The Writer's Brook

Your Writer's Notebook...

2008-04-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

What is something you have tried with your Writer's Notebook that is new? Have you recorded any of your observations about your students work? Have you dabbled with poetry? Played with lists? Sketched something interesting? What have you done lately that was something you could let us all in on?
Is the Writer's Notebook becoming a part of your life or is it collecting dust? Are you interested in having it become an integral part of your life and your teaching or are you just doing what you need to do for this course? How do you feel about your notebook? What do you like? What are you not sure about? What don't you like?

Observations...

2008-04-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Who did you get the chance to observe in your building? What did you notice about the set up of their room? The way they managed their students? What were they teaching and was there anything you left thinking about? What did you leave wondering about? What did you notice as an observer in another room? How did you feel being an observer? Were you able to talk to any students? You do not have to answer all of these questions, they are just some questions to get you thinking!! Take the time to write and reflect upon your observation. In the end it may feel as though we all got the opportunity to "see" all of these different classrooms in action! It is all in the details!!

Syllabus Spring 2008

2008-04-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

Golden Brook Syllabus
Spring 2008
Learning Through Teaching
Tomasen M. Carey, UNH English Department
“Nulla Dies Sine Linea”

“It is hard to imagine tools more useful than words. Without them, talkers, philosophers, actors and writers, would simply be out of business.”
~Karla Kuskin

Class Dates and Required Assigned Reading for the next class:
Class Text: Wondrous Words by Katie Wood Ray
Jan 24th Read 2 articles on Writing with Young Children
Feb 14th Read Chapters 9 and 10March 13th Read Chapters 11 and 12March 27th Read Chapter 13 and 14
April 24th Read Chapter 15 and Skim through entire text…what do you want to remember? What did you highlight or mark?May 8th Final Reading of Writing Pieces

Course Requirements: These requirements will be evaluated to determine final grades.
Regular Attendance and participation at group meetings, having all of the assigned reading completed and ready to discuss it in detail. (20%)
Weekly blog entries. (30%)
One visitation in your school of a colleague. I will ask that you post your observation on our blog. There will be a special section on the blog specifically for visitations. (10%)
Start a Writer’s Notebook as a place for you to play, experiment and reflect on the practices of your own writing and the writing of your students. This will show them through very real modeling how you as a teacher are a writer. It might also be helpful for you to look back on as you write your weekly blogs! (10%)
One visitation out of the school in an area of interest (optional but highly recommended!) Perhaps we could make some connections to Center School.
Final writing to be shared on the last day of class. This will be a personal piece that you will work on throughout the semester. We will work on it in class in a workshop atmosphere and go through the process of writing so that we can think about what it is for us and what that means for our students. We will continue to write, confer, share and talk about our writing during class. (30%)

What do YOU think?

2008-03-30T16:12:00.001-07:00

Your Writing

2008-03-24T07:28:00.001-07:00

Where are you in your process of writing? Remember we will be having a final reading at our last class again. Look back at some of the quick writes we have done together. What, if any, might have some energy for you to write about? What about our speed conferencing? Did you leave with any ideas or inspiration? What do you envision for this piece of writing? Take a few minutes to do a quick write on what is you are thinking about this writing. Let your mind and the possibilities just flow!

ONE Thing?

2008-03-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

ONE Thing?
What do you see as ONE thing that you would NEVER give up in your teaching repertoire?
The number one thing I would ever give up is the use of humor. Humor in the classroom is one of those things that I am always seeking and striving for. Here is a piece I have been working on...
Either respond to it or write about that ONE thing you would never be able to do without!

The Jokes on You

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear," Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in "The Wisdom of the Ego."

“Why did the cookie go to the doctor’s office?”
“Because she was feeling crummy!”
“Do you get it?”
My daughter, Emma loved to tell this joke when she found herself in new strange situations. Humor is one of those incredible gifts that we all have for making human connections. This was her way of taking some kind of control over her illness and she loved to tell this joke over and over. The delight in her eyes in seeing who “got it” was sheer heaven, thinking she was so clever and loving the joke over and over herself. There was something in this joke that she could see that made her enjoy it every time she told it. She “got” it and was always sure to ask, “Do you get it?”
The "getting it" is like the secret that she is privy to, the delight is making sure that everyone is able to enjoy the magic of the punch line in the same way as the teller. And there is an art to telling a good joke and the feedback is instant…did you get a laugh or not? You can always tell those who get it as an expression of knowing crosses their faces, and then there are those that laugh to be polite and those who are laughing as they are still trying to figure it out. We have all been there, at one end or the other and of course the worst place to be is to be the jokester that gets no laughs at all. It is a tough lesson, but one that you can do something about right away.

In the classroom one part of our morning meeting was joke telling. There were some rules surrounding the telling. First the joke had to be appropriate for school. Yes, of course there were those who pushed the limit every time, but for the most part kids were able to discriminate between those that would be acceptable and those that would not. Just trusting them allowed them the freedom and the responsibility to make good choices. The other rule was that you had to practice the joke at least three times and that you had to get a laugh at least one or two of those times before volunteering for morning meeting. This was for two reasons; one was to work on the delivery and to work on making it funny. We would talk about what made a good joke and what didn’t. We talked about the emphasis being on the punch line and how to deliver an effective punch line. These could be classified in our reading curriculum under reading with expression, the importance of audience and comprehension studies. (How is that for meeting standards?) It was a clear test of whether the child understood the joke or not based on the reaction of the audience. If it was not funny we worked together as a group to think about what could be done with the joke to make it funnier. This is revision in real life. Then the child would take his or her newly revised joke out into the world and wait until it was funny enough to bring it back to the class. Everyone had ownership of the joke by then and often there would be many versions of the same joke told over and over again. This gave us time to talk about the fact that authors do this all the time. Once someone has a great idea then other authors try to take the basic idea and make it their own. We talked about how this often happened with jokes and that jokes changed regularly in their details because joke-telling is typically an oral form of literacy that is passed on from person to person. The game of telephone is a great way to show how things change based on the oral telling and that people all hear things differently. Telephone is when you start at the beginning of the circle with a silly phrase or riddle and then have the kids whisper it from person to person until the end of the circle. By the end it has usually changed completely from where it began.
I would always begin the year telling a joke to model how to tell a joke. I would overemphasize the telling in order to be able to point out to the class just what it was I was doing and that there are things that you can do to tell a good joke. The joke I told was about a chicken that goes into the library to get a book. He goes up to the librarian and says, “Book, book book”. This is said like a chicken saying bok, bok, bok with a high voice. (This is hard to put into writing!) The chicken takes the book and returns within 10 minutes shouting the same thing to the librarian, “Book, book, book”. The librarian thinks this is strange but gives the chicken another book. Sure enough if you have heard enough jokes you know that this chicken is going to be back in no time. This structure allows us to look at it closely and see there is predictability in jokes and that if you wanted to make up your own joke then like fairy tales, the magic number of 3 often appears. Well, the chicken magically does show up again but this time the librarian wants to know what is going on, knowing the chicken could not have read either of those books so quickly. She gets on her coat and decides, after giving the chicken yet another book, to find out what is going on by following the chicken. The chicken leaves the library, heads up a big hill, out into a field and through the forest to a clearing. (Again here is a way a leading the audience into what we know is going to be the punch line. I talk about slowing down here and that when I do the audience almost leans in waiting, waiting, waiting and thinking get to the punch line already!) At the edge of the clearing is a pond. The chicken walks over to the edge of the pond where a frog is sitting. The chicken pulls out the book and shows it to the frog. The frog looks at it and promptly replies, “READ IT. READ IT”. Of course this is said like a frog instead of ribbit it is read it. These slight changes in voice are very important because without them the joke is just not funny! So, okay you are thinking this is a dumb joke, and it is. It is also, however an excellent model for kids because it is clean and it contains so many elements of a good joke. This gets kids thinking about their own jokes and jokes they have heard in the past. Often one of the hardest things to do is to just remember the joke. I tell the kids that having one or two good jokes in your pocket is a great way to be in a new crowd. Everyone loves a good joke. But is has to be a GOOD joke. A bad joke won’t get you very far. This also encourages kids to think about themselves in social settings and to think about when it is appropriate to tell a joke and when it is not.

“Jokes compact the elements of storytelling into bite-sized mini-narratives. They are not just funny. For writers and editors, they are models that can help teach storytelling” Chip Scanlon, the Poynter Institute.

Joke telling is a form of storytelling, something that we can use to help our young writer’s to see the elements of a story in a very compact version. To tell a good joke the teller must prepare the reader by setting the stage introducing main characters and setting, the chicken, the librarian and the library.

Next is to provide some kind of background for the reader, in knowing the structure of many jokes, one is sure that the chicken will be coming back at least a couple more times. Also using the voices allows for the characters to know more about them. She is a female chicken with a high voice; the librarian is suspicious about a reading chicken from the beginning.

The joke relies heavily on creating scenes that the reader can follow. The chicken comes and goes, comes and goes and does these actions very quickly, leading the librarian to become even more suspicious.

A good joke creates suspense, engaging the reader as they sit and listen, leaning in to find out what in the world is going to happen next and often this is done through conflict. The conflict here is for the librarian who is miffed that this chicken keeps on coming back without having read a book!

Next it builds to a climax and a clear resolution. We know that when the chicken leaves and the librarian follows that we are going with her and that we will find out instantly just what the chicken is up to.

Finally, is that wonderful element of surprise, the “aha” moment where we wonder how we didn’t get it all along. It is funny that the chicken is trying to get the frog a new book and so we laugh with this quick resolution and twist that we can visualize as being very funny.

Derek was a small fourth grader who had a hard time fitting in. Not only was he smaller than all of his classmates, but he was somewhat goofy looking and gangly. He had a hard time finding his place in the world and was often seen getting into it with kids. If there was trouble, then Derek was in the middle of it. In the classroom he struggled. As a reader he struggled the most. For Derek, this opportunity to tell jokes, this place where being the class clown was encouraged was his place to shine. By the end of the year he had found every joke book in his local area. I will never forget the day he showed up with a book the size of Webster’s heaved up under his arm. It was titles “A Million and One Jokes.” Derek would sit for hours pouring over this book in search of the perfect joke. It was a ridiculous book for him as it was laden with jokes that were so out there that I didn’t get a lot of them. Many of them politically motivated from cultures all over the world. The schema one would have to have for many of these jokes would put Google to shame! The print was as small as anyone could imagine, but he continued to read over it, searching for that one joke that he did get! And he would know when he would get it. You want to talk about serious monitoring for meaning. He was getting to know himself as a reader through this insurmountable task he had set for himself. He would carry that book everywhere…and did I mention it must have weighed 25 pounds??
At first he would tell jokes that none of us got. Eventually, though he was able to work on finding a good one, practice it and in no time Derek became one of the classes favorite joke tellers. This was his forte’. This was his place to find comfort and acceptance for who he was. This also gave him a very real reason to read and to read for meaning. It also gave him a real reason to write as he then went on to write his own jokes. At morning meeting it would be Derek that everyone wanted to tell a joke. Each day we had time for three jokes. On days when nobody else would volunteer, they would all chant Derek’s name and he would get up and do his own version of a Leno monologue telling joke after joke. He was good. I don’t know where Derek is today, but I have a hunch that someday I may see him on stage at the Laugh Factory!

We need to value children, for who they are, not who we want them to be. We need to look at each child and find the strength inside of him. Derek could also easily have dropped out of school. It was not a place that he “typically” succeeded and it was joke telling that allowed him to have a place in our classroom community for who he was. Don’t get me wrong. This was not that all magical cure and Derek continued to struggle each and every day in the classroom and on the playground, but offering this as an option allowed for Derek and other kids to use their humor in an effective and constructive way. It also allowed Derek to take some of the painful anger in his life and poke fun at that as well. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln where she focused on “the vital role humor and storytelling played in Lincoln’s melancholy personality.” , “He laughed, so he did not weep. He saw laughter as the ‘joyous, universal evergreen of life.’ His stories were intended ‘to whistle off sadness.’”

Where there is laughter there is community, and where there is community, there are safe learning environments. We should each laugh as many times in the day as we can. I remember reading somewhere that we use so many more facial muscles to frown than to laugh…therefore frowning causes more wrinkles!!. So heck, let’s laugh or in the end…the joke is on you!!

Being Specific

2008-03-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

What is there in our reading of Katie Wood Ray that speaks to you? Look through your current readings and find that one passage that is powerful to you. What do you think about it? Take the time to quote it, with the page number and then write to it. I will be collecting these quotes and posting them on our blog.

A Quick Write

2008-02-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

Aha...now that we have those lovely journals let's begin the process of getting them filled up. Remember, this is a place to play, experiment and have fun with words. It can also be a place where you store ideas that might inform your teaching, things you notice, things you are wondering about.
Find a line from your notebook, post it and then write to it. Here is my attempt at doing this!

"Your choices will change the world."

These were the words that came to me on my tea tag one day. As I sat sipping, reading the book, The Alchemist, I realized how connected these words were to the ones I was reading. And so I wrote them in my Writer's Notebook. I love this idea. I love that the idea that choice, something I believe in so strongly, has the power to "change the world" and yet I see this in action all of the time, especially when it comes to the teaching of writing. I was working with a teacher and she was so excited one day because her students, when given the choice, had discovered these incredible writing voices from within. These particular kids, see her for remedial (if you will) help and her days are filled with helping them identify words and well...you know the drill. But, one day she was just so tired of teaching this way that she chose to do something completely different with them. She found a picture of the desert, put it up on the chart and asked her kids to describe it. She listed everything they said on the chart next to the picture. Next, she noticed that all of their descriptions were visual, so she asked them to imagine what this place would sound like, feel like and even taste like. The list grew. After this group brainstorming she asked them to write about the picture. What came out of one of the boys was truly profound. I will get a copy of it and share it with you at our next class.

This teacher was so excited. The energy in her voice was infectious. And so, there it was, with one small choice that teacher made on that given day she did change the world. The world as she knew it, as her students knew it and as the energy around her knew it. She was energized by her choice and all that came with it! She reconnected to the reason she went into teaching and in the process, she helped four students begin to find their authentic writing voices. Now THAT is powerful!!

You see...I had no idea where I was going when I sat down to write this. In fact, I am very surprised that this is where I ended up! As Don Murray would say, writing is about the surprises you find along the way!! What surprises will you find today? Don't judge yourself, just let whatever happens happen! And then you can copy your entry into a word document, print it out and even add this to your writer's notebook. The possibilities are endless!!

Reading, Rereading and Reflecting...

2008-02-11T05:23:00.001-08:00

This week I am asking that you take some time to navigate your way through the blog and do some reading, some rereading and some reflecting. If you click on each post, all of the comments will be listed below it. Take this time to go back through the different posts to see what people have written before you and after you. Notice how the conversations take twists and turns. Feel free to comment again after a certain section or not! If you have missed a post, then take the time to weigh in now! Remember, this is our place to continue our conversations, to ask questions, to ponder and make sense of our teaching in this crazy culture that we call education!

Your Writer's Notebook

2008-02-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Take some time to tell us all about your writer's notebook. What does it look like? Where did you get it? How did you decide upon your selection? Does it have lines? No lines? Have you written anything in it yet? Did you decorate it on your own? What size is it? Is is something you feel comfortable holding and writing in? Did you dig it out from somewhere or make a special shopping trip? We will put these out at our next class and see if we can guess whose is whose! So, describe it as well as you can!
I got mine at the NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English) conference in New York City. I knew I was in the market for a new one, but I am always searching for that perfect one of the time! I spied it from far away. It was at a booth in the vendor's section. It was wildly colorful with funny faces mocking famous authors and artists. On my first glance I could not tell who was who, but thoroughly enjoyed looking and seeing who was who! I liked the smooth feel of the cover and how it felt cradles in my arms. It fulfilled the needs I knew to be essential of having blank pages and a spiral binding. What I was not sure about was the direction that the book opened. In the end, I went for it, relieved that I would not have to decorate this one..as my creativity seemed to be waning in this area as of late. And so I bought it, on the spot and just recently have started filling it with goodies. So far, so good. I like how it starts out with my travels, one of my goals for the year! I like carrying it and using it...although I am still not wild about how it opens, I am pretty much loving it. Do you think you will be able to pick mine out?

Continuing our Conversation....

2008-01-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

Kim said, "For me, with teaching writing, I guess I just don't know where to start. It feels like there are so many little pieces that go into teaching writing and I'm not sure which ones to teach first." So if we look at this, how can we, as a group think about and respond to this question? Where do we start? How do we know we are "covering" everything? Is there a curriculum we can use as a guide? What do we do well? What else do we need to get better at? Do your students consider themselves as writers? Let's keep this conversation going because it is an important one for sure!!

What do YOU think?

2008-01-21T05:50:00.001-08:00

Good Morning Bloggers! I would like to thank those of you who remembered to post your final letters and reflections and to nudge those of you who have not! Also please notice I am posting the special section for observations.This week I would really like you to think about the work of Katie Wood Ray and write a personal response to something in the text that has "spoken" to you. Perhaps you might take a quote right from the text and write to that. What did you mark in the text? What makes the most sense to you? What does not make sense? What do you like? Dislike? The point here is not to write a summary, remembering we have all read it! The point is to write YOUR personal reactions so that we can all read and share the different ideas we have read about thus far. Here is a sample reaction from me!I really like the list that Katie keeps about the process of writers that begins on page 103 and continues onto 104. She writes "When our students envision writers at work, then need to be able to see them doing lots more than just sitting at desks. Active development possibilities like those in the lists above need to be a big part of what our students can envision themselves doing as writers." I wish that someone had pointed that out to me years ago! If you look at my background and my history it is somewhat overwhelming. Coming from a family of self-proclaimed writers, ( my grandfather wrote his town's history and multiple plays for the local players, My Dad, has owned and created newspapers and magazines throughout his life, my sister, worked for my Dad and started writing stories for the family when she was 10!) I was unwilling and unable to see myself as a writer!! In fact, I found the idea completely intimidating and made it my goal to be anything BUT a writer! I mean really, who could compete in world such as this? And yet, over time I found myself more and more drawn to the written word. I slowly became an avid reader and revelled in how different authors used words to convey their thoughts. And so I started thinking about how I would say different things. I began to "play" with words in my head...having no idea that I was heading down the exact path that I was eager to avoid!! Still, the image of a writer was one who was perched over their typewriters for hours and I knew that I would never have the patience for something like that. I needed to move and to play outside and to experience all that I could everywhere I went. And again, I was doing things that "writers do!" I just never knew it. It was not until very recently that I actually was able to start calling myself a writer. It seemed simple enough as I started working on some writing that writers write. I was writing and so I tentatively called myself a writer. I do not do this still, though, in the company of my family and I think they are always surprised to hear that I am a teacher of writing. It is as though they forget and are startled back into reality every time I mention that I teach writing. I can teach writing because I write and because I write I am therefore a writer! Katie's list only confirms all of my active processes that involve so much more that actually sitting down at the keyboard. In fact, by the time I actually sit down I can write with a general flow because I have done so much thinking about it before I find myself banging out everything that I have spent so much time thinking about!

Considering Feedback....

2007-12-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

Now that you are in the process of working towards that final piece, what has been helpful to you in terms of feedback? In my conference with Ronnie, she asked me to give her "constructive criticism" instead of just telling her how wonderful her words were. I hope I was able to do both! We need to consider these words and the feedback that was most helpful when we are conferring with our students. It is walking that fine line between everything being wonderful in the name of high self-esteem combined with the rigor involved in asking them to be all they can be as writers. We are here to encourage and to teach. Our job is to know and "read" our students in terms of where they are in their processes. How much baggage is our own when it comes to asking our students to take that next risk? This is one of the most difficult and yet one of the most powerful things we do as writing teachers. How did you feel being on the other end?

Conferring

2007-11-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

As I read your posts it seems clear that a conversation about your writing would be helpful. Find a friend or colleague to confer with. When you get together be prepared with questions for each other about your writing and your writing process. Please list the questions you had for your partner and how the conference went for you. What was helpful? What was strange? What was scary? What felt good?

Noticing...

2007-11-12T05:04:00.000-08:00

As you are working on your writing, what are you noticing about yourself as a writer? Is there that inner critic sitting on your shoulder, questioning every word and phrase? If so then tell it to take a hike! Trust yourself and have some fun with this! Remember, if you are stuck then look to a mentor text to help guide you along.
We are doing this to become better teachers of writing. Our purpose here is to look at ourselves as writers, think about the process and what it is like. Through this we will become better writing teachers because we more clearly understand the process of writing. So, as the writer you are today, what are you noticing?

Time to Think!

2007-11-08T04:35:00.001-08:00

This week all I am asking you to do is to keep thinking about writing! There is no need to respond this week unless you are so moved! I know it has been crazy for all of you and so...be looking towards next week when I will be asking you about your thinking! Keep breathing!

Envisioning...

2007-10-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

Many of your wonderings seem to be around the idea of creating a piece of writing. What kind of writing piece do you envision that you want to write? What are the possiblities that you see as you begin to practice reading like a writer on your own and with your students? Think about the Seven Stories of your summer. Is there something from there that you can envision as a piece? What kind of piece? A poem? An essay? A short story? An article? What about your work with your reading and writing history as demonstrated to our class? What are the stories that were found in your Bio Book Bags? Each of you had stories for many of your pieces. How can you envision those stories? Remember, that often talking a story through is the beginning of writing that story. This is all a part of the process of writing. I believe we "write" all of the time. When we are driving and thinking about our piece..this is a part of writing.
"Our goal in this teaching was to help the students take the material they had gathered around their seed ideas and read like writers to find possiblities for how they might draft those ideas and write well. We wanted them to be able to envision doing many different kids of texts with a single idea, to know that they didn't have to be limited to just "telling about" their idea in a draft." Katie Wood Ray pp. 52
Let's go beyond "just telling" by envisioning your peice in as many different ways as you can! Have some fun with this!

Wondering.....

2007-10-23T03:52:00.001-07:00

What are you wondering about? What are some of the questions that you have in relationship to our work together, our classes, your teaching, your own writing, the reading, mentor authors etc.? Take a moment to explore what it is you are most curious about right now...

Favorite Authors

2007-10-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

Who are some of your favorite children's authors? What is your all time favorite? Get to know that author more intimately so that we can get to "Know a few authors well", as Katie Wood Ray talks about. Who will be that author that you can quote inside and out? What can you discover about this author's craft that makes them unique? Let's begin this process together, realizing that as we get to really know these authors we are planning for infinite teaching situations ahead! You never know when you might need Patricial Polacco's help through a lesson!
And yes, Patricia Polacco would be one of my all time favorites because of the way that she structures each of her texts. But the one text that I know the best and that I use over and over is a book called Emma by Lisa Say. I love this book because of it's rich illustrations and how it allows you to get to know the character, even though she never says a word. I love how this author creates a story that forces it's readers to wonder, think and feel with and for the characters. I have used this book to teach questioning, inferring, connections, sensory images, writer's craft and more. It is because I know this story so well that I can use it well. It is not about getting to know a million different stories on the surface, but going deep with one that you love that you can have by your side as you teach everyday! As we want our students to live with a stack of their mentors on their desks, you too need to have yours!! draft

Strong Leads...

2007-10-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

"I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I'm not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn't dead but lost his hearing and in many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire." The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.
I just LOVE this lead. This is the very first paragraph of this novel and instantly I am engaged and wanting to read more. From the language we get a sense of place, somewhere pretty remote with only a volunteer fire department and I am thinking somewhere down south. The imagery of the man being thrown through the air and hanging in limbo while everyone gathers and watches is so small town. This is the event of the year that everyone will be talking about. Then there is the humor of the fact that he was trying to blow up a tire. It makes me wonder...was he filling his own tire or was he the gas station attendant? Either way, it just seems so UNbelievable that it is believable!! This kind of good writing gives SO much information without giving it. That is what good writing is! It SHOWS us the situation instead of telling us about it. I am right there, in the crowd staring up in disbelief, putting us right in the middle of the action, if you will. It starts us out right in the middle of this scene without any lead up to it, but it works and it works well.

What makes a good lead or beginning? What makes us want to read on? Find an example of a good lead and post it as I have with your thoughts about what makes it a good lead. This can be from any source, a book, a newspaper article, a magazine...what makes you, the reader, want to read on? Look at it with the eyes of a writer and delve into it to discover as you read like a writer, what this writer did to win you over!

What are words to you?

2007-09-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

I LOVED reading all of your stories and comments and thoughts about who you are as readers and writers. I have learned so much about you and as some of you commented, there was this sense of connection amongst us all that brings us together in terms of our histories or where we are currently.
This week I am going to ask you to think about just words. So, what are words to you? What are some of your favorite words? What is your relationship with words? One of my favorite words is succulent. I love the way it sounds just like what it is. It brings a strong image to my mind and it almost makes my mouth water. My relationship with words is very volatile as words are my greatest pleasure and my worst nightmare. Have you ever found yourself in that position where you want to say something, but just can't find the right words? I hate that!! I have posted a photo of a perfect summer evening because as many times as I have tried to capture this moment in words, it falls completely flat. Why is it that words cannot do this moment justice? Or is it that I just have not found the right words? Of course, without words we would be lost, and I wish I could say that I am always learning new words, but the truth is that I am not. I almost feel embarrassed when someone uses a word that I am not familiar with. I always feel that I "should" know what it means. And as I sneak away to my dictionary on the sly to find it, I realize that it often is not a word I would want anyway. Other times that is not the case and I work to meld it into my everyday thoughts. So, what are words to you? Do you think about words and how you say things to others? Do you find your plethora (great word meaning overabundance ) of words to be adequate or are you searching for something more? Do you celebrate words in your classrooms with your students? Tell us all about YOUR relationship with words!

Beginning Thoughts.....

2007-09-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone and Welcome!
Here is our own place to write, reflect, chat, and think about our teaching and how who we are impacts who we are as teachers. Thank you all for being so brave as to try this out with me! I am so excited to see what this brings in terms of continuing our conversations outside of class! I will post something once a week and would ask that you respond once a week as well.
I chose this name as a metaphor for us to write and follow our thoughts as they wind around, take side trips, overflow, dry up, are replenished again and flow into the sea of literacy! How was that for profound?
This week I am thinking about who I am as a writer and a reader. Where did I come from in terms of my own literacy? What is my history as a reader and a writer?
I was not a reader when I was little. My sister was not only the avid reader of the ENTIRE Nancy Drew set, but also quickly followed in my father and my grandfather's footsteps as the writer of the family! As the second child, well, let's just say there was no way to compete. She was already publishing stories as Christmas presents for the family before I was even beginning to write in cursive! I went through much of my childhood not understanding what I read, although I did get all A's on every report card. I was your classic word caller who loved phonics because I could and did read with great inflection and expression. The only problem is that I never actually thought about what I was reading!!
In terms of writing, again, coming from a long line of writers I was intimidated and when I finally did write something I recieved so much praise that it was embarrassing. Shameful too because along with that praise was the dark secret that I had stolen the idea from a wordless picture book! I wrote the reverse story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears where the bears do all the visiting. My Grandfather was SO enamoured with my story he HAD to talk about it every time we saw him. Little did he know that each time he talked about this I was sure someone was going to discover that the idea had not been mine at all!! If I only knew then what I knew now. All writers get their ideas from somewhere! Katie Wood Ray recommends that we should all write with a stack of our favorite writing mentors on our desk next to us to remind us what good writers do!! It was a very long time before I wrote again, and nobody ever did discover me...either that or they just never told me!!
So who are you as a reader? A writer? What are some stories or thoughts about your reading and writing history? What has shaped you into the literate person that YOU are today?