Category: Teaching Writing

Living Literately and Mindfully at the Intersection of Mother Nature, the Animal World and Poetry

11/9/2020

BY PEGGY S. RICE

Consider...

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Be blown on by all the winds. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons. Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her.

Henry David Thoreau, August 23, 1853

Poetry! There is no other genre like it in the world. A good poem can take you places you never thought possible, wake you up, shake you, make your every emotion quake with excitement and awe. Writing poetry is taking a subject---be it a pigeon or a Popsicle—breathing new life into it, letting readers know they never experienced a moment such as this before.

Lee Bennett Hopkins, 2009.

Make the Earth Your Companion
--J. Patrick Lewis

Make the Earth your companion.
Walk lightly on it, as other creatures do.
Let the Sky paint her beauty—she is always watching over you.
Learn from the Sea how to face harsh forces.
Let the River remind you that everything will pass.
Let the Lake instruct you in stillness.
Let the mountain teach you grandeur.
Make the woodland your house of peace.
Make the Rainforest your house of hope.
Meet the Wetland on twilight ground.
Save some small piece of Grassland for a red kite on a windy day.
Watch the Icecaps glisten with crystal majesty.
Hear the Desert whisper hush to eternity.
Let the Town weave a small basket of togetherness.
Make the Earth your companion.
Walk lightly on it, as other creatures do

North Padre Island, TX THE ROAR of the surf... Soaring seagulls' hungry screams... Serenity here.

Ruby-throated hummingbird [Public domain USFWA]

Hummingbird jewels
Necks gleaming like red rubies
In the morning light

Sarah Rice, 8 years old

Serenity can be found at the intersection of Mother Nature, the animal world and poetry. I have found that the more time I spend at this intersection, the less anxiety I feel. Following are materials and strategies, my students, daughter and I have found successful:

Writer’s Notebook: The notebook serves as a means to encourage young writers to value writing. It creates a space for students/writers to save words in the moment; "seeds" for a longer writing project which might be expanded and developed (Calkins, 1994).
Banish Boring Words (Shelton, 2009): Use as a resource for interesting words. It provides lists of specific, interesting words for several categories of words, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, action verbs, colors and shapes.
The Book of Animal Poetry (Lewis, 2012), and the Book of Nature Poetry (Lewis, 2015) Mentor Poems: Before requiring students to write a poem at the intersection of Mother Nature, the animal world and poetry provide students with numerous opportunities to explore mentor poems. NTCE Award Winning Poet and former U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis has created the Book of Animal Poetry (Lewis, 2012), and the Book of Nature Poetry (Lewis, 2015) to inspire us to see poetry in the natural world. Each collection includes 200 poems that “squeak, soar and roar” or “float, zoom and bloom.” Each poem is accompanied by a photograph to experience the wonder of Mother Nature and the Animal World.

Poetry Performance

I recommend regular poetry breaks that provide students an opportunity to perform a poem of his/her choice. Repeated reading and poetry performance of a favorite poem can enhance students’ motivation and build/increase fluency skills as well as strengthen reading/writing connections. Renee M. LaTulippe at No River.com provides 5 tips for poetry performance that my students and I have found helpful.

Within the context of repeated readings and poetry performance, discussions about poet’s craft/poetic elements can occur, such as stanzas, use of white space, figurative language (similes, metaphors & imagery), personification, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance and repetition. Performance of an original poem can provide a moment of pride and peer review of videotaped performances can strengthen literacy skills.

Power of Place

Locate a space surrounded in nature that you can visit regularly. I am fortunate, because I live on 7 acres with a pond. When visiting this space, be prepared to engage in mindful listening, see the world with a poet’s eyes and take notes in a writing journal.

Sit comfortably.
Close your eyes and breath normally for a moment.
Now imagine your belly is a balloon filling up with air and when it is full hold it. (Pause). Now slowly breathe out.
Listen mindfully: What are the sounds of nature? Consider poetic elements, such as figurative language, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance, repetition
Repeat. Deep breath in and hold it. (Pause). Release.
Breathe normally.
In your writing journal, write down the sounds of Nature. See p. 22 and 23 in Banishing Boring Words for some specific interesting sounds

Sit comfortably.
Now imagine your belly is a balloon filling up with air and when it is full hold it. (Pause). Now slowly breathe out.
Relax your body.
Focus your attention on nature for 5 minutes. What do you see? What do you smell? Hear? What can you touch? When you see a creature, use your imagination. What would it be like to be this creature?
In your writing journal, write down what you have noticed in nature. Consider poetic elements, such as figurative language (simile, metaphor, imagery), personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance, repetition and refer to Banishing Boring Words for some specific interesting words.
Take photograph(s) to capture the moment.
Continue mindful listening and writing as desired.

Poetry Writing

Writing poetry is all about playing with words. Fletcher (2002) encourages us to play with the sounds of words. Consider, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, onomatopoeia and alliteration. He also encourages us to think fragments/cut unnecessary words, consider shape, use white space/experiment with line breaks and end with a bang/sharpen the ending. Each of these aspects of language can be a topic of minilessons connected to poetry performances of mentor poems. Lewis (2012, 2015) has included excellent resources for writing formula poems.

Savor...

In Beauty May I Walk
--Anonymous (Navajo Indian)

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully will I possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age, wondering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty

References

Calkins, L.M. (1994). The art of teaching writing. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fletcher, R. (2002). Poetry matters: Writing a poem from the inside out. New York: Harper Trophy.

Lewis, J. P. (2015). National geographic book of nature poetry: More than 200 poems with photographs that float, zoom, and bloom! Washington, DC: National Geographic Partners, LLC.

Lewis, J. P. (2012). National geographic book of animal poetry: More than 200 poems with photographs that squeak, soar, and roar! Washington, DC: National Geographic Partners, LLC.

Shelton, L. (2009). Banish boring words. New York: Scholastic

Peggy S. Rice is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education and Faculty Advisor for the Partners in Literacy Council at Ball State University in Muncie Indiana. She is a member of the Children's Literature Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Ideas for Change with Tonya Bolden’s Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl

9/1/2020

By Jennifer Graff and Courtney Shimek on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

As shared in our initial Biography Clearinghouse post, we are committed to showcasing how biographies can help connect youths with each other and the world. Offering curricular possibilities that are easily adaptable to grade level, time, and other contexts and providing “behind-the-scenes” content from biography creators are central components of our commitment.

Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl Cover

In the spirit of returning to school and the desire to amplify the historical achievements of Black people in the U.S., we showcase the story of someone committed to justice and equity her entire life. “A child of New York City’s striving class of Blacks in the mid-1800s" (p.5) whose ideals were to “Aim high! Stand tall! Be strong! -- and do!” (p.5); a girl whose mother was “an ace operator for the Underground Railroad” (p.21); and an educator who wrote, “I never forgot that I had to sue for a privilege which any but a colored girl could have without asking” (p.36). Thus, our first featured biography on the Biography Clearinghouse website is Tonya Bolden’s award-winning Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl.

Bolden felt compelled to write about Maritcha after coming across her memoir at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Bolden’s rich, descriptive language and use of primary and secondary sources illuminate the life and experiences of Maritcha Rémond Lyons and her family in New York City during the latter half of the 19th century. Readers discover what life for Blacks was like in New York City, witness the terror and violence of the Draft Riots in 1863, and experience the fight for education and equal treatment. Bolden’s discussion of her research and writing process in the front and back matter as well as Maritcha’s perseverance, determination, and legacy inspired us to interview Bolden and imagine how we could incorporate this powerful biography into our classrooms.

Operating within our Investigate, Explore, and Create model, we designed teaching ideas geared toward literacy and content area learning as well as opportunities for socio-emotional learning and strengthening community connections.

Investigate focuses on authors’ and illustrators’ craft and structure. Suggested mini-lessons, writing opportunities, and talking points invite students to take composition-focused “closer looks” and “tryouts,” accentuating the importance of authors’ and illustrators’ craft from multiple perspectives. Bolden’s use of rich, vivid language and a medley of source material in Maritcha inspired our suggestions that connect the power of word choice and text structure as well as differentiate between facts and informed hypotheses.

Explore offers resources to connect ideas, historical events, and scientific discoveries and inventions within the featured biographies to our world. These resources are selected to help readers deepen and extend their understandings of and connections between historical events and eras, scientific progress and modern conveniences, and to illustrate the interconnectedness of life across geographical places/spaces and disciplinary perspectives. For Maritcha, we found resources about the Draft Riots of 1863 as well as other education desegregation cases from the United States that happened between a decade and a century prior to Brown v. the Board of Education.

Create invites readers to apply what they learn and know from the biographies to their current communities and contexts. Acutely aware of time and resources, our suggestions are typically designed to meet educators where they are and offer additional opportunities.

Investigate, Explore, and Create Model

Diagram of interconnected circles involving Investigate research & writing process craft and structure, Explore content and disciplinary thinking social and emotional learning, Create new texts and artifacts

Create with Maritcha

Featured here is one of the Create ideas inspired by Maritcha. We mirror Bolden’s focus on family, community, and equity by having students think about their individual families, situate themselves within their communities, and then engage in positive action and change. While Bolden’s Maritcha is geared toward upper elementary or intermediate grades, the Create ideas speak to primary and intermediate grade levels, work with varying amounts of time, and stimulate new ideas rather than prescribe curricular engagements.

Getting to Know Your Community Leaders

Community networks were central to Maritcha’s story as well as her and her family’s accomplishments. The importance of community networks is still present today. But how often do we have opportunities to delve deeper into the community networks that help us survive, if not thrive?

If you have 1-2 hours . . .	If you have 1-2 days . . .	If you have 1 week or longer . . .
Discuss the ways in which Maritcha’s community helped her succeed and who the leaders were in her community.	As a class or in small groups, brainstorm who (people and/or organizations) are part of their communities, who they consider to be leaders in their communities, and why (e.g., leadership qualities, character traits, etc.). Sample discussion starters: Who does a community look up to/learn from most and why? What qualities do these individuals have that inspire members of the community?	In small groups, students identify someone from their community network. Students generate interview questions and then conduct in-person or virtual interviews with their identified community members about the importance of community, leadership, etc. (connect back to key ideas from Maritcha).

By investigating biographers’ research and writing processes and connecting people and historical events to our modern lives, we hope to motivate change in how readers engage with biographies, each other, and the larger world. To see more classroom possibilities and helpful resources connected to Marticha: A Nineteenth Century American Girl, visit the Biography Clearinghouse. Additionally, we’d love to hear how the interview and these ideas inspired you. Email us at [email protected] with your connections, creations, questions, or comment below if you’re reading this on Twitter or Facebook.

Jennifer M. Graff is an associate professor at the University of Georgia, the current past-president of CLA, and a former committee member of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.

Courtney Shimek is an assistant professor at West Virginia University and has been a member of CLA since 2015.

Imagine the Writing Possibilities!

4/15/2020

BY ALLY HAUPTMAN

One of my greatest joys as a teacher is to see students’ creativity in action. As an elementary teacher, I was amazed at the creative minds of my students, and now as a professor I continue to delight in seeing teacher candidates create lesson plans and ideas to engage their students. As I reflect on my career as an elementary writing teacher, my best lessons were the ones that involved excellent children’s literature and allowed for student writing choice. This is where the creative magic happens! If I am honest with myself, my students were their most creative as writers when I offered a great mentor text and just got out of their way.

So, I offer you a lesson complex in ideas, but simple in delivery that can be presented in person or on-line, really in any context. I have used this lesson in university classrooms, with PreK-12 students, and my own children.

The Steps

1. Choose a text. It might be a brilliantly written and illustrated picture book, an excerpt from a middle grades or YA novel, or even an interesting infographic.

2. Share the text with your students and model what writing ideas you have based on this text.

3. After reading, ask the questions, “What writing ideas do you get from this text? What are the possibilities you see as a writer?”

4. Get out of the way and let kids write and create!

5. Give students time to share and learn from each other.

That’s it...five steps that lead to important discussion and writing possibilities.

The following is an example of this writing lesson in action with two of my own children. I started by reading Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai. The book begins with Malala talking about a television program she used to watch. The show’s main character was a boy with a magic pencil who Malala saw as a hero, always helping others. She dreamed of having her own magic pencil. She goes on to tell her story of fighting for girls’ education, realizing that she really did have a magic pencil all along. She was able to change the world with her pencil as she fought for educational equality. The last line in the book reads, “One pen, one teacher, one student can change the world.”

Here is the key to this lesson, and this is how I get out of the way of their creativity. I asked my children to write for ten minutes about what ideas they got from Malala’s Magic Pencil. It is as simple as that. I did not give them my prompt that might be presented from this book such as, “What would you do with a magic pencil?” I let them figure out how this book would be a mentor text for their own writing. The beauty of presenting a text and then letting students figure out their own writing possibilities is that they bring their background knowledge, voice, and writing style and combine it with the author’s ideas from the text presented. When you present a mentor text and ask the students to see the writing possibilities, the variety is astounding.

Just with my own daughters, my fifth grader, who is the youngest and always trying to prove herself to her sisters, wrote about a magic tree. In her story, no one believes her that this tree is magic and she hatches a plan to show everyone that she is right. She brought in her ideas and showed strong voice. My eighth grade daughter decided to write about the Infiniti Pen. It is worth mentioning that all of my daughters are obsessed with Marvel movies. So, the Infiniti Pen was inspired by Thor’s hammer in that only the worthiest person in the village could pick up the pen because of its persuasive powers. In this piece, my daughter chose to bring in her own voice and combine Marvel with Malala’s ideas. These writers were able to choose their ideas and use their voices. When we present possibilities through mentor texts, readers also begin to read like writers.

Try it. Read a book and ask your students to find writing possibilities, to write for ten minutes and see where it may lead!

The following list includes texts I have used to spark writing ideas over the past few years with teacher candidates, K-12 students, and my own children.

25 books with endless possibilities…

After the Fall by Dan Santat
Animals by the Numbers by Steve Jenkins
Bookjoy, Wordjoy by Pat Mora, illustrated by Raúl Colón
Camela Full of Wishes by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Christian Robinson
Claymates by Dev Petty, illustrated by Lauren Eldridge
Coco: Miguel and the Grand Harmony by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Ana Ramírez
Cute as an Axolotl by Jess Keating, illustrated by David DeGrand
Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat
Dude! by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Dan Santat
Dreamers/Sonadores by Yuyi Morales
Friends and Foes: Poems About Us All by Douglas Florian
Imagine by Juan Felipe Herrera, illustrated by Lauren Castillo
Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
Love by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Loren Long
Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai, illustrated by Kerascoёt
Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell, illustrated by Rafael López
Nope! by Drew Sheneman
The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López
The Girl With a Mind for Math: The Story of Raye Montague by Julia Finley Mosca, illustrated by Daniel Rieley
The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds
They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel
Water Land by Christy Hale
What Makes a Monster? by Jess Keating, illustrated by David DeGrand
Wild World by Angela McAllister, illustrated by Hvass & Hannibal

Ally Hauptman is a CLA Board Member and is the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee. She is an associate professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN.

Image by Tookapic from Pixabay

Digital Read Alouds

3/30/2020

BY JEANNE GILLIAM FAIN

These are hard times. Many of us are scrambling to figure out a schedule that keeps us all from losing our minds. One important part of your schedule should definitely include the power of the read aloud. This is a wonderful time to facilitate reading aloud digitally. There has never been an easier time to get to know some of the fantastic authors that are online. It would be easy to send your students a link and have them check out a favorite author (provided that they have online access). Many authors are spending valuable time reading online via YouTube, their websites, Instagram, and there are even author posts via twitter. These digital resources were created by the author and read by the author. As a reminder, it’s completely fine to read books aloud in a classroom or library setting but the rules change when it comes to a digital platform. So be wary of reading books online to your students*. Here are a few of my favorite authors and some of their websites.

Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is a poet and educator. He is the author of 32 books. He is known for his energetic approach to making poetry come alive in his writing. His website includes various read alouds and tips for teaching in the home.

Monica Brown

Check out Monica Brown’s website and YouTube video channel. Monica is a professor of English at NAU. She has authored many award-winning books. Her writing is inspired by her Peruvian-American Heritage. Her read alouds, like the example below, are in her second language, Spanish.

Kate DiCamillo

Kate is an award-winning author that writes books about the messiness of relationships with themes of separation and loss. She has a powerful video on the importance of read alouds:

Yuyi Morales

Yuyi Morales is an author/illustrator that uniquely uses texture and color in her picture books. She powerfully integrates her Latina cultural experiences into her writing. Check out Yuyi's YouTube Channel and her video "Why I Love Picture Books."

* Creating a recording of reading aloud a published work is subject to copyright law. Sharing copyright-protected work via a public platform and/or monetizing your recording is not allowed. Sharing a read-aloud via a Drive link you post only to your own classes is generally allowable under Educational Fair Use. However, posting to something like YouTube (which is by default indexed and potentially searchable) is not. The story Publishers Adapt Policies To Help Educators published in the School Library Journal (SLJ, March, 2020) offers some helpful guidance as to how children’s publishers have temporarily altered some of their policies to support teaching in the context of COVID-19

Online Author/Illustrator Studies: Leveraging E-Books, Author/Illustrator Sites, and Interviews for a Virtual Exploration of the Creative Process

3/24/2020

BY ERIKA THULIN DAWES

The children’s literature course that I teach at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA is a survey course titled Literature for Children, Tweens, and Teens in a Diverse Society. Typically, when I introduce the idea of author/illustrator studies to the students in this class, I present groups of students with stacks of books to browse along with a curated collection of weblinks to explore. In the context of this survey course, this activity is framed as a teaching strategy and our class time is organized to introduce the goals and elements of an Author/Illustrator study and to provide a ‘tasting’ of what it is like to experience such a study. I’m careful to note that to experience the work of an author/illustrator in depth would take more time and more intensive study. When I learned I would be teaching this class ‘remotely’ from our Blackboard site, I wondered what the options were to replicate the book browsing element of this in-class activity.

Introducing the Strategy:

The readings below can support an introduction of the purposes and processes of an Author/Illustrator Study. Students can read with the following guiding questions in mind:

What is an Author/Illustrator Study?
What are the benefits of doing author/illustrator studies in the classroom?
How do you carry out an Author/Illustrator study?
What ideas and questions do you have about this teaching strategy?

Suggested Readings:

Fletcher, R. (2005). The author study: Knowing a writer from the inside out. In S. Frost and F. Sibberson (Eds.), School Talk, 10, 1-3. (Full text available through ProQuest Central and through NCTE [Link to article - Free to NCTE members])
Reading Rockets: The Author Study Toolkit

Experiencing an Author/Illustrator Study:

Once students have developed a concept of Author/Illustrator studies, ask them to opt into a small group to explore a collection of online resources on a single author/illustrator, simulating the experience. Students will read and view:

Examples from the author/illustrator’s body of published work
Biographical information
Interviews and descriptions of the author/illustrator’s creative processes

When I carry out this activity in class, I focus on picture books authors/illustrators because students working in small groups have time to read several picture books each. In follow up discussion, we note that the same strategies can apply to the reading of novels. In a remote learning context, students are reading eBooks. In the examples below, I make use of Epic! Books to provide access to eBooks. This platform is free to educators. I signed my graduate students up as a Class and submitted their emails, obtaining them free access until June 30, 2020.

Additionally, I use two resources available through my university’s library database:

TeachingBooks.Net. This is a curated collection of children’s book resources that is searchable by title, author, and keyword.
Something About the Author. This online database includes entries of bibliographic information for authors.

From the many wonderful author/illustrator study possibilities, I have selected four to share in this blog entry. If you have more names to suggest, for whom eBooks are readily available, please email me at [email protected].

Online Author/Illustrator Study Resources

Yuyi Morales*

Epic Books: eBooks: Dreamers; Video: Viva Frida, Nino Wrestles the World
Yuyi Morales Author/Illustrator Website
School Library Journal: “How a Library Raised Yuyi Morales, Award-Winning Illustrator of “Thunder Boy Jr.”

Jacqueline Woodson*

Epic Books: Audio Only: This is the Rope, Show Way, Each Kindness, The Other Side
Author Website: Jacqueline Woodson
Reading Rockets: A Video Interview with Jacqueline Woodson
The Horn Book: Who Can Tell My Story

Christopher Myers*

Epic Books: eBooks: Looking Like Me, H.O.R.S.E, Jazz
The Horn Book: Young Dreamers
Reading Rockets: A Video Interview with Christopher Myers
Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning: A Conversation with Author and Illustrator Christopher Myers

Grace Lin*

Epic Books: eBooks: The Ugly Vegetables
Author/Illustrator Website: Grace Lin
Grace Lin’s YouTube Channel includes read-alouds
Reading Rockets: A Video Interview with Grace Lin

* As mentioned above, I also provide resources from TeachingBooks.Net and Something About the Author for each of author/illustrator

Process:
As your students read across the available books and learn about their chosen author/illustrator’s life stories and creative processes, ask them to make notes about:

Patterns in the author/illustrator’s work: Notice patterns in: theme, writing style (use of language), characterization, plot lines, perspectives, artistic style (media, color, shape, line, perspective), audience for writing
Biographical Information
The author/illustrator’s influences, commitments, and values
Processes: How does this author/illustrator create? What can young writers and illustrators learn from these processes?
How has this author/illustrator taken an advocacy role in the “We Need Diverse Books” movement?

Sharing Out:

To share their learning with classmates, your students can use online collaboration tools such as Google Slides, Voice Thread, PowerPoint or Book Creator (some of these require a paid account).

Since this is an abbreviated author/illustrator study (really, it is just an introduction to the body of work), let your students know that they are sharing their initial findings and wonderings. You could provide students with a structure for their presentations or leave it more open ended. In the past, I’ve asked students to share a general overview, their discoveries and connections, and their questions. They conclude with a listing of “Top Three Reasons to Check Out this Author/Illustrator.”

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