This week: UOI - writing -reading

The read aloud for the unit this week had two books:

Miss Rumphius is a story about a girl growing up and fulfilling two of her dreams - to go to faraway places and to live by the sea. All the time she keeps in her mind her grandfather's advice, "You must do something to make the world beautiful." She will make this happen also.

The Wartville Wizard is a story about an old man who works hard to keep his village clean. When he sees that people make more trash than he can clean, he gets tired and is gifted a magical power. Can you imagine what happens when he sends the trash back and sticks it to the person who created it?

The writing for this week reached the publishing phase of the writing process. The students had a choice on how to publish their texts - either on paper (a picture book, a comic book, a pop-up book, a flap-book, a shape book) or digitally (using Scribble Press, Cute Cut or Book creator.) Majority of the class decided to Book Creator.

In addition to the book creating we spent time discussing the reasons for having this unit, and identifying what our class and school community is doing already to support sustainability and what are some issues we notice. The best part of these discussions is to see the students actively thinking what is something we could actually do, not just talk about, to make change happen.

Poetry Gallery

Please, come and visit our poetry gallery. Last week the students chose some of their poems to illustrate, decorate and share with the community. You will see a variety of poems - poems about animals, short poems, point of view poems, slice of life poems, funny poems, small image poems, apology poem, memory poems, poetry hides poems, how to write poems. Below is a small glimpse of the display:

This poem won Ms. Naglee's poetry contest.

Collective poetry

On Tuesday we read a beautiful poem "Valentine for Ernest Mann" by Naomi  Shihab Nye.  I was a bit worried it might pose a challenge for students to understand the poem, and some of it was confusing for them, but through a discusdion they were able to see the big idea.

The poem includes lines:

...poems hide. In the bottom of our shoes,

they are sleeping. ....

The students talked about how sometimes the beauty isn't visible outside, but inside; or how some people can speak poetically about everyday odjects and places; and sometimes you just have to have an open mind and look at a different perspective to find poetry.

On Wednesday we took some time to review what we had learned about writing poetry. Each student used post-its to give advice "If you want to write a poem.." and organized the lines in the order that made most sense to them.

As a result they had some poem drafts. Then we worked together to choose some lines from each poem to create a collective poem.

If you want to write a poem

Keep your eyes open

Open your heart

Wonder

Carry your notebook with you

Think what to write about

Don't try to write a poem

Just write

Write interesting words

Words that flow

Like a piece of music.  

Look at the beauty in words

Make an image in the reader's mind

Make it easy to read

Feel the emotion

Revise, revise, revise

Writing through a mask

For the past two days I have read aloud poems that have been written from a point of a view of an object, like tree, a sun, a plant, a book etc. 

It's like a poet has put on a mask and imagined oneself as whatever or whomever they would like to be. Thinking about the actions, feelings, thoughts, dreams, wishes, fears of the object or character, the poet has collected the material for the poem. The students tried a similar exercise. The next step for them is to choose the essential and write an initial draft. 

UOI presentation

Before the holidays the students chose one invention they wanted to learn more about. We learned how to read a paragraph, find the key words, and in our own words say what was the main message. After collecting information form various resources, they started to think how to best share the information with others. As a class they decided to use Keynote as a presentation tool.

For some it is the first time to use Keynote. The possibilities of transitions and special effects has dazzled them and maybe even distracted from thinking of the content. For those who have used it before the focus has been on creating simple memorable slides and adding detailed and engaging notes for each slide. This feature of keynote makes presenting easy. The audience sees the slides and the presenter has notes available in case he/she forgets what he/she wanted to say. 

Today we gave preliminary presentations to gain feedback and suggestions from each other.

Poetry: revision

Writing poetry follows a writing process as any other writing, from gathering ideas, pre-writing, drafting to revision and publishing.

On Monday students, the few who were at school, thought of an animal and collected ideas and phrases.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I worked with individual students ( the ones who had some text written to work with) on using the phrases and words to create a poem. The students wrote or rewrote phrases on post-its and then played around with the order of them. They read out loud to hear how the poem sounded and added, rearranged, changed or deleted words as necessary. The next step was to write the final draft on Google Drive. 

Poems about animals

For the next two weeks at least we will continue reading and writing poetry. Today I shared different poems about animals. I read several poems about the same animal. It is amazing how differently the poets can write about the same topic, some playing with rhyme, some with rhythm, some with images, and some have complicated ideas hidden in their words. 

Now it was the students' turn to think and get started with some animal poetry. The key to it was not thinking about writing poetry, but rather envisioning a specific animal and collecting words, phrases, and images about it. The next step is to use the collected bits to combine and revise them into a poem.

Journal writing tips

Before going on holidays we discussed how to improve our Slice of Life writing. The students suggested that we do some prewriting and drafting at school, and revise and publish at home.  Returnign from holidays, we had many possibilities for choosing our slice. We also learned two new strategies to help with our writing.

The first idea gathering strategy involved post-it notes. On each post-it the students drew or wrote an object, an activity, a place or a person from their holiday week.

Then we used 1-3-10 minute strategy for pre-writing. The students chose one post-it. I set the timer for one minute, they wrote. Then I set the timer for 3 minutes and they improved their 1-minute writing with adding specific details. Finally I set the timer for 10 minutes and the students revised and lengthened  their 3-minute writing.

I look forward to listening to slices on Wednesday.

Gratitude and a bit of poetry

Students created this lovely card for Ms. Tatiana who was a substitute teacher on Thursday. Each student contributed a colorful square.

I feel that this week has been like that card - colorful, with each student contributing to make it beautiful. I appreciate the enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity and cooperation the students have shown this week.

As a little weekend gift I would like to share two short poem. Inspired by Laura Purdie Salas and her 15 words or less poems. We used our FMF texts (the word was "Outside"), to choose words and play around with them to create poems. The original idea was to use less than 15 words, but it is ok for poets to work and create differently than the assigned task. The two examples show how different the approaches can be. Keep in mind that these are just the first drafts.

Outside
by M

I like to play
hide and seek,
have fun and jump
on the trampoline,
play tag and
king at a tree,
and shoot my sister
with freezing water,
because I am
her brother.


Outside
by Z

Creativity outside,
realism left behind.
Curiosity takes flight
through the sky
like a beautiful eagle
spreading its wings
for the first time ever
outside the box.

This week: in the words of the students

In the world of math, area has taken over our math unit. Since Monday our carpet has been covered in squares. Everyone has been enthusiastic in this unit. We have all understood and learned a lot.

Poetry has been ruling  over our writing/reading unit. After reading tons of poetry books we have tons of poetry knowledge. Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein and Judith Viorst are poets. Poets use interesting words. They think and carefully use words to make fantabulastic poems. Whenever we read them, some of us feel like writing them when we grow up, and it gives us inner happiness.

In the wonderful world of UOI we have learned, about inventions. Since our topic is Technology and Inventions. We have learned that inventing is a process. You might fail a few times but it wil maybe turn into a invention.

Poems, poems, poems

 Baskets of poetry books greeted the students on Monday. In April we will have fun reading and writing poetry. This week we are reading, reading, reading - quietly and aloud. We are looking at what the poets write about and how they write. 

We created our own poems using an interesting technique. We used the titles of books to combine words and phrases to express ideas. As a result we had book spine poems.

Here are three examples from me:

Boy

So you want to be an explorer?
Jump right in
Splish, splash
Wish for a fish

Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky

Good sports

The great frog race

Splish, splash

Bing, bang, boing

Handsprings

The frogs wore red suspenders

The long, long letter,
this is just to say
wonderful words.
Days like this
I like to be me.

FMF

FMF (Five Minute Friday) is part of our weekly writing routine. It is a quick writing exercise, a focused writing in response to one word. It can be viewed as an experiment to see what happens when you just write. Since there is no expectation for a perfect outcome, it lowers the fear of writing and allows just write. "Just write" is what writers sometimes have to do. 

This week's word was "WIN"

Here are some ideas that surfaced within the five minute writing period. Each idea has potential to grow into a bigger writing.

Example 1
I am a winner because I like to win.
Things that I have won

• partner dancing 3rd place in reception
• egg catching 1st place at a birthday
• egg spoon race
• first one on a computer ME vs Sister at home
• slowest against my grandpa
• scream the loudest against my best friend

Example 2
In PE my team won "Not in My Back Yard" two times in a row and the other team won it once. My team won dodge ball twice.

I like to win but I am not always happy about it because it will make the looser team sad.

Example 3
I wonder what would happen if you were best in everything.
Well, this is what I think:
You will have many shelves of troffees and when you are moving, you will need many boxes and even have to carry some in your bag.

This and that in writing

Right now I am:

:: writing this blog post to inform you of what we do in class::

:: sitting on a blue couch::

:: letting my tea cool::

:: thinking of what else I should I write::

:: waiting for the students to return and the PYP assembly to start::

:: hoping that everything will go fine::

The writing above is an example of another writing prompt the students ( or adults) can use when they don't know what to write about or when they are in a hurry.

In addition to quick write in the journals, the students have created their picture book layouts and have continued illustrating their fictional narratives,  they have collected notes for their sport writing, some students have written blog posts. While they have been working, I have invited individual students to assist  them in revising their stories. 

Writing about reading

We like to talk about the stories we read. Spoken words disappear. We could record them, but the you need a tool  for listening. How could we record our thinking so it would be visible in a journal or in a classroom?

This week we are looking at different ways to present our thinking.

For a whole class work I purposefully use picture books. We can read the story in a shorter amount of time, they are more accessible to English language learners, and we can focus on comprehension and strategy practice.

I read:

Then students reread the text, highlighting what they thought was important or made them react and think.

Today students worked alone or with a partners to create a summary, a time-line, character comparison and thought bubbles with visuals.

Drawing

This week has been a Dance and Draw week. Like writers, the illustrators go through a process of planning, drafting and crafting. Our fictional narratives are almost done, and we work as picture book authors, combining pictures and words. This time consuming task will take us more than a week. Only one student so far has been playing with the layout. 

The Friday usual and unusual

On every Friday we have a wordstudy test, a mental math test, and Five Minute Friday writing. This week's word was "Dog." This word was chosen by one student. In mental math students have 3 minute basic fact test and multi-digit untimed test on a computer.

This Friday was unusual because after the students were gone, our classroom hosted 23 Estonian teachers from Estonian Reading Association. Ms. Sirje and I talked about our school's reading and writing programme. I am very thankful to the students who had helped me to clean and organize the room. Working together and with a bit of music the job was done fast and joyfully. It may happen that Ms. Sirje and I will use grade 3 classroom for some reading workshops in spring.

Reading like a reader, reading like a writer

Adding to our conversational skills has been the focus of reading this week. We have worked with partnersto practice how to share our thinking, how to listen to a partner, how to invite the partner to elaborate and clarify, and how to add to the conversation.

We have used both picture books and poems to dig deeper with understanding and practice how to talk about ideas. I hope that what we do in class transfers to the Literature Circle discussions.

In addition to reading like a reader, we have looked at the texts as a writer. Some books are filled with marvellous language. The book below is about a boy who has never seen a sea and his mother describes it in the most wonderful words.

Revision: Sentence fluency.

The sentence fluency is probably the hardest trait to teach in writing. You have to listen to the text to hear whether the text is smooth and flows naturally, whether the length of the sentences helps to build  suspense or creates a peaceful mood, whether the sentence structure helps the reader to understand and supports the thoughts of the writer. 

It is possible to play witht the length of the sentences.

It is possible to play with the structure of the sentences.

Playing with the order of words or order of sentences opens up even more possibilities.

This week during revision the students chose one paragraph from their fictional narratives and played with sentences - adding, chopping off, rearranging them.

We also looked at different ways to start a sentence.

What if

In this lovely book (I had read to the students some time ago) a girl named Eva is struggling with a school writing assignment. Different people on her street give her writerly advice. 

The same advice is useful for us during a revision process. Before we went on holidays the students had been working on their fictional narratives. On Tuesday I gave them their drafts to read, recommended to ask one of the greatest revision questions: "What if...?" and look for new possibilities in their drafts. This is a big question, and bold writers could change a character, a setting, a plot or the perspective they are writing from. It is a chance to turn the story upside down and make it fresh. This advice is a way to improve idea development.

The second advice from the book says: "Put poetry into your writing."

It doesn't mean writing your text in verses or inserting rhymes between paragraphs. It is meant to look closely at the word choice.

To help student to see and hear what poetic language looks and sounds like, we explored several short poems where poets have chosen simple and small or every day things and with careful word choice have created incredible images. The same literary devices can be used in narrative writing.

Isn't it beautiful when author writes about a dragonfly and calls is a sky ballerina? (metaphor)

Or what about this image "safety pin, closed, it sleeps on its side."? (personification)

Or "its tail out like a thin shrimp"? (simile)

 

These were poems (most of them by Valerie Worth) that did not have rhyme, but used the visual and sensory words and line breaks to express images.

Illustratrators