Author: Rachel Smith

Categories
Classroom

digital classroom

I am a digital native, don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t consider myself a technology genius or anything like that. But, at the same time I would struggle to get through the day without my fingers on my laptop, iphone, and ipod (if you’re wondering if you should buy a Mac the answer is yes).

This past year in my classroom I experimented a lot with video. I used a Kodak PlaySport video camera (see flip camera) to record and analyze my own teaching. I let the kids make short films and projects on the camera. I even helped other staff members make their own video projects using the camera, and then I edited the footage using iMovie. Seriously, I love Mac products because they make it all so easy and accessible. I also used movies for sub plans; this kept the kids on track and made the sub’s day a little easier! Some days, I thought they liked watching me on video more than the real me.

At Columbia this year, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who was technology obsessed. Practically everyone was carrying around an iPad; the jealousy was killing me. I do love new toys, but this one would certainly have power in the classroom, especially if it had its own 3G server.  Think about it— we could Facechat on the big screen with Miguel in Africia, and Michele in Manhattan, and Tash in Australia, and Mom in Media, without any server firewalls telling us to arrange it through the tech department. Imagine the wealth of information that we could gain from five minutes of live conversation outside the walls of our classroom! Maybe we could even get some authors on there . . . oh iPad, you will find a happy home in our classroom!

I have a Kindle; this summer I’ve become pretty good friends with this beautiful piece of technology. I’ve heard plenty of adults complain about not being able to hold a “real book” or something like that, but I teach middle schoolers— and umm Kindles are cool. Anyway, I plan on bringing in the Kindle this year; my reluctant readers won’t know what hit them when I let them use that little book to read, take notes and oh my favorite feature—highlight!

Don’t even get me started on the wonders of a smart phone. I held out on getting one for so long because I didn’t want to pay that much for cell phone service— stupid decision, it is 100% worth the $80 cell phone bill. My favorite new application is Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I know it sounds dorky, but really it’s not. Sure, it does what you would expect, it defines words, but if you want you can just say the word you want to look up and it will spell/define it for you. For example, yesterday no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to spell amateur correctly. I picked up my phone, said the word, and my phone spelled it for me. Can I get a hallelujah for less time wasted? And for the kids that will regain confidence and speed when I let them use my phone/ their phone for this free app!

There’s more, there’s so much more— I mean blogs, google docs, document cameras, smart boards, (the Wii???)— and our kids?They’re pretty good at using them all. I’m not bad at it either, but I’m totally willing to look stupid once in awhile as I learn.  If you work in my building and want to see any of these fun things in action this year, come on down. If you’re just reading for fun, comment and ask questions, try things out yourself, let me know what I’m missing. You don’t have to be a technology native to realize and use these tools in your classroom.

Categories
Classroom Reading

I’ve got the Magic

When I think about my time as a child, some of my closest memories are with picture books. I can still remember the thrill of the welcome invitation to jump into Mom’s bed and how fun it was to get tangled in her soft sheets. But mostly, I remember when she finally got my brother and I to be still, and listen to a story. It was magical; it didn’t matter that my brother had picked Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel for the tenth night in a row, because each time she read it I could live in the story and be amazed at Mike’s bravery and strength.

While I have kept these memories close to my heart, I haven’t really used picture books in my teaching. Sure, I’ve used them a few times— Who doesn’t want to read The Lorax during a propaganda unit? And Three Nasty Gnarlies is my favorite book to read them at the end of the year . . . but during my time at Columbia’s Reading Institute I was reminded not only of the magic behind these books, but of their power in a reading classroom (even an 8th grade language arts room like my own).

Reading a picture book that’s written for slightly older kids lends itself to instruction beautifully. First, with an interactive read aloud students can easily practice the skills from the minilesson within the context of a whole story. Picture books that are aligned with your unit of study, done once or twice a week, with a consistent structure provides your kids a wealth of opportunity to practice, without a major loss of time. During your interactive read aloud get kids to turn and talk using prompts like: discover, categorize, question, teach, wonder, compare & contrast. Get them thinking, get them talking, get them to remember the magic too.

The other big bonus of using picture books in your classroom is their ability to be used as a teaching tool in small skill based groups and independent reading conferences. When you see that your kids are struggling with a skill, you can think back to these books and teach from there. It’s so much easier because you already know the text and they do too. This way, let say if you haven’t read the independent reading book they’re reading, you can still teach a skill for them to use within their book. At Columbia they recommended that you actually carry the book with you to your conferences, just in case, and believe me, I’ll be doing just that— hopefully it will work like magic.

Categories
Classroom Reading

Because I want to know.

The Fourth of July was on a Monday this year, and I was in NYC. Although I knew I had class the next day, I still managed to make it quite a magical night out in the city. Wisdom tells me that next year I should probably plan on making it to bed sooner than I did, but alas sometimes I just HAVE to be twenty-something and in New York. Can you blame me?

I guess you could when you find out that I missed the Keynote for the first day of the institute—I’m gonna blame that on the Subway.

My first day at the Reading Institute started off slowly, with a cup of coffee in hand. Traces of my week working with writing were still dancing through my head, and friends from home were texting me in full force. I wasn’t sure I would be able to focus at all.

Then I saw Brooke Geller walk into the room; and I knew I would be fine. After all, I am ahappyteacher and tired or not I could never pass up an opportunity to learn from the best.

Class started off with a question: What are three books that you remember reading?

My answer: Hidden Gems, The Hunger Games, & Nickle and Dimed

Then we were instructed to fill in the blank. I’m the kind of person who likes to read books about _____________________________.

My answer: justice and compassion and their struggle to work together.

The tone was set. We needed to care about reading as teachers of reading. Right off the bat, they wanted to know who I was as a reader.

Immediately I found myself thinking of the first days of school this year, of all the work that would need to be done, and the importance of giving my students these kinds of reflective questions. The importance of saying, right off the bat, who are you as a reader? Because I want to know.

Categories
Professional Writerly Life

That too.

I journaled twice last week about reasons I love being home— there are a lot. But all the people that know me best are looking at me with questioning eyes, some are surprised I came home at all, so I’ll admit it, I wanted to stay at Columbia forever and become a teacher for the project. Maybe next year? For now, I’m sitting here with a highlighter, pouring through at least 100 pages of notes and two curriculum calendars.

Overwhelmed? Definitely. Christmas morning excited? That too.

Two weeks at Columbia was certainly an information overload. I wanted to blog everyday while I was there, but New York City is magical even for a workaholic like myself.

I’ve posted a lot about the week of writing instruction I had, it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface with volume of information I’m actually taking away. My plan is to start tomorrow with the Reading Institute, and work on processing that. I promise to go back throughout the year and touch on each of these as they play out in my classroom.

As a side note, if you’re wondering where I’ve been (besides spending time networking for another project I’m working on), I’ve been snuggled up with my kindle.

On my first day at the Reading Institute, Mary Ehrenworth said this, “Reading about teaching reading but not actually reading novels is like talking about running but not actually running—you’re still not skinny.”

I’ve got a two-page book list— books for the kids, books for me, and only a few professional books, because summer is the perfect time to get lost in a dystopian fantasy. This reading teacher is off to . . . read. Maybe I’ll share my list with you during my next break?

Categories
Classroom Writerly Life Writing

breaking silence— part 3

As a teacher and natural organizer, I love and maybe even crave structure. It makes me feel safe and lets me know what to expect. A predictable mealtime, the order I put hair products into my untamable curls (prep, cream, mouse, shine), dentist appointments six months apart on the 14th of August & February—this is not normal, but at least I’m upfront about it?

Needless to say, when we started to analyze the structure of memoirs, I was both happy and nervous to hear that not every story follows the “plot diagram” we teachers love to present to our students. Plot diagrams, they’re easy to teach, but they easily fall apart in the face of real literature. Not every story is as neatly packaged as I would like it to be, but that’s the beauty of a story—of life—inviting people in journeying together in the unstructured uncertainty of at all.

But sometimes we can use a little direction, from someone who has done it before, someone willing to lead the way (in this case a published author). So, in looking at short sections from mentor texts, we formed maps—short little diagrams of a craft moves.

From one text we found a string of pearls, —o—o—o—o—o—o— Short and beautiful moments of life held together with a common theme.

From another a series of events story told, A–>B–>C–>D

And from yet another, “Quotes”+ Reflection–> “Quotes” + Reflection

There were more texts, more patterns, and a room full of teachers looking from above at a text and mapping it out however they saw fit. Just seeing a pattern helped me to see purposeful craft moves that I could make, because even though my story wasn’t exactly the same, there was still much to learn.

The structure gave me something to hold onto, got me out of feeling so stuck in my writing, so while the reflecting was hard, it had a place in my story and I would have to go there to make the piece effective.

I wrote all that to say a few things:

  1. Wow, the impact of just a few carefully chosen mentor texts.
  2. Imagine the power of letting students create their own map & follow it.
  3. Being teachable— in writing, in reflecting, in journeying—Beauty.
Categories
Classroom Professional Writerly Life Writing

breaking silence— part 2

Coming up with an idea, something I needed to write about, that wasn’t hard. In fact, I easily produced at least five pretty quality topics I could have used. Even then, collecting story seeds around my idea wasn’t hard either. For a few of my topics, I had well over ten pages of writing. But then I had to name the issue, or the common theme throughout the seeds that I would be able to weave into my memoir.

It was in this process of searching and reflecting that I realized this was a project where I could face hard things head on or choose something easy and go through the motions (much like the book report I did on Rachel Carson every year throughout elementary, middle, and high school). But, you don’t travel from PA to New York, pay to go to Columbia, and fork over NYC rent to write a piece that tells you the something you already knew.

Now I’m going to take a second and pause, I’m not sharing my final piece with you. I don’t want to get your hopes up with all this reflecting and then have you be disappointed in the end. I’ve already shared the piece out as far as it goes, which pretty much means the people in my class, and Jess (my writing partner from home), oh and little baby Siena & her awesome momma Michele because they were there for one of the torturous revision sessions I put myself through. Sometimes we (our students too) need to write and not share it with the world. For me the topic I ended up picking is a little too raw to share with everyone, at points it felt too raw for me. So, while I wish I could share some amazing piece with you, know this—I tackled hard stuff, I grew.

Okay back to the process. Once I found the topic that I needed to write about, I asked myself the hard questions, I boxed out the parts of the stories that revealed what I was trying to say. We began to study mentor texts, to see how other authors had done the same thing that we were trying to do.

At this point I began to use a few tricks that we were seeing in mentor texts.

  1. Reflection- using questioning within the text
  2. All the time- this is how it always would go; he would or she would always
  3. One time- but this one day
  4. Symbols & Metaphor

And because I am a classic version of the overachiever, I used all of them.

Even just typing this out, I am amazed at the process, and how much thinking I was forced to do. Somewhere in the middle of all this, we revised for structure. We had been doing a lot of up close looking at the text and working within reflection for so long that I had almost forgotten to pull myself away and analyze the story structure.

The story structure thing, it was pretty huge for me, so I’m going to stop here and save that for its own blog. It deserves it.

To be continued . . .

 

Categories
Classroom Professional Writerly Life Writing

breaking silence—part 1

It’s Saturday morning and I owe you myself a little bit more in the way of reflection on this past week (umm where did this week go? & I may never come back).

Let me start by saying, there is something crucial to writing, the way it helps us remember, process, and pause. One of the best parts of this week at Columbia may not have been the way I learned to teach my students, but rather the way I learned to teach myself.

In my morning class, with Sara Kugler, we focused on memoir. Memoir is different from personal narrative in that while a personal narrative is written from the perspective of the main character experiencing the event for the first time, a memoir is written from where the author is today looking back—it includes the truth of your experience.

Sara quoted Katherine Bomer often in class, which pretty much captured my heart from the beginning . . .

We write memoir to break the silence surrounding who we are.
We write memoir to awaken the I.
We write memoir to bear witness.

Maybe it was then that I realized I was in the right place. This is the writing my heart needs and fears at the same time. This is the writing my kids need me to show them. I would pay close attention. I would learn how to teach and pull from my kids. I would allow myself to be taught and pulled.

Then the assignment: go the places you don’t usually let yourself go.

I have to say it was hard for me, not hard like I really had to focus hard, hard like I sat for what felt like hours with pen in hand doing nothing but crossing out the previously written word.

But, just because something is hard or just because my pen wasn’t writing as fast as it normally does, doesn’t mean I wasn’t learning, doesn’t mean it wasn’t exactly what I needed.

To be continued . . .

Categories
Classroom Writing

Pronouns, Code-Switching, & Beyoncé

Today I learned about pronouns, code-switching, and Beyoncé. It’s a long day; we cover a lot of ground.

Pronouns: Pronouns have always been close to my heart. Well, to be honest I probably firmly learned what a pronoun is last year, but I’ve always loved them, even without knowing their proper label. Why? Because they’re so telling. I love the moment in a relationship when you’re no longer you or I, but we or us. If you’ve been around me enough you’ve probably heard me comment, “love the pronoun,” especially when I see the move to a we or us. Weird, I know.

Today, when we were thinking of ways to revise our memoir pieces, looking at mentor texts, we noticed that sometimes authors will purposely switch from We to I or They to We as a craft move. Using these words influenced the reader’s connection with the text. As I looked through my piece, I noticed there were places I wanted my reader to connect with me in my reflection and other places where I felt the need to stand apart. By playing with the pronouns, I was able to create this effect in different places within my piece.

Code-Switching: This topic was actually covered in more than one of my classes today. And while I have addressed this topic with some of my kids before, it was never with any more intention than passing on some teacherly good advice. Code-Switching is simply this, when people make choices to change the way they speak, act, dress, or write depending on the audience. When I was in middle school this would have been called being a poser. Now, I realize it’s just smart. It’s also smart to have this conversation with our kids.

Let’s face it, when I’m with my friends I talk one-way, but when I’m working on business my vocabulary changes. In fact I dress differently at work, at church, and at home—and it’s purposeful. I’m not being a poser; I’m being smart. In writing, the way I write this blog is different than how I would write a research paper or a business plan. Having this conversation with kids, and then having them practice code-switching with different audiences in mind gives them valuable tools for the future.

Beyoncé: One of the things I have become more aware of this year and this week is that I need to pay more attention to the media, pop-culture, and maybe play a few video games? Anyway, I laughed when my teacher put the music video “Single Ladies” on the screen and asked us to generate ideas for writing from it. But seriously, what a great idea!

Nonfiction: How to Walk in Heals

Narrative: A story about a time you tried really hard for a long time but still couldn’t make work

Poetry: How it feels to be loved

Persuasive: Why it is important to respect women

Comic: Guy is a jerk. Girl finds new Super Guy with Ring.

The whole Beyoncé thing makes me laugh, but you could do it with any video and if the kids all share-out their ideas, someone is likely to grab something great. It’s the end of— I don’t know what to write about today!

 

Categories
Classroom Professional Writing

Catching Up

As it turns out, both Stacy & I are away at conferences this week. If you’ve never been to a great summer conference, I would check one out. Last year, I did the Kutztown one the Stacy is at, and I loved it. This year, I’m opting for two weeks at Columbia—it doesn’t really matter where you go, just go. There is something about being in a community of people who are all excited about teaching that gives you new ideas and new courage to take risks in your classroom.

I thought I would have been posting Monday, seeing as I am so excited to share with you. As it turns out, I had forgotten about having homework and still trying to live like a New Yorker and how tired that makes me. So, here it is day three, I’m still not done tomorrow’s homework, but I wanted to pull out something from the 50 pages of notes I’ve taken so far.

Goal Setting. I’ve known it was important since, well since forever, my Mom does teach at Benchmark after all! I can set goals for myself with my eyes closed, but writing goals have been another story. Truth, I’m still not where I want to be when it comes to writing conferences. Truth, I’ve come a long way. What I was reminded of today was something I learned at Benchmark years ago and had forgotten to take into my conferences this year. Goal setting should be teacher directed at first, but the job should be gradually released to the students. Clearly, this will be easier for some students than others, but independence in goal setting is crucial to developing a writerly life.

 

So, here are my notes from my morning session with the AmAzInG, Sara Kugler

 

Goal Setting

  1. Identify Writing Goal- based on the qualities of writing. It should be big—across a whole unit and multiple genres
  2. Choose a mentor text that will help you
  3. Study mentor text for- What, How, Why or What Effect
  4. Apply it to your writing

 

Somehow I’ll get around to writing more, and if for some reason I don’t get around to it while I am up here, I promise to keep the happiness coming as soon as I get home.

Categories
Professional

Brooklyn Bound

Columbia

I’m on my way to Brooklyn, classes start on Monday at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College where I’ll be attending The Writing Project for five days. The following Tuesday I’ll start classes for The Reading Project.

I’m crazy excited. Last summer I attended just the writing portion and it changed my life. This summer I’m expecting nothing less, and I’m totally excited to be in class all day from 9AM-4PM!

Here’s why I’m telling you all this. I’ll be blogging a bit more while I am away—Hopefully, sharing great information that you can use in your classrooms!

Feel free to:
-Join in. Leave Comments and Discuss
-Ask me questions to ask the people up at Columbia
-Repost something I write on your Facebook or Blog
-Send links to the blog to your colleagues
-Talk even if you’re not a teacher, I love your voice, share away ☺