Slice #10 of 31: The Perils of a Group Gift

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! It's not too late to join in with comments-- or just read... 

At times, I think I've got this parenting thing down, and then something happens that humbles me. Leaves me scratching my head. Inspires me to ask for advice.

One of my daughters and all of her friends decided to order rings for each other to celebrate birthdays and friendship. Monogrammed rings (aka unreturnable...). Somehow, I was the nominated mother to fund the purchase (6 friends times $59.99). Initially, not completely understanding the plot, I protested the use of my credit card, so another parent got the nod to purchase half of them. Unbeknownst to me, the company ran a sale, the other parent bought three of them for about $40 each. Now that they are back at full price, I am on deck to front the money for the other three.

Now, as the plot thickens and the story goes, there is friction over what everyone should pay, since these are supposed to be group gifts to each other. Do they pay the total cost of the 6 rings divided by 6, or does one group pay less since some were purchased at a sale price?

At the risk of sounding like money doesn't matter, I have offered to cover the difference in the prices for the three rings, but my daughter remains furious with especially one of her friends. All six girls are weighing in on different sides of the issue, entangling and complicating, and siphoning the joy out of a celebratory gift of friendship.

Somewhere in this drama, a short story lurks, with a plot that focuses on the beautiful monogrammed rings that sit at the bottom of six separate jewelry boxes. I hope that a different story is able to overcome this impostor.  I'd welcome any advice that could lead to a happy ending.

Happy Slicing!

Slice #9 of 31- It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! It's not too late to join in or comment or just read... Many of my posts will be at my personal blog, Just Write, Melanie, but the posts that relate explicitly to learning will be on both blogs. 


Over the weekend, I read The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart. It definitely hooked me with an extremely high stakes plot. Mark, the 12 year-old main character, has cancer and runs away just before he is supposed to start a treatment. He has set a personal goal to climb Mount Rainier, and even with a raging storm, continues with his quest. Dan Gemeinhart has some wonderful passages about life, and the social issues around whether to tell the truth or keep a secret pulsates the entire book. An upper elementary book club would have some intense discussions about the morality/immorality of lying!

All that being said, with a 12 year-old main character, this book is classified as middle grade fiction. I would not want any of my 8 year-olds to read it. There are some violent scenes, some terrifying scenes, and some really emotional scenes, as the book deals with death, cancer, gangs, bullying, and intense hospital scenes. It's a book that you might want to alert parents about if you're passing it along to strong readers in your elementary classroom.

Happy Reading and Slicing,

Slice #7 of 31: A Nonfiction Piece to Make Us Smile

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! I

After I read Georgia Heard's, Finding the Heart of Nonfiction, I became much more interested in working with teachers to ensure that students maintain a sense of voice when they write information or opinion. The CCSS really don't talk much about voice, and a well-written encyclopedia article (although somewhat dry and voiceless) would meet the standards. 

Today, I stopped to say hello to a fourth-grade teacher.

"I have an on-demand piece that you have to read," she said.

I love it when teachers say that to me, but that's another post... Our most recent writing assessment was a performance task. Students had a couple of articles to read, a short video clip to write, and then they had to write an information piece about the Connecticut River. 

She handed me the piece. "I got a little worried when I read the first page," she said. 

A good hair day? I could definitely understand why the teacher was a little concerned...

But then I kept reading, and my jaw started to drop.

 We used Hudson Talbott's It's All About Me-ow throughout the unit as a mentor text, and clearly, this student had internalized it. I have written about this book here and what a great mentor text it is, but here is student writing proof. Don't you love her use of parentheses?

True to her introduction's suggestion of sections, her piece stayed organized by topics, and I have included another page. Maybe some of you will want to share in my amazement of how she wove in details as she personified the Connecticut River into the narrator. Please remember. This is a fourth-grader writing an on-demand piece for a performance task. She read, watched, planned, and wrote in two classroom sessions.

I talked to the student before I left her classroom, complimenting her and suggesting that she revisit this piece. I'd love to see it in a contest some day, and in the meantime, I share it with all of you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Happy Slicing!!

Slice #8 of 31: A Reminder to be Kind in the Grocery Store Aisle

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! 

I generally do most of my grocery shopping on the weekends. The last few weeks have inspired particularly crazy weekend grocery store madness because of all of the snowstorms. The weather patterns have favored Sunday storms. 

Today, the grocery store was quieter than I have come to expect on a Saturday afternoon. I found a close parking spot. I had a plethora of carts to choose from. The aisles were stocked... Maybe because I was with one of my daughters, or maybe because the store was less crowded, or maybe because we had no great sense of urgency, I found myself paying more attention to the people than I usually do. One particular woman, one particular interaction struck me. 

Walking down the mayonnaise aisle, I found myself stuck behind a woman with a walker, leading another woman with a cart. The first woman was clearly sick--she was way too thin, her color was off, her hair thin...The second woman was clearly helping her. Oblivious to other shoppers, they trekked down the aisle, trying to remember if they needed olive oil. There was no getting by them.

As another person passed us, having had to wait for the pair to get past a worker who was stocking shelves, she rolled her eyes. Not the friendly kind of eye roll, but the truly annoyed eye roll. The eye roll that says that this is an unbelievable inconvenience. 

"It could be a whole lot worse," I said quietly. 

She didn't hear me, and I didn't want her to, but what if she had? Would my question have given her a moment of pause to be grateful that she could walk down the aisles quickly and efficiently, held up only by slower shoppers in her midst? Or does she have demons that aren't so apparent--demons that rush her and render her impatient and hostile, incapable of an empathetic smile? 

I'm reminded that we don't know what keeps people up at night, what worries confront them when they wake.

And I'm reminded to be kind.


Happy Slicing,

 

Slice #6 of 31: You Just Have to Listen, Mom...

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! 

One of the many things that I love about the Slice of Life Challenge is that it gives me the opportunity to peek into the lives of families who are younger than mine.

This morning, I read Beth's story about picking her son up from daycare and basking in the joy he had to see her. I look forward to Dana's stories because they focus on the small moments of humor and joy she finds in her girls' relationship, and Stacey always has a wonderful snippet to share about Isabelle. I miss those days. I miss the sticky-uppy hair. (My girls' hair is now coiffed, straightened, producted, braided...) I miss the bare feet and nightie. (The girls sleep in sweats and go to sleep after I do...)  And I miss the unbridled, unselfconscious, ecstatic demonstrations of love.

Beth, Dana, Stacey, and many more of you remind me to find my moments, even with my teenagers--on May 27th, I will officially have FOUR of them.

Last night at dinner, we were all there, except for Larkin who is at college. Julia was sitting across the table from me, next to Clare, and I asked her a question. I don't remember what the question was. I don't remember the answer, either. What I do remember is that when I asked her to repeat her answer, Clare knew exactly what Julia had mumbled.

"How did you understand that?" my husband asked.

Across from me, the two of them laughed and bumped elbows.

"You just have to listen, Mom," Clare said.

Somehow, I think their communication involves more than listening.

And  I celebrate.

Happy Slicing,

Slice #5 of 31: Reflecting in a Third-Grade Classroom

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! It's not too late to join in or comment or just read... Many of my posts will be at my personal blog, Just Write, Melanie, but the posts that relate explicitly to learning will be on both blogs. 

Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of taking the time to slow down and process the learning that is happening. In one of the third-grade classes that I work in, I asked the students to do just that. 

"Before you go to your writing, I want you to just sit and reflect for a moment on the lesson you just experienced," I said. "You have a chart in front of you, as well as some work that you did in the last ten minutes. What did you learn? Consciously think about what you learned."

We did not ask the students to share their learning which surprised them. They are used to raising their hands and giving an answer. Instead, I told them to just take their learning with them to their work. Their classroom teacher gave students who wanted them Post-its so that they could write down their learning. I kept some of the responses and the different take-aways fascinate me:

 The first response is reflective of the lesson, as it was a lesson about planning and making sure that you will have enough to say about your claim, emphasizing the importance of front-end revision.

I learned that I should go back and rewrite things or add in more.

The next response was from a high level writer.  From her post, I can tell that she was thinking about and processing at the next level, contemplating the possibilities of revising her claim and thinking in terms of reasons and matching examples--high level thinking for a third-grader.

This third response is a great example of one that worries me. Where did the concept of character traits sneak in during an opinion writing lesson? This child's response gives me a clear shout-out to clarify the different types of writing and different purposes to keep in mind. I will make sure to circle back to her and try to clear up the confusion that may exist for her. Without her reflective Post-it, I wonder how long she would have written her piece and how she would have gone about structuring it.

Walking around and reading their opinion writing early on in the unit, I was impressed blown away at the level of their writing. Still with Maggie Beattie Roberts' wonderful voice in my ear, encouraging me to help students take charge of their own learning (she had worked with us the previous day), I asked the students how this amazing learning happened. How was it that they were writing such amazing opinion pieces so early in the unit? I jotted their answers on another Post-it and I wished that I had made a chart of what they said, but I am sharing a photo of my notes:

Here's what they said...

• We have charts, checklists, modeled pieces, a strong purpose, and showing pieces (their term for mentor texts). 
• Also, we can take all that we learned in the information unit and use it in this one. 
• We know what the fourth grade standards are so we can set goals.
• We are writing what we know a lot about. 

I'm not kidding.

Thank you, Maggie, for the reminder to take the time to think, really think, about the learning, and to remember to foster this important habit of mind.

Happy Slicing,

#SOL15 4 of 31: Taking TIme to Revisit and Reflect

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2015

Slow Down and Reflect- an Idea Worth Remembering

This month, I have committed to writing every day through the community at Two Writing Teachers. All are welcome to the March Slice of Life Challenge! It's not too late to join in or comment or just read... Many of my posts will be at my personal blog, Just Write, Melanie, but the posts that relate explicitly to learning will be on both blogs. 

We are incredibly fortunate in our district to have Teachers College Staff Developers come and work with us a few times a year. Since I have been in my position of Writing Coordinator, Kate Roberts has worked with our sixth-grade teachers. This year, Maggie Beattie Roberts has taken over this role, and I met her face to face for the first time yesterday. 

I'm going to pause and take a minute to give Twitter a plug. When Maggie walked into the building, I felt like I knew her because I have been in twitterchats and I have tweeted with her back and forth. I have read her blog, and I have tweeted favorite posts (all of them, actually, I think). I would not have believed that I would write this a couple of years ago when I was new on Twitter, but we hugged each other like old friends yesterday morning. If you are debating twitter, if you are on the fence...join. It really is an incredible forum for learning and developing friendships with like-minded people. 

Maggie said so much that inspired me yesterday, but the first share I will offer on this blog is an idea that she shared from Kylene Beers. 

"We're always so busy moving forward that we don't have a time to reflect."

I think that in context, Kylene was talking about notetaking, but the shared comment from Maggie made me think and reflect on many aspects of teaching and learning. When do we take the time to ask ourselves and our students:

• What did I learn today?
• What helped me learn?
• Why did it matter?

Additionally, when do we take the time to reflecting on the learning that has happened over a longer period of time, both for ourselves as educators and for our students, asking ourselves and our students"

• How does the work I'm doing now compare to the work I was doing at a different point in my learning path?
• What knowledge/understandings do I have from past units or experiences that can help me with new challenges?
• What tools, lessons, or other experiences helped my learning?
• How can I learn from the other members of my community? 
• What has been hard or held me back and how can I overcome similar obstacles?

I tried this with a group of third-graders, and the conversation we had amazed me. I will share their reflections tomorrow. 

Happy Slicing,