Sensory Poems

This is the second year that I’ve done sensory poems, and possibly one of my all-time favorite lessons. The kids love it, and it’s such a great way to teach rich, descriptive writing… something that most of my students struggle with. By isolating the senses one by one, they are really challenged to find words to describe how something sounds, feels, smells, feels, sounds, or tastes and then find ways to convey that to a reader. It’s truly phenomenal what they come up with during this exercise.

Last year I used a couple of different stimuli than this year, but it was just as successful. In fact, that’s the beauty of this lesson; you can use whatever you have access to, to bring this to life. Here is what I did:

First, I introduced the word “sensory,” which most of them were unfamiliar with. I wrote it in caps in the middle of the white board and asked what they thought it meant. Give them a minute with this because you will usually have one brave soul who offers up the word “senses.” Once you've got that, they generally know the 5 senses. Add the five senses to your mind map on the board around your middle “sensory” word. Then, one by one, add adjectives under each of the senses until you feel like they get it. Then explain that you’ll be making poems using these 5 senses. You will see the excitement start to rise when they realize they will get to eat something. Naturally, you have to keep that one for the finale to hold their interest, but you get the point here.


I started with "sound." I played this youtube clip for them from my desk so they weren't able to see the screen. After the clip, I told them to write down words or phrases in their writer’s notebook that they think of when they hear this sound, and to go beyond naming it.

Next, I played this clip on the overhead projector without sound and asked them add it to their writer’s notebook page under “see.”

The next sense I did was “touch.” For this one, I got a boa from our drama room and told them to close their eyes while they held and squeezed it. Last year, I used sand and ice for touch- all were good.

The next one was “smell,” which I did with a eucalyptus scented essential oil. This one was hard for them, so I might suggest a strong smelling flower or more recognizable smell like cinnamon.

Lastly, I sent around a bowl of freshly popped popcorn for them to take a handful of for “taste.”

As a class we went through some of the descriptors that they came up with and I shared a poem I wrote about apples. Then, I turned them loose to choose one of the 5 stimuli we just experienced and create a sensory poem about it.

I’ll post a couple of their finished poems when I get back to school tomorrow. Until then, enjoy what’s left of your weekend, and go indulge in a good meal with all your senses! 

Haiku- Mixed Media Art Journals

Well, we’re a couple weeks into our poetry unit here, and things are going great. We covered the elements of poetry and have now ventures into the thick of it with acrostic, concrete, and haiku poems. I wanted to share our haiku project from today because I was really impressed with their effort on this one.

It’s not every day that your students can grasp a concept like subtlety, and then show you that they GET IT. It is a beautiful thing, my friends. Anyway, so after we learned a little about the history and structure of haikus, we split the class into different seasons and started brainstorming ways to describe nature in those seasons. Then, once we felt like we had enough descriptive words down, they went to work making their own seasonal haikus.

Later for art, we looked at some really great examples of mixed media and art journal pages so they could get a visual of what our goal was, and started exploring with texture, color, and technique. I allowed them to use any medium that we’d worked with this year, including drawing/sketching, painting (watercolor & acrylic), doodling, collage, stenciling, and sponging. I had to keep reminding them that mistakes could be covered, and that layers were what make mixed media so cool. Once they got that, the awesomeness started to emerge… Check out s couple of them below. Have a splendid weekend!

Spring!

Summer!

Winter!

Fall coming soon!

Mother's Day Poems

Happy Friday, everyone! Well, at least for those of us living in Asia. It’s May and the rainy season is upon us once again, which means I’ll be sporting wet shoes and a poncho for the next couple of months. It really makes me miss having a vehicle with doors and a roof, but hey, it’s just water, right?

This weekend is Mother’s Day, and coincidently, we’ve just started our poetry unit, so I thought- what better way celebrate mom than with a beautiful poem? In language arts we’ve been learning about figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors, so we read some poems that use figurative language just to get some ideas. Then, we brainstormed a list of adjectives that we use to describe our moms.

Later for art, we created a watercolor floral border to publish out poems on… I got the idea for this project here. Here’s a few snapshot of our pieces today.

Happy Mom’s Day to all you fierce females out there. Hope you have a great weekend!

Start with watercolor- be sure to leave a space for your poem!

Any color combo will do...

Once it dries, draw over it with a fine-tip permanent marker or fountain pen (0.5mm)

It's up to you how light or dark the flowers.

Add the final draft of your poem.

Voila! Mother's Day Gift, boss status.

Tell THIS story

It’s assessment time again, and I was looking for something different to assign for my writing assessment this semester other than the usual “here’s your topic.” I’ve always loved using picture prompts for writing because so many of us are visual learners, and it’s neat to see how the same picture can elicit such a variety of stories. In my quest for bizarre and interesting picture prompts, I stumbled onto a slideshare that was created with 150 awesome pictures for story writing. (Thank you, Kevin Cummins)Some of them were so good that it was hard for my students to choose which story they wanted to tell. It’s so nice when an assessment doesn’t feel like an assessment, isn’t it?

So, if you’re looking to put a little spin on your next writing assessment, or if you are just looking for a fun task board or class writing assignment, give this one a try. Your students will love it!

150 Amazing Writing prompts Pictures from Kevin Cummins

Children's Book Project

We are wrapping up our earth science unit and getting ready to go on spring break here in a week, so I really wanted to give my students a language arts project to tie it all together before they go on vacation and forget it allJ It’s been quite a few weeks since we’ve done any sort of narrative writing because we’ve been in our expository unit, so I wanted to give them the option to do some creative writing for a change.

For this assignment, the students have two options- 1) Create a storybook that relates in some way to earth science, or 2) make a picture dictionary that relates to earth science. In either case, students will be responsible for creating a 20-page book for a young child audience. This is great because it forces them to think about their word choice and eliminates the “copy & paste” method that they may be tempted to use. Plus, it gives both right-brained and left-brained students the opportunity create something cool.

On my search for a digital option for this project, I remembered storybird.com. I’d used it last year, but completely forgot what a great site it was for creating stories. Since that really only works for the storybook option, I also gave my students the choice to create a wikispaces page. Here’s the rubric and guidelines that I created for this project along with a really great storybird story. If you haven’t used this site, I suggest you check it out. It’s awesome, and better yet, it’s free!
Happy Saturday, folks!

Children's Book Project Guidelines
Children's Book Project Rubric
 

Thankful for 30

Sorry I’ve been MIA all week…. You see, it’s Christmas and my mom’s here visiting all the way from America, so that’s my excuse. Anyway, I wanted to share this little thing that I did in class over the past month.

I got the idea from some facebook friends of mine in November. Basically, it’s a daily post about something that you’re thankful for and why. What better time for reflection than the holiday season, right? I thought this was the perfect morning task for my students in the month leading up to Christmas, so I printed out some blank ornament templates and made a “Thankful for 30” board on my door.

Check some of these out:

 

Hope you had a great Christmas with your loved ones!

Procedural Writing

Concert performances, assessments, exams, oh my! We’ve been so busy wrapping up the last couple of weeks before break that I haven’t had a chance to post any updates. My apologiesL

Anyway, this week we’ve been doing procedural writing in Language Arts. I love teaching procedural writing (especially right after information reports) because there’s so much fun stuff you can do with it. Last week one of my students had a birthday so I thought this would be the perfect introduction to procedural writing- how to make a birthday cake!

We started with a quick brainstorming session as a group to review what we knew about procedural writing including purpose, examples, and organization. Here’s the list we came up with:

 

Then we watched a short cooking video about making a cake and took notes on what steps to take. We compared notes as a class and then edited and simplified our directions. Finally, we baked a cake of our own to celebrate a classmate’s birthday! It was a lot of fun, and the students were completely engaged- always a plus. Here are a couple of pictures from our cake baking session. Stay tuned for a couple more extension lessons with procedural writing.  

 

Writer's Notebook

I was first introduced to the concept of a writer’s notebook last Christmas when we were back in Georgia visiting family. Jeff’s (my partner) dad is a retired English teacher from a wonderful private school there and was nice enough to arrange a school tour AND put me in contact with a colleague of his during our visit. She told me about one of the tools that they use in language arts called a writer’s notebook and right away I loved this idea. I  wanted to learn more about it so I bought the books she recommended and have been using them in my classroom ever since.

The idea  behind the writer's notebook comes from research done by RalphFletcher and it just makes sense. Here's what we know about writers:
* Writers are different.
*Writers use different processes.
* Writers need time and tools to develop their writing skills.
Although these ideas are basic, we tend to forget to take them into account when planning our lessons at times. Ralph Fletcher gets to the heart of these challenges and makes it make sense... if that makes any sense. His books are brilliant and have totally changed my approach to teaching writing. I highly recommend them if you are struggling with teaching writing.

Anyway, like most things in my class, I wanted to provide my students with a real-life example to help them better understand my expectations and get them started with creating their own writer's notebooks. Here’s a short video that I created for you to see my example and a slideshow of some of my pages. If you have any suggestions of how you’ve used the writer’s notebook in your class, please share them. Happy Writing!

 

 

 

 

 

Scary short stories

Halloween has always been one of my absolute favorite holidays. As a kid, I usually had my costume picked out by my birthday in the summer and couldn’t wait to go trick or treating with my friends. The amount of loot we made out with every year still blows my mind… I mean, who really needs 86lbs of candy? It’s insane. I’m pretty sure that’s when my sugar addition and subsequent tooth decay started, but that’s not what this post is all about.

Beyond the costumes and candy, Halloween is the official kickoff of the holiday season. It’s a time for haunted houses and ghost stories. A time for FUN. And that’s what this week is all about.

In language arts, we’ve been working on narrative writing so I decided to shake things up with some good ol’ scary stories. I’m not a huge fan of horror in general, but the students love them and they’re great for teaching elements of good narrative writing.

We started the lesson with a couple of spooky tales from this AWESOME website. I read the first one aloud in our reading area while we pretended to be around a campfire at night. Then we brainstormed together on the white board about what elements make up a scary story. Here’s a look at what we came up with:

Excuse my messy board

 

Here's the PDF if you want to download it.

Later, I turned them loose to start drafting their own haunted stories that they will share later in the week with the class.

Because I’m trying to find new and interesting ways for my students to present their work with 6 + 1 traits, I am going to have them voice record their stories and use editing software to add creepy sound effects to the background. I’m really excited to see the finished products. I promise to post more on these when I have them completed. Until then, enjoy some Halloween candy for meL

Constitutions

 

For our theme unit on citizenship and government, the students were tasked with creating a country and then later writing a national constitution to outline their chosen type of government, laws, and rights and responsibilities of their citizens. I think I was being a bit unrealistic about what a big project this would be for my students, but they did really well overall. We studied different forms of government and looked up constitutions from around the world to get familiar with the structure and organization before we drafted ours. After several revisions and lots of peer-editing (and what feels like a thousand years), we were ready for publishing. YAY! This part was, by far, the most fun we had with this project. We took sheets of white cardstock and dyed them with tea, burned the edges to make them look old and authentic, and then practiced our best penmanship to create our finished product.

If I had this to do over, I would have scrapped it all together because of the level of difficulty. Concepts like political ideology are a bit too advanced for my students. I feel like they learned a lot about the role of government in a country, but aside from that, this was a disaster. So, if you’re thinking about doing something similar, I recommend that you simplify as much as possible. Here’s a photo of one of the final products. If you want a sample constitution, send me a message and I’ll email it to you. Enjoy your weekend!

6 + 1 Writing Traits

As I mentioned before, one of the main purposes of this blog is to document and evaluate my work in the classroom. Because most of last year was spent in survival mode and because I don’t have a background in education, my approach to teaching was largely based in internet research and trial and error. I feel like I did some really great work last year helping my students expand their existing skills, especially in literacy but this year I want more. I want to really dig in deep and find ways to allow them to use language to express themselves. But how does one do that? That is a question I’ve been chewing on all summer.

The answer, at least in part, lies in encouraging students to find their inner writer. Once the desire to write is there, the rest is simply giving them the tools to be able to bring that writer to life. I suppose there are a thousand approaches to teaching writing but the one that I’ve found most useful (and that’s been widely adopted under the Common Core Standards) is the 6+ 1 writing traits. The idea behind 6+1 is that it’s a tool for teaching writing that creates a common language for teachers and students while making certain areas of writing easier to teach and assess. Here are a few helpful links for explaining the 6+1 traits:

http://educationnorthwest.org/traits

http://languagearts.pppst.com/6traits.html

http://ethemes.missouri.edu/themes/1283

http://writingfix.com/traits.htm

I hope to be able to integrate these traits into my teaching of the writing process in more depth this year. I’ll keep you posted on what that looks like when the year gets underway.

In other news, I’m looking forward to the new books I ordered last week. For those of you living in the western world- you have NO IDEA what a luxury it is to be able to just order books online and have them show up at your door or go down to your local bookstore and peruse the aisles of categorized paperbacks. Please take a minute to be thankful for that amenity. I won’t go into too much detail about what an ordeal it is to acquire such things here, but just know that it’s one of many challenges to be faced when living/teaching abroad. Here are the books I’m making my wonderful partner schlep back to Vietnam to help get me through the school year. If you’ve used any of these or have other recommendations, I’m ALWAYS open to hearing about it. Goodnight from Greece.

my new books-