Clever Idea: historical character on facebook

The middle-years group was thinking it would be fun to do podcasts in role as historical figures.  Perhaps an interview between Gandhi and Hitler?  Today, when I was searching for an off-line facebook template to use in Seminar, I came across this:


Attribution: http://historytech.wordpress.com/

I love clever - and think this is just the right kind of clever for middle-years students.

Graphic Novels I have Loved. . . .

Here are a few of the graphic novels that I have read and loved, or my children have loved.  Click on the image to go straight to Amazon where you will find reviews and grade levels if you are curious.


 

Owly is the cutest little book - mostly without words.  I love that the author/artist created Owly on sticky notes that he left for his mom.

Baby Mouse is a wonderful character, the books are well-drawn (love the pink, black and white), and the content is quite engaging.  She is a little hero for girls everywhere. 

The pink, white and black content turned my 8 year-old son off, so when I saw Monster Mash I picked it up for him.  Liam got hooked on it, and continued to read the whole series - no longer concerned about the

colour or character. 

 

 

Bone is one of the most popular graphic novels in the school library.  Both my boys have read the series (9 books I believe), and I have enjoyed them too.  Liam has actually read them three times, he finds them that engaging.

This is a combination of traditional novel with graphic novel-like inclusions.  My boys wanted me to put this on the list - they've enjoyed them, but I must say they were never something they wanted to re-read, and they never kept their attention for long.  Still, they found them entertaining, and many kids love them.

Amulet is very well done, and has captured the attention of my boys.  It isn't as well known as Bone (in my experience), but it is just as good!(perhaps better, but don't tell anyone I said that). 

Not exactly a graphic novel, but a much-loved comic in our house.  Love the expression presented, and the slapstick world of a Calvin and his trust sidekick.

For older students, this book is gorgeous in its black and white drawings, and the coming-of-age story is beautifully told. It is the first graphic novel I ever read front to back and fell in love with.A graphic novel for adults - the drawings are incredible and the story well-told. 

 

For older readers.  I thought this graphic novel was incredible on many levels, it is really an interesting look the author's perspective/representation of growing up in a Chinese family in America.  It shows stereotypes through one of the storylines, and so I have heard debates about having this in schools, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.

If there is a graphic novel you think the blogosphere should know about (especially for schools, but not necessarily stricted to schools) - please leave a message.

As luck would have it, I just came across this list for the top 10 Graphic Novels of 2011 (click image to go to the article):

Picture Books I have Loved

Nothing like curling up with a good book (or twenty) over the  holidays.  Below are some of my favourites.  Just click on the image to get to Amazon, where you can conveniently read more about it. I love that it is easy to check professional reviews like School Library Journal and Kirkus Review. 
 These books were chosen because of their wonderful kid-appeal.  Most of them make great read-alouds, and are stories I love to share.

Compiling this collection of picture books that I've loved, felt like a walk down school library lane for me.  I picture all the students I shared these books with: the students who gasped when they understood the ending of The Sweetest Fig.  The students who said, "You have to read One Green Apple, Mrs. N., you'll love it!"  The group of kindergartener's who liked to chime in during King Bidgood's in the Bathtub.

Ah, sweet nostalgia!  Life is just better when you can share the books you love.

A Letter to my Students

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

Dear EDCI 302 Teachers of Tomorrow: 

It has been a pleasure getting to know you this term.  I want to thank you all for your hard work, critical thinking, and positive attitudes.  The school community will be lucky to have you - and I want to wish you the very best in your professional journey.

If you remember just one thing from our few months together - I would really like it to be this:
Students will rise to the occasion of excellence in your Language Arts classroom if you create an environment which nurtures:

• a love of language (or willingness to play with language and try different strategies); 
• a meaningful purpose (I almost wrote "a meaningful porpoise"...which would make for an interesting story, wouldn't it?); 
• a safe environment; 
• a balanced approach;
• constructive feedback;
• and, an authentic audience.

Sharon Creech managed to create such a classroom via Mrs. Stretchberry in Love That Dog.  Nancie Atwell and Lucy Calkins have been working on creating such an environment through Writer's Workshop.  Donald Graves, Tom Romano, Penny Kittell (and many more) have been calling for teachers who value personally-meaningful engagement in the writing process for many years.

So much depends
upon a language-rich classroom
in the school where you will teach.


So much depends upon
a willingness to try
and an open mind.

You all have a beautiful opportunity in front of you.  Go forth bravely, and enjoy!


Sincerely,


Carol N.

Places to go, things to write and books to read

Image Courtesy:  Novelist on Ebsco

The Northwest Territories Literacy Council has created a Writing Ideas Toolkit which appears to have a wealth of information for the beginning or veteran teacher.

The Red Cedar Book Awards :  Many schools in British Columbia are involved in reading and voting for these reader-choice awards.  Even if you don't participate fully, you can look here for a phenomenal reading list.

The Pacific Northwest Young Reader's Choice Awards (YRCA): I have never been disappointed choosing a book from the YRCA lists.  The books are often top-quality, well-written, fully-engaging books.   I highly recommend browsing their current and past lists.  For those of you wondering about finding age-appropriate books, YRCA has them categorized nicely into Junior (grades 4-6), Intermediate (grades 7-9), and Senior (grades 10-12).

Last, but not-by-any-means-least,  Novelist  is an on-line database available through the public library website, and is a wonderful tool for helping students find more of the types of books they like.  They have reviews by highly-esteemed journals (Booklist and  Library Journal....), which are valuable for helping teachers select appropriate books for their classroom.

Haiku to You Winnie the Pooh

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know were they will take you.

I stole this from Chloaye....who took it from Beatrix.  Wonderful, isn't it?  I love to hear what authors say about writing.  For some reason, their words will stay with me, even if the date and time of big events in my own history won't.  My brain is wired that way . . . and I'm okay with that.

John Irving once said something along the lines of, "writing is a great way to spend your time alone."

I like writing, but I don't like spending time alone.  Much like my morning coffee, I need to write....for my own sense of well-being; but I don't do lonely well.  When I was completing my English Degree at Trent University, way back in the 1990's, I used to go down to the Champlain College Snack Bar, set myself up in a booth, and scribble my essays into a three-ring binder.  Since I didn't live at that particular residence, nobody knew me...I could be alone in a crowd and the writing felt less lonely.

In that booth - the far one to the left of the big window - I would often meander away from the prescribed assignments to write journal entries, poetry, or letters home to my grandmother.  These writing distractions (journal, letter, poetry) helped me to focus my active mind.  I needed that little taste of creativity, or the meaningful inward glances at my own life, to counterbalance the writing I was completing for my professors.   Over time I managed to integrate more of my creative self with my critical eye, and the process became more enjoyable.  I learned then that writing begets writing, and I still stand by that belief today. 

The more I write,
the more I want to write,
and the better my writing gets.
I hope.

Thinking back to a younger age, I was seven-years old when I first learned the power of the written word.  It manifested itself in a spiteful poem scribbled into a pink journal with a cat on the front of it which Santa left in my stocking the Christmas before.  My older sister had made me feel such angst I thought I would spit, or burst.  Since I didn't like spitting, and bursting was out of the question, I grabbed my pen, ripped into the journal and wrote venomous lines of ink across the page.

I have the worst sister in the world.
I would trade her in,
but nobody would take her.

That was my first Haiku of sorts, though I didn't know what Haiku was then, and I"m still not sure it would fit the definition.  What I do know for certain:  I needed three things to begin my life as a writer.  I needed the tools, I needed the feeling, and I needed the environment to write in.  We owe it to our students to nurture a language-rich culture in our classrooms.  To support students through exposure to a variety of rich texts; provide opportunity for writing to beget writing;  nurture the social aspect of learning - through peer conferencing and shared writing; and help students to place their own value on the written word.

I would like to end with a quote from the creator of that honey-searching bear of little brain, followed by my own attempt at being clever:

Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way.
I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the
appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.

- A. A. Milne

Writing is not a passive activity. 
Teaching writing is not a passive activity either. 
We need to do what Winnie the Pooh's creater knew.

Nurture a climate right for inspiration.
Snowflakes falling with individual purpose and intent.
A desire to play in the snow.

Comic Writing

Comics were not my thing when I was growing up, and I don't mean that in a snobby academic way - I simply didn't think comics were written for me as their audience.  They belonged to the world of the boys I knew.  Superheroes, good versus evil, the grand gesture of saving the world...these were not my story.  But there was another reason I wasn't drawn (no pun intended) to them - reading them took a lot of work, and I was not a strong reader. 

My interest in graphic novels was piqued when I was working on my Master's in teacher-librarianship.  Maus, Persepolis, Blankets, Owly, Bone, and Baby Mouse opened my eyes to the genre.  I loved the narrative, but also the artwork.  The heavy black-and-white drawings in Persepolis, the love story and artwork in Blankets, the sweetness in Baby Mouse and Owly, all caught my attention and invited me into the world of comics and graphic novels.  I began to champion them for use in the classroom. 

I was so intrigued, I even had a go at writing/drawing the first chapter of a graphic novel.  I learned that creating such a visual story took a lot of work, and the process of telling was pared down to what was truly essential.  The ability to communicate with drawing and words widened the stream of narrative for me. 

Now that I am a parent, I watch my eight-year old gobble the Bone series for the third time. I was recently  pleased when he tried to create his own comic on Bitstrips, and started with a comic representation of our family. 

Liam spent a good deal of time on creating each member of our family (from left to right, Me, Liam, Charlie, Dad, Charlie, Aidan and Kieran.  You will notice that in my son's mind, he and I are the same height, and each of the boys is more buff than their father (it's okay to stretch the truth when you're telling a story, I always say).

The comic below was written by my friend's son when he was in Fourth Grade.  When he showed this to me last year, I was really impressed by the quality of his art, but also of the narrative voice he has developed in such a short time.  He has applied all that he knows about the comic genre in this three-page spread.

I just love the expression represented in the latter photo. 

Our conversation in the elementary class about the use of hand-writing/printing versus keyboarding can be carried over to these two examples: the hand-drawn comic versus the one created electronically.  Is the process engaging the student as much in the electronic version as the hand-drawn?  Is one more authentic than the other?  Does it have to be?  What is really important here, the artwork or the story? Or is that even a fair question?  Perhaps it's like comparing apples to mangoes.

One might argue that we can't compare these two samples because one represents a full story, while the other is more aptly described as a family portrait.  A better judge might be the students themselves, creating their representations with both mediums, then reflecting on and evaluating both experiences.

The bottom line for me is that there is a story and it wants to be told.  Whichever tool we use; whether that be ink, pencil, chalk, digital representations, talking to ourselves in the mirror, or moving a stick in the wet sand - as individuals we all have something to say.  Our job as teachers is to support our students in the telling of it.

Clearing the Path

Big step for both of us

This was a big moment for Aidan. It was his first step onto the spider-web-type structure at Fisherman's Wharf. This was also a big moment for me. . . it was the moment I realized Aidan had moved into a new stage in his development. The stage of nicely pushing my hands away so he could do it himself. 

Liam. . .on writing

On the first day of Grade Three, Liam brought home an All About Me graphic organizer to complete. Actually, he only had to complete a couple of boxes, but he missed that part of the instructions and thought he was to finish the whole thing.  Thankfully he didn't complain about it!

He got right to work. I sat with him because he insisted he needed help. Really, he just wanted someone to bounce his own ideas off of.



Inventing a toy dispenser is the perfect job for him as he pours over toy catalogues and highlights items in the Sears Wish Book.

When it came time to write the Mini-Autobiography at the end he puzzled over what to write.  I suggested he start with, "My name is Liam. . . " to which he replied,  "wouldn't it sound even better if I said 'HELLO, my name is Liam'?"

"Yes Liam, that's an excellent way to start."
"Oh, good!  Now what?"

We chatted about how he would describe who is to a complete stranger.  Maybe sharing the places he's lived and a bit about his family.

After he wrote a couple of sentences I said, "that's a great mini-autobiography, Liam.  You're done!"
He looked at me aghast.  "MOM, Mrs. N. gave me all this space to write in, I think she expects a little more than that!"

"Quite right, Liam."  (Here I am, humbled again).

What you probably need to know is that last year Liam struggled with writing.  It was like pulling teeth to get him motivated to write.  He could tell you a terrific story; but when it came to putting the pencil to the paper he froze.

These were some of his excuses:

• "I'm tooooo tired!!!!"
• "I don't know what to write."
• "I have too many ideas in my head!!!"
• "I'm SOOOO tired!!!"
• "Can't I play?"
• "Waaahhh!!"

Luckily for Liam, his 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. L.,  had barrels of patience with him.  She praised his efforts when he wrote something.  Gradually, gradually, his confidence grew.  He wrote a little, and it was celebrated.  He wrote a little more, and it was celebrated too.  This continued until the end of the year when he began to write novels (yes, you heard me, he wrote novels) in his free time.  His title for the novels?  The Wars.  Each one ended with "To Be Continued" written on the back page in bold, bright felt markers.  Mrs. L. did not step in to redirect the topic saying it wasn't appropriate for school.  She told me she didn't care if the stories were about a Pokeman war, she was just thrilled to see him writing something.

Now, here's the question of the day:  What would you do if your students wanted to write potentially violent stories in class?

Creative Commons Search - the [N]etiquette of using images from the Web

When I first started teaching, and the Internet was exploding with possibilities, I copied everything and anything in the name of EDUCATION.  In other words, I stole photographs and images and intellectual property like a vandal sneaking apples and doormats off other people's doorsteps.

When the copy-right issues started being tossed around - I thought it didn't apply to me because I was a TEACHER, and it was in the best interest of my young learners if I keep using this rich material I was finding.

Then I started posting my own images on flickr and my thoughts on blogger and facebook, and I began to rethink my thievery.  Something in me changed so that I wanted to be a good role-model. When I saw a photograph that I wanted to use - I asked permission first.  I explained that I was wanting to use it for a bulletin board display - and I explained the context.  Almost always, I heard a response within a few days, and almost always they said, "yes!"  The people I contacted often had little requests such as, "please give me attribution" - or - "please DON'T use my real name" - or - "I would love to hear what the response is."

This was new and exciting and the effort was worthwhile.

Worthwhile, but not always practical.  Sometimes inspiration doesn't want to wait a few days for permission. 

When I discovered Creative Commons Search I was so grateful.  You can seek out images/information that the creators are willing to share.  There's no cost - and it's easy to use.

If I could give one word of advice to new teachers interested in exploring technology with their students, it would be to use the Creative Commons Search site.  We might as well model best practices for our students right from the start.  Chances are, many of the veteran teachers you are working with will thank you for it...Creative Commons Search does seem to be the Internet's best-kept secret.  Spread the word!

Almost Random Thoughts on Blogging

The following quote was sent to me by my teacher/writer friend, Lara:

 "You're not a writer. Blogging isn't writing. It's graffiti with punctuation."

                                                                 (from the movie 'Contagion')

Whether or not I agree with that humorous comment,  I must say that to me blogging is more than writing.  It's sharing your thoughts, ideas, experiences and passions with the Blogosphere.  (I almost said it's sharing with the world - but that's an assumption that everyone in the world has access to this technology.)  It can mean getting almost-instant feedback on those thoughts from anywhere in the world - or from the fellow student who sits in the back of the room whom you've never had a chance to talk to.  It is about building a community with like-minded people (usually we follow blogs about topics which interest us).  How is this different than writing an interest piece in class and reading it to your friends?  Perhaps there isn't a huge difference, except in blogging there is the potential to reach a wider audience - and to experience the text on a different platform.  Paper or screen? It might come down to a personal preference.

Photos found on Creative Commons  1. Globe, 2. Sliced Digital Camera, 3. I ♥pod, 4. shoebox project - boxes

As students in my Language and Literacy class share their own blogs with me and their classmates - I get excited about the possibilities.  I also get worried about the dark side of the Internet.  I think we have a huge responsibility as educators to teach our students a safe way to interact within the World Wide Web.  The best way I can think of is to experience it ourselves so that we may be better informed on how to practice safe blogging.  Avoiding it in the classroom doesn't make our students safer when they leave the school zone.

As we experience new technology ourselves, and consider how it might be used in our classrooms, it is important that we don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  We need to learn to use wisdom in our choices.  We don't need to use technology for the sake of using technology, but use it because it might be the best method for reaching our curricular goals.  The Internet is a tool, just like chalk is a tool for teaching.  It's our job to know when to use the right tool at the right time with the right learner.

And that would be me on my educational soap box; ranting about the joys of blogging to anyone who will listen/view/read/consider.

We'll talk more in class.

Warm regards,

Carol N.