I loved this project and I definitely want to do it again next year with a few changes of course ; ) The biggest change that I would make is to provide more time for conferencing and editing with my students. This time, I was a little pinched for time and was unable to develop the quality of work that I would have liked. I loved seeing the different ways that members in my group developed scaffolds for their students to use. I think that in the future I will model more than one Ipoem for my class so that they can really understand how to include information in their poems by asking questions to bring out more details.
IPoems from my Classroom April 15, 2009
If anyone is interested in seeing the Ipoems my children wrote about different creatures, please visit my class blog which is listed in my blogroll! I think they’re great, but I’m a little biased. The kids would love any comments that you would like to leave!
Multigenre Presentations April 8, 2009
These presentations have been eye-opening. I loved seeing the work everyone had done on their different topics. I learned so much about sea turtles, Celine Dion, Rocks and Earth Day. I was so impressed by everyone’s creativity. The way that all of the information was displayed was so original and interesting. I’m overwhelmed by the experience as a whole. I love the idea of the multigenre presentation and experiencing the dynamic of sharing projects makes me want to use it even more!
During Lydia’s presentation, I was enthralled as I learned about female sea turtles and how they lay their “clutch” (new vocab for me). Also, I loved hearing more about the possibility of helping sea turtles by paying just a little bit extra when I buy my next license plate.
Kim talked about Earth Day with us and I loved her cartoon poster. It was so fitting. Also, the pictures of pollution in different areas of the world were striking to say the least.
Carla’s Rock Town presentation was wonderful! I thought it was hilarious and really informative, which is not easy to do. I thought that the map of the town was excellent because it incorporated pictures of actual examples of each type of rock. Not to mention the song . . . .
Crystal has been talking to me about her Celine presentation all semester and I’ve loved learning about her along with Crystal. I was so interested to learn how she got her start in her father’s pub and amazed at her discipline when I learned that she stays silent for 24 hours before every performance. Wow!
GREAT JOB EVERYONE!!!
Graphic Novels for Really Young Readers April 5, 2009
This article by a media specialist who values graphic novels speaks very highly of the genre. It tells the reader of the different ways that graphic novels help students read and gives advice on how to get your media specialist or reluctant colleagues to begin using graphic novels. There are many similarities in the way that this author and Reese view graphic novels and the strengths of including them in students’ reading.
Wordless Picture Books – Reese April 5, 2009
This article discusses the value of wordless picture books for reading and as a springboard for writing original text. They challenge students to attend to details of illustrations to follow the storyline of the book. Students can be challenged to write words for the book. This gives them the support of a preexisting story line. Their job is simply to provide words for the story that the pictures are already telling. This strategy is sure to alleviate some of the anxiety felt by beginning writers who never know what to write about. Reese reported that in his use of this strategy he saw huge growth in his children as writers who had not been successful before.
Why Should Kids Read Comics? April 5, 2009
This article is brimming with support for the use of graphic novels in the classroom. I love the first reason they give for students reading comics: BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. I love it! This is so important to me as I have spent a good deal of time studying student motivation in reading. If you have a genre of written text that your students want to read . . .give it to them!! Not only does this genre tend to motivate kids because they find it interesting, but according to the article, it supports struggling readers with heavy story clues in the illustrations and challenges successful readers to look at text a different way.
Arnberg Article April 5, 2009
This article was exciting to me because the author is a practicing classroom teacher. I think that it would be possible for me to do just what she is in facilitating meaningful instruction in memoir writing for my students. I appreciated that at the beginning of her study of memoir, she had students bring in books that they thought were memoirs. Arnberg used exploration and childrens literature to develop a definition of memoir that would be salient and meaningful to her students because they played a part in developing it. I didn’t really understand that memoir was different from autobiography until I read her article. I now know that a memoir does not tell the entire life story of the subject. It is not a “bed to bed” story. It can be about a small moment, a summer, a vacation, a Saturday afternoon. Arnberg’s record of her reluctant writers triumphing over their weaknesses was so special. I am excited to learn more about memoir and perhaps include memoir study in my own writing curriculum.
Espinosa Article April 5, 2009
I appreciate this article for the way that it showed how writing can be done artfully and successfully in a dual language setting. I don’t have much experience at all with ELL instruction, but I appreciated the idea of having children write in their native tongue and using mentor texts from their background. I also really appreciated the idea of finding small, seemingly unimportant moments to write about in such a way that makes them meaningful. The phrase explode the moment was used over and over again in this article and I think that it is an excellent way to vividly describe the process of taking a small moment in time and bringing it to life. The way that Espinosa worked with the children to teach them how to respond to authors and each other was also meaningful to me.
Writing Without Boundaries April 5, 2009
I really appreciate the concrete nature of this text. It takes you step by step through the process of facilitating a multigenre or multitext project with a class full of students. I feel very supported by the advice on how to proceed with writing workshop and the specific examples of student work and teacher feedback. I especially appreciated the sections that dealt with assessing students work. Because students have so much creative control over the multigenre project, it was helpful to see how a teacher could go about assessing such different work fairly. This book will be by my side throughout every stage of implementing a multigenre project in my own classroom.
Moulton Article April 5, 2009
I loved Moulton’s take on the traditional research project. It is so true that it is uninspired, unoriginal and students are unmotivated because they are basically regurgitating information they have found in the given number of sources from their assignment, all the while being careful not to plagiarize even though none of the ideas presented are their own. The solution presented of the multigenre project is ingenious. Not surprisingly, she found that students were engaged and excited about their work because students had creative control over their own project. Not only were students able to choose the genres in which they wanted to write, but they were thinking critically in order to write across genres. I’m so glad that Moulton had this idea and that I’ve been taught about it. I know for sure that if I ever teach in the upper grades, the multigenre project will be the ace up my sleeve.
