[Quote of the Week] Leaning Pizza

The Scene: Journal-writing time.  The schmoopies are all writing.  In fact, they all started writing early–before the bell rang (!!!).  Schmoopie T. has a question.  Typically, there is no question-asking or question-answering during writing time, but since they started early I oblige… T: Um, does the Tower of Pisa lean? Me: Well, yes. T: Okay……

[Student Writing] Journal Excerpts

I posted yesterday about my students and their journal writing.  I asked permission to share some of the entries.  I’ll show a series for each author to show the change over the last four weeks of writing. I’ll also transcribe exactly–including errors, run-ons, etc.: T. 8/18 Yesterday when i got home I watched my brother…

[Teaching Tips] What I Used to Know

I re-learned something I think I knew once. Journal-writing is good. Systematic sustained writing on a daily basis improves writing.  It just does.  I’m not going to look up the proof for this, * I’m just going to state it as a fact–in order to improve your writing you must write. Over the last five…

[Tech Tip] The Storybirds Are Flying

Earlier this week I told you about something I was going to try in my classroom–Storybirds. Well my caped friends, the birds they are a-flyin’. As the lovies finish their stories I’ll add them to the Student Story Bird page on this blog. In the meantime, here are two that made me smile or laugh…

[Teacher Prep] Super-rific

Earlier this summer I was struck by a piece of brilliance. No jokes please…. I was watching the new Green Lantern movie and learning, for the first time, about the story of the Green Lanterns. Have you heard it?  I will ‘splain. No. There is too much. I will sum up… There are tons of Green Lanterns in…

[Writing] Where I’ve been

@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } I made many promises (here and here) that I would be posting in full force this Spring and Summer.  I was wrong.  Flat out wrong.  This doesn’t happen very often in my…

Hope

Hope Hope is the thing with feathers  That perches in the soul,  And sings the tune–without the words,  And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard;  And sore must be the storm  That could abash the little bird  That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land,  And…

Folk-a-licious

In our recent discussion of folktales, we listed the following components: 1.  A powerful person 2.  A not-so-powerful person 3. Twists and turns 4. A beautiful character 5. A problem or  riddle 6. A Moral 7. The End After some practice the Sugar Pies were assigned the following task, and we created a rubric* for…

Stop, Elaborate, and Listen!

The lesson of the day was “elaboration.”  We talked for a while about the difference between elaboration, exaggeration, and lies.  We talked about when elaboration is a good idea, and when it might not be (“when the police ask you questions?”).  We then dug into my collection of interesting magazine photos (fifteen years in the…