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First Grade, Not Forgotten!

10/28/2015

Hello, first grade!! I promise I have not forgotten you!!

As the year began, it seemed critical for me to concentrate a lot of time and effort in kindergarten. From our perspective, we were starting from the beginning, building from the ground up. Planning, writing curriculum, meeting with teachers, assessing, and then starting all over again. And again. And again. It takes time. Lots of it. Especially when you are trying to create and introduce a context for writing for children who have never done any. Most of them can not even write letters, much less words.

It has been an incredible journey. And, at this point, I feel like we have established the writer's workshop with our kindergarten students, and they are exceeding all of our expectations. Whew!!!

So, first grade. Let's talk.

I met last summer with more than 50 educators from my district and shared some curriculum that I wrote for first grade when I taught it four years ago. I had moved to first grade from a fourth grade gifted class - where I had taught for eight years. For the primary workshop, I wrote units of study that targeted first grade skills and standards. But, I quite naturally still spoke to my first grade students much like I did to my gifted fourth graders. I called them writers. I used technical, process writing vocabulary. We did pre-writes and quickwrites. We drafted in drafting booklets. We revised. We edited. We made books. We published. We were a community of authors. I never "lowered the bar" on what I thought first grade writers could do. My instruction was as grounded in teaching the writer and not the writing as it had been in fourth grade. And it was writing - picture books, literary nonfiction, poetry, informational books, how-to books

From that year in first grade I learned something that will forever frame my teaching - #allkidscanwrite.

All. Kids. Can. Write.

As we now approach the end of the first quarter of the 2015-2016 school year, the first grade team at my school is well underway with using units of study as a framework for their writer's workshops. They have launched the workshop with a narrative writing study, also using Eric Carle's books as entrypoints for students' work. By first grade, nearly all students have at least a context for writing, having had experiences in kindergarten. However, they still need foundational instruction in first grade to build on what was begun in kindergarten. Our unit included the following mini-lessons:

* Students as Authors
   * Writing As Craft
   * Making Books
   * "I'm Not Afraid of My Words!" (Thank you, Katie Wood Ray and Lisa Cleaveland)
   * Troubleshooting/Management of the Writer's Workshop
   * Finishing a Book
   * What to Expect in a Conference
   * Revison
   * Editing
   * Publishing

A very generous first grade teacher has agreed to let me come into her room and teach! We will be starting the next unit, an Illustration Study week after next.

Why not next week? Well, here at my school, in first grade, we are building up to a unit to be taught in February on graphic narrative writing. Next week is one of our four preparatory lessons for that unit. This is a yearlong, writing pilot in first grade and I am over the moon excited about it. I promise to keep you posted on our graphic narrative writing project!!!

My plan for this blog going forward is to post on first grade writing each week on Wednesdays and continue to post on kindergarten writing on Sundays!!

Keep on writing!

#allkidscanwrite

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Voice and Choice

10/25/2015

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This writer decided to make his main character a very busy bumblebee. This is his illustration of the bumblebee getting on the school bus!

My two colleagues and I, who attended the Joan Oates Institute together this past summer, were greatly motivated to not only bring arts integration to our students, but to also inspire, support, and celebrate our faculty and staff as we began this school year. Our fervent hope was to throw open the doors leading to a journey brimming with possibilities for our entire school family. As our first outreach, we asked each teacher to give us one word that held the power of inspiration for him or for her. We took each word and created a "Wordle". And then we had team shirts made with that "Wordle" front and center! When we wear our shirts, we proudly proclaim that we are more! We are what moves us and inspires us. It is powerful.

My word was "VOICE" !!!!!

A writer's voice is what captures a reader's attention. Voice infuses the personality of the writer into the written word. And every single student that walks through our classroom doors has voice! It is our job to help the student writer discover, unearth, expose, believe in, trust, and celebrate his or her author's voice. I recently read a baseline writing prompt written by a student with autism. The piece was short and had taken this student a long time and several attempts to complete. But, when he used the word "hilarious", he had me! That is VOICE. That is what we want to hear!

Having taught elementary writing all the way through fifth grade, I worry that as we concentrate so much on prompt writing, brought on in large part by state assessment requirements, we are quieting the voices of our student writers. When we remove choice from the writer's workshop, and teach only to prompts or specific journal assignments or basal activities, we may not be providing opportunities for our students to express the joy, the excitement, the intuitive point of view inherent in topics of their own choosing.

So, that being said, here I am, leading an author study in kindergarten based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Part of me (a great big part of me) thought I should read several books by Eric Carle and let the students choose which one they felt most inspired by to use as a model for their own picture book. I'm still not sure that isn't what I should have tried.

However, I have to keep reminding myself that these are kindergartners! They do not write many words, yet. They do not write sentences, yet. They are just learning what "story" means. To offer them too many choices, I believe, leaves some kindergarten students overwhelmed and unsure of themselves. We must provide them with a context for writing in our classroom. Many of them have come to us with none.

But guess what they do come to us with? VOICE!! Yeah, that's right!!!

And, even more importantly, those who are ready to move beyond using our mentor text as a model are doing just that! As we notice students moving beyond the text, we teach in to what's happening with those writers. We celebrate their originality and risk-taking, even as we continue to offer structure and support to those students who need it.

And student VOICE is everywhere :)

This writer chose a "hurantula" as his main character. Every single time I read his story, I laugh out loud. His author's voice is loud, clear, and powerful.

This coming week week we will continue to study our mentor text, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and base our stories, as needed, on the structures Eric Carle used, including the days of the week and growing numbers. I will work with the student writers as they each compose a repeating phrase for their stories, building on the "..but he was still hungry." line in Carle's book. And we will, perhaps, try to tell our stories, one day at a time - both literally and literally. While this may seem a bit too structured and dictated, in my heart I know that it really is a foundation, a net, a place to begin for most of our young writers. I want them to discover their voices and play with their stories in an environment that inspires them.

It is powerful.

#allkidshavevoice

#allkidscanwrite

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The Very Amazing...Students :)

10/21/2015

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Happy Wednesday!! We are halfway through the workweek :) Life is good!!

We began our Author Study in kindergarten this past Monday, and I wanted to share with you how we got started. I feel very much like we are driving down a highway without a map - an experience that is nerve-wracking and exhilarating at the same time! Not surprisingly, the students are meeting our expectations - and then some!

We began on Monday with an introduction of our mentor text, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. I asked the students to first listen to the story as readers, and then they shared what they liked about the story. Some of their responses included "all of the food the caterpillar ate"; "How beautiful the butterfly was at the end"; and, of course, the part where the caterpillar was big and "fat"!

I read the book again, this time asking the students to listen and look for the writing and illustration moves that Eric Carle made to help his readers enjoy the book as much as they did. We charted what they noticed.

On Tuesday, I read the story again. By this time, the students were beginning to anticipate the repeated phrase, "...but he was still hungry." and joined in as I read. They also got excited when we got to the page where the caterpillar is big and "fat". We did stop and talk a bit about how Eric Carle used that word on purpose so that his readers would giggle and enjoy the story even more. But, we cautioned that the word was only funny because it was used to describe the caterpillar, who had, indeed, gotten fat by eating so much food, just like a caterpillar should do.

After I read the story, we added a list to our Noticings chart of insects, animals, etc., that the students might choose from to write their own "The Very Hungry..." book. I asked the students to think hard about what animal/insect/etc. they would like to have as the main character of their book, and they each chose one. The writing work for the day was to go back and begin creating (sketching, drawing, and coloring) their main character. Prewriting! We had everything from turtles to ladybugs to sharks to "harantulas"!! The students were so excited, you could feel the energy in the classroom!

Today, we read the story once more, but this time I asked them to pay attention to the structure of the story - Carle's use of the days of the week and the growing number of foods the caterpillar eats as the story progresses. I made a chart and, after the read- aloud, we talked about how the story was put together.

Finally, we sent the writers back to their seats to begin thinking and sketching what foods their character might eat in their stories. I cautioned them that while we could use Eric Carle's writing as inspiration, we could not copy it.

I was simply amazed by the work these students did with this assignment. There were ascending lists of numbered foods; there was color; there was humor (ice cream sandwiches, sandwiches without crusts); there was such focus and purpose!! I promise to share some examples on Sunday :)

So, that's where we are. Tomorrow I am going to read a counting book and ask the students to pay close attention to the match between the number of items pictured and the number written in the text. We will then be ready to begin our drafts! Sweet!!

I will chat with you again on Sunday!

#allkidscanwrite

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Turning Points

10/18/2015

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This first picture shows the writer in his house, putting on his "rain gear". He added the walls and the door as he continued to work on this piece across several days.

Turning points....and where do we go from here? These are the two parts of this teaching journey that I am considering this morning. We have spent an amazing month in the kindergarten writer's workshop! Here is a list of the minilessons we taught our young writers:

Where Do Writers Sit? Why Do Writers Write?
Students as Authors
The Structure of the Writer's Workshop
Seed Ideas and Experiences
Supplies and Using Resources Around the Room
Making a Movie in Your Mind
Moving Around in the Writer's Workshop
Adding Details and Telling Stories with Illustrations
Writing Your Name and Being an Author
Storytelling Before Writing
Using Letters and Words to Label Our Pictures
Adding Details to Our Pictures

We began our Launching the Writer's Workshop unit of study by using a simple routine: Read Aloud, Minilesson, Writing/Conferencing time. The simplicity of this routine worked well with the kindergartners, and in one short month they learned what the expectations were and more than met them!

We also gave the writers complete autonomy to start and finish their books as they saw fit. The result? Red writing folders filled with papers!! Many writers thought they should begin a new piece each day; and they LOVED the idea of making books. We were delighted with their energy and encouraged their writing enthusiasm. Lots of our conferences centered around nudging the students to tell their stories, if only verbally, as being "about" something and having a beginning, middle, and end.

Finally, at the end of last week, when we had taught our last minilesson of the unit, we cleaned out the students' folders (saving them in a separate file folder) and gave them a fresh, blank picture book. We read The Best Story Ever, by Eileen Spinelli and asked them to think of a new story from their lives. We told them that they were going to work on this one story for a whole week! And we sent them off to write...

And write they did!!! Asking these young writers to stay focused on one story and one picture book across three to four days was wildly optimistic :) Each day we asked them to try to add details to their illustrations; to the kindergartner author that direction translated to just adding more "everything" to the pages they had already drawn or written.

So, we got a lot of books full of color, characters, letters, some words, and scribbles. But...and this is big...we also found that a handful of our writers got it! They were ready for this! They attended to one story, across several days, and added details to existing illustrations without filling the pages with just "more"!

The second picture shows the writer outside playing in the rain. He added the blue raindrops as he thought about telling his story to the reader.

The final picture shows the writer back in his house (labeled), taking off his rain gear. The story has a clear beginning, middle, and end!!

So, now to the turning point I mentioned at the beginning of this post. You may be finding, as we are, that the students are not all at the same point in their ability to express their stories to their readers. This is fine!!! However, what should we do about this wide spectrum of developmental writing readiness? I'm thinking we need to start differentiating our approach to instruction. Putting scaffolds in place for those students who are less independent in their storytelling, and providing opportunities for the other students to continue to grow as authors/illustrators.

How do we do this? And where do we go from here? Good questions :) Remember, we are not following any program or prewritten curriculum as we plan our instruction. We are simply learning about how our students tell their stories, about where they are developmentally as writers, about our objectives and goals for their learning this year, and about best practices in elementary writing instruction. That's all!

So, I think we are going to move into an author study next. And I think we are going to invite Mr. Eric Carle into our classroom as our mentor author. All children love Eric Carle's books - his stories are accessible and his illustrations are bold and colorful. We are going to start with The Very Hungry Caterpillar - reading it, studying the pictures and words, and using it as a model for our own picture books. I believe in the practice of using mentor texts because it gives students who are less ready to independently tell a story the opportunity to compose their own version of a story without having to come up with all of the context. I have used this teaching practice with first graders (also using Eric Carle as the mentor author) all the way up to fourth graders (using Judith Schachner's Skippyjon Jones books as mentor texts).

So, now, I am off to write some lessons. I may try to post a few mid-week, so you might check for a new blog post Wednesday.

A final thought...we want to constantly be nudging our writers to think of their own lives as full of stories to tell. With older students, I would encourage them to keep a writer's notebook in which to record their seed stories for future writing opportunities. However, with these little ones, I did not think that would work. I thought and thought about it and wondered how I could downsize the idea and still maintain its value. And then I had an epiphany :)

At the Joan Oates Institute this past summer, I learned how to make "zines", small paper blank books within which writers can write pretty much anything! So, I made 18 little zines for our writers. We took the students on a "field trip" to look at leaves and then we came back to the writer's workshop carpet and talked about how we didn't have time to write the story of our wonderful field trip right them, but couldn't we draw a little sketch to remind ourselves to write the story sometime later? I modeled drawing a leaf and some birds and a few small stick students in my little zine - all components of the story I would write later on. The students were so excited! So, we gave them their writer's notebooks and sent them off to their weekends, asking them to sketch just one little picture of something they could write a story about one day. I can't wait to see what sketches come back on Monday!

#allkidscanwrite

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Collaboration and Intuition

10/11/2015

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"Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much." Those words from Helen Keller sum up my feelings about this week in the Kindergarten Writer's Workshop. I am so lucky to be working with a group of teachers who are true collaborators, who are bold enough to step away from written plans to meet the needs of the writers in their classrooms, and who understand their students so well and bring that knowledge to our work together.

We began the week with a lesson on adding labels to the illustrations in our stories to help capture our meaning. We want to keep moving the kindergarten writers toward using letters and words to tell their stories. And some students are ready for scribing. We read Richard Scarry's The Best Mistake Ever (and Other Stories) to set the writers up for labeling.

After that first session on Monday, the classroom teacher approached me and wanted to do a lesson that she uses each year with her students. She wanted to incorporate a lesson that she values into what we were trying to do this week. So, on Tuesday this teacher taught a fabulous lesson on telling a story through pictures, and then adding labels to help readers understand the drawings. She talked about each picture as she added details, and she talked about them again as she added letters and invented spelling to the drawings. This repeated storytelling is a way for our young writers to capture their own stories. Finally, she showed her students how they could use the labels to write sentences to go along with the pictures. Golden!!

This student has used lots of letters and invented spelling to tell his story. He has also used vertical lines to separate the sequence of the events in his story.

You can see this student has labeled the "sun" and the "sou" (store). There is a clear sequence of driving to the store, shopping in the store, and then having dinner with what was bought at the store!

Another teacher on the team was showing me her students' work and I noticed that instead of giving her writers small booklets of a few pages stapled together, she had simply taken strips of paper, marked 3 sections with vertical lines to represent beginning, middle, and end, and then copied them. Brilliant!!! This amount of white space was very appropriate and it nicely scaffolded the amount of writing her students needed to get on the paper. She understood the needs of her young writers far better than I, and she took that intuitive knowledge and made the work accessible for her students.

For this week coming up, we are going to do one more lesson on adding details to pictures in order to add meaning. I am going to read Freight Train, by Donald Crews to encourage the students to add lines and colors and shapes to their pictures. We will then revisit a favorite mentor text, Silly Lily and the Four Seasons, by Agnes Rosenstiehl to encourage our writers to go back to mentor texts for support as they write. We will end the week's lessons with The Best Story, by Eileen Spinelli to celebrate stories that come from the heart. And then we will have an author celebration to end our first unit of study! Every writer will have an opportunity to share his or her story with an authentic audience - their classmates and us!!! I simply can't wait! :)

Happy writing, everyone!! A quick sneak peak as to what is coming next....maybe an author study!!!

#allkidscanwrite

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Teachers as Writers and Illustrators

10/4/2015

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This week I want to step away from our students' writing and, instead, address the work of writing teachers. First, I want to send a booming, boisterous shout-out to the kindergarten and first grade teachers at my school! I am simply awed by their courage and willingness to jump right into new pedagogical territories - how fortunate for the young writers sitting in their classrooms!

As I work with teachers in schools across the district and on all elementary grade levels, I encounter a consistent hesitation that sits right below the surface of their work with students. Teacher as writer. Let's admit it...writing is hard. I am talking about compostitional writing. Process writing. And, scariest of all, writing in front of your students.

"Teachers should write so they understand the process of writing from within...If you experience the despair, the joy, the failure, the success, the work, the fun, the drudgery, the surprise of writing you will be able to understand the composing experiences of your students and therefore help them understand how they are learning to write." Donald Murray, A Writer Teaches Writing 2004, Boston, MA: Heinle Publishing. (pg. 74)

Truth. But you can see where many teachers just can't manage it..

And that brings us to the heart of this post...how do teachers dig deep and push past the feelings of low confidence that come from limited experiences? How do teachers do the work that is necessary to raise the level of their teaching from good to great?

I'm here to tell you that it's not that hard! Just do it!

I know. Those of you who know me are thinking, "Oh, easy for you to say. You are passionate about writing. You are a writer. Of course, it is easier for you! But what about the rest of us?"

You are right. So, I'm going to use compositional drawing as my context for this blog post. I am not an artist. Any drawing past coloring in a coloring book takes me way out of my comfort zone. Once I left my childhood, I put away any thoughts of drawing. I placed them, along with the charcoal, colored pencils, markers, watercolors, etc. in a box and closed the lid. And now, I am a writing teacher working with kindergartners and first graders whom I am asking to compose and tell stories through drawings and words to share with the world.

You are right. I am comfortable writing with and in front of my students. But I am soooo uncomfortable drawing in front of them. So, we'll begin there.

Serendipitously, I had the honor and pleasure of attending the Joan Oates Institute at the University of Richmond this past June. Our guest artist was Lynda Barry, a writer, cartoonist, author, college professor - the list of her accomplishments goes on and on. She is a true joy and an inspiring artist. So lucky for us, she spent two full days teaching us how to be inspired through art - specifically, the art of drawing cartoons. She taught us a rudimentary method for drawing ourselves, using artist Ivan Brunetti's style of creating characters using simple geometric shapes. Her advice to us all was to just do it! Draw, draw, draw. Everyday. And your art will improve. It will evolve. All you have to do is draw.

Does that sound familiar? The habits of mind that a writer uses to create a story with words are the same habits of mind that a cartoonist, or illustrator, uses to create a story with pictures - idea, organization, craft, voice, tone, genre, audience, purpose, etc. But you must do it!

And if I am going to ask my students to do this work, then, like Donald Murray advises, I'd better try to understand the process from within.

Last week, I was trying to help the students understand what making a movie in your mind means. I asked if any of them had seen the movie Cinderella. Some had, and most knew the story. So, I drew a picture in front of them, on the board, using my very rudimentray drawing skills. I wanted to show them how in just three simple pictures, I could tell the story of Cinderella anxiously awaiting the prince, and then the prince holding up the glass slipper, and, finally, Cinderella's joy when the slipper fits her foot.

Here are my drawings:

I drew Cinderella's face looking sad in the first picture to show her nervousness. In the second picture, her smile is growing as the Prince holds the glass slipper. And, finally, in the last picture, her hands are raised and her smile is big as Cinderella wears the slipper!

The very fact that my pictures are limited in their composition makes them accessible to all of the student writers/illustrators in our classroom. And I used the drawings to teach the students about telling their stories in a step-by-step way, much like a movie. They got it!

Whether we or our students are using words or pictures, we are all artists telling stories. And just as I celebrate their approximations, I will celebrate my own.

Donald Murray says, "Teachers of writing do not have to be great writers, but they should have frequent and recent experience in writing." (pg. 74) Teachers, I encourage you to do so! I don't think we should ever ask our students to do something that we, ourselves, won't try. It may very well be uncomfortable. It will be challenging.

But, it will also be rewarding, both professionally and personally. Your students will see you as an authentic learner, right alongside of them. When my drawing of the glass slipper was less than, um, accurate, the students and I laughed a little. And then, I erased it and tried again. That, my friends, was a lesson in revision :)

Happy writing! Happy drawing!

#allkidscanwrite

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First Grade, Not Forgotten!﻿

Voice and Choice

The Very Amazing...Students :)

Turning Points

Collaboration and Intuition

Teachers as Writers and Illustrators

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First Grade, Not Forgotten!