first black woman millionaire, Madam C.J Walker. I liked learning about how she created beauty products for women. Entrepreneurial success stories have fascinated me ever since. I remember painting a portrait of Princess Diana and on “Person I Admire Day” dressing up like her. One not so fond memory is when I spent what seemed like hours crafting my write up on Louisa May Alcott and then accidentally feeding it through our paper shredder! These things happen! When we read about Rachel Carson, we participated in a coastal clean up day. I still carry with me striking memories from our research and art projects.

Did you know that March is Women's History Month?

I stumbled upon one of my prized possessions the other day, paper and pencil in hand, a writer looking for creative inspiration. As I unfolded the mass of faded-yellow legal pad and saw Sara’s profuse notes staring back at me, I felt the smile stretch from ear to ear and was taken back to the summer of 1997. Who needs a time machine?  

Detail of Amelia Earhart project – pen, watercolor, corrugated cardboard, oil pastels

For the coming school year our desire was to continue to provide opportunities for directed year-long research. The intrinsic reward of this type of activity is that children discover over time to value work that is not instantaneous. Beyond that, the objective is to develop the muscle necessary for independent discovery, which will have a direct connection to critical thinking. But there’s always a twist.

Back in time, Sara and I are in my kitchen. Where else? Chattering away we are brainstorming. We want to inspire our young girls (then first and third graders) to follow the thread of perseverance to its logical conclusion. What if they engage in research of famous women from history who will model the skill? What if we use great picture books and incorporate sophisticated art materials? Yes! And of course it will be great fun! And, think about it, I mean, we will be exploring literature, and this is history too, right? Ah, the glory of cross-curricular activities!

So, with a baby on my hip stirring up dinner in a pot on the stove, I imagined with Sara, her legal pad in hand chock full of bibliographic lists of famous women biographies she had researched to get our girls started, we constructed a series of research questions that the girls would use to guide them in their research and developed a presentation format. We decided that, for each book read, our girls would write a report and craft a creative project depicting the famous woman.

Detail from Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan

Looking back, the trick to this kind of research is to be prepared. Because we had a plan, we were able to sit with our girls, take turns reading aloud with them, and guide them as they developed the skill gathering just the right tidbits about the famous woman’s life to include in their simple research paper. We had time to help them explore art materials such as paint and canvas, chalk pastels, and textiles. We were able to encourage them as they endeavored to craft a creative project that would not only celebrate each famous woman, but also would propel them into the process of seeing a creative work from the start to the finish line.

Set as a two hour per week activity, generally speaking, we read and wrote about one book per week unless the book was long, in which case this leg of the activity could take a couple weeks or more (the “there is no hurry” truth applies here), and we completed the artistic activity in two or three weeks. From there, it’s all, well, history.

Only looking back do I see the great pay-off, our girls, all grown now, Hannah is 21 and Evelyn is 19, are women that turn heads not only because they are lovely, but because they are busy following the thread of perseverance to its logical conclusion and are consequently girls who dare to dream.

– Kim

Detail of Faith Ringgold project – fabric wall hanging

Spread from Dinner at Aunt Connie's House by Faith Ringgold

Detail of Eleanor Roosevelt project – acrylic on canvas

Eleanor by Barbara Cooney

Detail of Wilma Rudolf project – colored pencil, pen, acrylic, collage 

Most people agree that pinewood derby cars fall into two classes: those obviously made by kids and those obviously made by parents. A few years ago two of my sons built winning cars that fell into the kid made category but were viewed suspiciously because they won. Liam, too young to be officially eligible for a ribbon, built The Stealth, a car that beat every officially participating car.

Their dad showed them what to do but made them do the work. He passed his expertise to his sons and showed them how to implement everything from axle polishing to weight placement to wheel alignment. He gave them the knowledge and skill but required them to do the work with their own hands. This is a dad who mentored his sons and believed they could succeed.

In the end, the pinewood derby reminds me that I’ve observed three classes of teachers: those who don’t bother because they do not think their students can succeed, those who do it themselves because they do not think their students can succeed, and those who truly mentor, passing on the knowledge and skill necessary because they believe their students can succeed.

Passing on knowledge is a noble purpose, believing in a child’s potential, well that is revolutionary.

– Kim

I didn’t really need anything from the market that day. What I really needed was a diversion from my work. Sad but true, Trader Joe’s did the trick.

All was going according to plan until I noticed a display near the frozen aisle. There, right before my eyes were stacks and stacks of enormous chocolate bars imported from all over the globe.

A normal middle-aged woman might have responded, “C-h-o-c-o-l-a-t-e! Yes!” She might have cracked open a bar and taken a big bite. But not me, no, I’m a teacher. So I grabbed a handful of the luscious bars and got in line, while simultaneously crafting a lesson for the next day.

This would be a cross-curricular writing lesson. I would begin with a session of chocolate taste testing, gathering sense words and phrases with the group along the way. Then, after my students chose their favorite variety from the tasting, I would direct them to a mass of geography books, the ones I was on my way to pluck from the shelves of my local library on my way home from the trip to Trader Joe’s (the trip that was supposed to divert me from my work). My students would then research the country from which their favorite chocolate originated. After they gathered some notes, they would craft a poem of place and taste! By the time I pulled into my driveway a thought crossed my oddly refreshed brain, “Tomorrow will be grand!”

– Kim

The result of that lesson is delicious:

Swiss Chocolate (Taylor, age 14)

It melts in my mouth

            silky,

like velvety Swiss hills

gleaming in the morning sun.

Sweet milk awakes my

            taste buds

like the cry of an alpha

horn in the alps.

But it doesn’t last long,

            no,

like a fiery sunset

it melts away

revealing a moony relish.

Continue reading Delicious Poetry

“S-w-e-e-t, my mom bought Hostess cakes!”

“Really? Does your mom, like, never buy sweet stuff for you guys?”

“Are you kidding? Why would she? My mom bakes cookies, cakes, and pies all the time!”

My son Wesley came home appalled. A dish is only as good as its ingredients. We know when we use fresh produce instead of canned that the dish is going to have a higher nutritional value, that we are going to experience much better flavor.

I don’t start with a box mix. I cook from scratch. I make my cakes with flour, fresh eggs, butter, sugar, and chocolate. People notice and love my baking. Sure, anyone can go to Costco and buy a chocolate cake, but it has three paragraphs of obscure ingredients on the metallic label and a metallic taste to match.

I believe every child is like a blank recipe card and that our job as educators is to teach them how to bring their unique spice to a bland world. Each child possesses a unique cabinet brimming with flavor. One might be like chili powder (which you really need to make a good pot of chili), another cinnamon mixed with sugar, yet another oregano (which gives a great background flavor to many dishes).

What if our job is to challenge our children to explore the potential of their flavor? Let’s help our children develop their unique recipe for life.   

– Sara        With this new year, we welcome a new contributor to four&twenty!

Sara and I actually grew up in the same town by the sea. We lived parallel lives as children and as grown-ups, moved miles away from our hometown to the same small town location raising our children. Go and figure. My teaching career took a sharp turn at an unexpected bend in the road when our paths finally crossed at a garage sale. We became fast friends and kitchen table philosophers. Her wisdom is an orchard teeming with fruit. I know you will be blessed!

Welcome to the conversation Sara! Read more about Sara here.

I am squirming, back-to-work-Monday, the first of the year smirking around the corner. Let’s face it, even teachers who love teaching have to oil their gears after three weeks of fa la la.

So I find myself clicking through my past philosophical musings trying to remind myself why, exactly, I chose this profession until I stumble on an apropos reminder, “The comfort of routine, once established, will set roots deep into soil, establishing a framework for the tree to grow strong. When a routine rhythm is established from an early age, the student will value the work of exploring…” That’s the one!

To value the work of exploring, now there’s a worthy goal.

Math is a subject where consistency is a must. Fine-tuning a math routine is fingernails on chalkboard, a nearly archaic metaphor to be sure. Seeing as chalkboards have gone the way of record players, here’s an opportunity for a few seconds of Youtube diversion:

Okay, back to math. Math is a keystone subject that presents bumpy stretches of road along the way. Challenging our students to do their math consistently will give them the ability to be successful.

But what else can be acquired on the journey?

I learned a long time ago that, like all subjects to be tackled, a systematic approach to math will not only enable students to strengthen their math skills but will allow them to experience the discipline of working through a process to accomplish a task, and this, this, my friends is more valuable than the actual subject being tackled. “Process” after all, is the key to writing, literary analysis, visual art, music, and historical research. The list goes on and on and on.

What do I want to see in the classroom this year?

Students totally immersed in their learning, students discovering their individual efficacy.

And so I nod to myself, yes, that’s why I venture into unfamiliar territory, that’s why I take a whole-brain approach to solving problems, yes, whole-brain even when it comes to math problems.

Numbers and number relations, fractions, patterns and functions, data analysis, probability, algebra, no matter the strand, my goal is to help my students to move from simply completing a math lesson or math exam with exceptional accuracy to something much more.

Each of my students are plugged into a traditional math textbook and set on an individualized journey. I currently utilize Teaching Textbooks or Saxon depending on the individual needs of the student because of the exceptional didactic element that, if utilized over time, provides a potential for students to own their study of math. Beyond that, I am bent on incorporating concrete instructional materials that allow my students to delve into an exploration of critical and creative thinking. Students who engage in concrete learning are better able to apply what they’ve learned in real life situations. Fact of the matter is that students who use concrete materials develop more precise and more comprehensive mental representations—especially math students. Often times that these students are more motivated because experience with concrete materials have enabled them to develop longer attention spans. The benefits are endless.

Learning that moves through stages is learning that sticks. Students should begin in the Concrete or “doing” stage of learning because it enables new ideas to connect with familiar ideas. Building conceptual understanding of this nature supports retention, prevents common errors, and allows students to make larger critical and creative connections. From here students will move with ease to the Representational or “seeing” stage of learning, transforming the concrete into visual representations or pictograms. Moving through these first two stages often eliminates “holes” in mathematical understanding and allows students to confidently reach into the Abstract or “symbolic” stage of learning. Once arrived, the capacity for logic, for reflection, has blossomed to the point that the student begins to believe in the diligence that makes them hungry for more.

I have been striving for years to perfect my vision of a “Math Lab” upon which to found the math textbook. Funny, this year the goal is creeping to the top of my list.

Why?  

Passionate learning, of course!

Here’s to more of that in 2011.

– Kim

The slow sizzle of sautéing onions was interrupted when Søren, donning a plaid woolen flat cap, came wandering into the kitchen asking for an interview with the cook. The accent was, thick, Russian gone awry, picked up most likely from his brother’s daily Rosetta Stone lessons. The newsboy was serious about collecting data for the morning edition. I told him that the evening special was vegetarian spaghetti. He scribbled on notes of Post-Its neatly organized on a hand held whiteboard, thanked me for my time (I think, the accent was t-h-i-c-k), and went on his merry way.

When everyone was tucked into bed and I was tidying up for the next day’s chaos, my knee jerk reaction was to be annoyed with the little newspaper reporter slumbering angelically in the other room who left a trail of sticky tabs, pencils, and dress-up clothes from the kitchen to the end of the Earth, but thought twice when I read, “Window takes over World.” I burst out laughing. Window takes over world? What an awesome headline! Forget the headline, tomorrow that awesome phrase would become a fabulous prompt for my poetry workshop!

So I collected the trail of little handwritten notes for future fodder, put the pencils in the drawer, threw costume accessories into the closet, and sat with a cup of tea crafting a lesson in my mind around the phrase of the day. Sometimes the best writing lessons happen spontaneously in the kitchen.

– Kimberly

November is National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo” – a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Along with more than 100,000 young novelists worldwide our co-op has accepted this challenge for the past three years. Setting a personal word count goal, students have the opportunity to dig into their imagination and write, write, write their way to that goal! Writing an entire novel in one month may seem like a daunting task, but subtracting the steps of conferencing, re-writes, and editing from the process leaves room for young writers to explore creativity and that amounts to fun, fun, fun!

Last year our group wrote, collectively, 71,595 words! I am thankful for The Young Writers Program that provided our students with an opportunity to explore an idea which is the first and, perhaps, most creative step in the writing process. Following are unedited excerpts from 2009.

Once upon a time there was an elegant owl named Henry, Henry Hidgery Hoo. He lived with his four sons, John, the oldest, Clive, the middle, and the twins, James and Andy. His wife’s name was Henrietta. The family liked to do many things together, their favorites were fishing and camping, and they loved to celebrate holidays, especially Christmas.

            Henry woke up wanting coffee, black and sweet. He walked down stairs and turned on the coffee machine. He sat down and read the newspaper until the job was done. “DING!” went the machine. Henry walked over to it and made his coffee. He glanced up at the calendar.

            “December 24! It’s Christmas Eve!” he yelled. Ignoring his coffee, he ran upstairs and woke up Henrietta.

            “What is it?” she asked in a tired voice. She took off her eye mask and looked up at Henry. He smiled.

            “Henrietta, it is Christmas Eve!” she got out of bed without even saying one word. She walked down the stairs and woke up the kids. To Henry’s surprise, they were already dressed and ready to shop for the perfect Christmas tree.

– Henry Hidgerry Hoo, Liam, Grade 5

“Mommy, we’re going to be late!” Lila’s mother hated when she yelled across the house but Lila hated being late twice as much. Lila, in her impatience, ran out the door, her long blond hair flying behind her, and would have ran down the street to school but her mother’s call stopped her. “Lila you’ve forgotten your book bag!” Lila spun around, marched back into the lime green house, snatched the bag with her right hand and took her mothers hand lovingly in the other and together they walked to school. They walked because almost everything in the small city was in walking distance.

It was Lila’s first day in fourth grade, and she wasn’t as excited as the other smiling children. She didn’t get why one and two made three. Why did it not make four or five? She imagined that they felt left out. One day she would write a letter to the people who made math. On the other hand, she did look forward to art and writing.  These tended to make sense. Lila and her mother walked up to the front door of the little school, the warm sun glittering off the panes of glass in between the cream, wood framing, and knocked. A lady with rosy cheeks and short, chocolate brown hair opened the door wide. She was pudgy, wore a pink plaid suit and had a welcoming voice, but Lila disliked her, greatly. She was always so kind and when someone else did something bad, she wouldn’t scold them as Lila thought she should. But, lucky for Lila, she was not to be her teacher any more, as she stated quite clearly when she opened the door. “Oh dear Lila how I wish I could teach you but you are in fourth grade now! Would you like me to walk you to your room?”

“That’s quite alright, Miss Kito, I will be walking her to her room.” Said her mother. This brought great relief to Lila who didn’t want to be walked to her room by Miss Kito. Miss Kito gave a smile of content and walked away.

– Lila Dressed in Lilacs, Taylor, Grade 8