Schaenen-catching up on April

MAP tests and odd schedule messed up the 4th grade schedule for 2 weeks, so here we go, a little behind.

Second grade round up – April 2, April 9, April 16, 2008

We had a long talk in class about what it means to “talk white.” It all started with adjectives – we were going to highlight the adjectives in the first chapter of The Hobbit, and somehow when reviewing what an adjective was, we got on the subject of color and ethnicity. We tried to emphasize that people of any color can talk in any way, that color was not necessarily attached to the way one sounded. But this was tough and complex – I’m not sure how or whether any of this “got through.” After a long talk, I asked the students to write three adjectives that described who they were and then some sentences about why they chose those three. Some examples:

“Black
African American
Kind
Precious
Sweet
I chose those trhee because they are true about me and my teacher told me half of the words and my mom told me all of them both of them are my favorite teacher and mom.”

“ I am light. I got short hair. I am African American. I pick those three because I have all those adjectives on my skin. I’m kinda white.”

“I am a African American. I love myself. I am in the second grade. I am JB. I am the tallest in my classroom. I am light brown. That’s who I am and I love my family.”

“I am African American from Rochester, NY and St. Louis, Missouri. I am crazy colors of the world. I am a person who writes and reads.”

The next week we then proceeded to read through a handout of The Hobbit,first aloud, then on our own, circling adjectives and defining them so we would know what they meant. Working in pairs, the students made lists of all the adjectives they could find and then picked three to use in sentences that they could make up on their own. Many of the kids used colors, but a few used the more interesting words like sandy, comfortable, oozy, nasty, wet, and respectable.

On April 16th, we played Two Truths and a Lie. I put my example on the board, and we played one round with me as a group. Then they wrote theirs and everyone got a turn, got to call on someone to guess, and feel at the head of the class.
Mine: If I could have any superpower, it would be teleporting.
I eat a banana every day.
I would always rather eat at home than go out.
Keeping track of what’s true, what’s not, and why we guess one and not the other exercises critical thinking every single time.

Third grade, same weeks:

We had the same talk on the 2nd about “talking white. I got some of it on audio tape. Then we did the same thing as second grade – pick 3 adjectives that describe yourself and use them in sentences:

“I am a African American. I speak English. I do not speak any other language. I like school. I really like writing class.

I like those these because they were the first thing in my mind. They are also true. I am a African American. I so speak English I don’t know a nuther language. I like school. And this really true. I like writing class. All these things are true. I really like to write.”

Naturall, this warmed my heart beyond belief – written by a very shy by hardworking and attentive student who is really coming into her own, expressively.

April 9, we talked about how language could sound different even if the words were speled the same. We said GIRL shaped in AAE and GIRL shaped in SE. Some feedback from listening to family out in the world – one girl reported that she heard her cousin, granny, auntie, other cousin, and unclfe all switch from AAE to SE when on the phone with certain people. Another girl heard her uncle switch when talking to the electric company.

Then read through The Hobbit and looked for adjectives, harvested them, is how I referred to the process. Then they used as many of these cool words as possible in a story they made up themselves. Silent good writing time, sound of pencils ONLY for many many minutes. Most kids wrote two solid pages of story. One question posed to me, “Is it OK if you are the evil queen?”
K looking at T’s work: “She write neat. I like how she write.”

Great work from everyone.

On April 16, I spread out all these cards of famous accomplished African Americans and the class chose one to read about and write about. Lots of vocabulary learning and deciphering. Lists of words to look up.

Fourth grade, April 16

Great to see everyone after a month!
Before getting started with anything, I asked the kids to write me letters to tell me anything they wanted me to know – what they’d been up to, any feelings, thoughts, anything about spring break, anything…activities. “What’s been up with you?”

Some reports on the MAP tests, some adventures from break, many addressed to me personally like a letter. All so sweet and focussed. I let them write for 20 minutes or so, and then we chatted about the upcoming collaboration day with the John Burroughs kids. We planned the menu, and some of the flow of the day. Then they wrote their 2 truths and lie for the program of that day. The second hour did the same thing – free write followed by two truths. They also browsed in their folders for their favorite work to go in the lit journal we publish at the end of the year. Sorry this is all so short and brief, with few examples – I’ve been wanting to catch up for a while – I will try to infill or backfill some examples at some point. We only have a few more meetings this year and there is a lot to pull together. I am really looking forward to the JBS day.

Inda

The Things That Are the Same… and those that are different.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

I was so excited to be back after Spring Break and MAP. The kids were very excited as well. I came in early and wrote out what we will be doing in each class for the next six weeks that way the kids see it each time and can see where we are headed and where we have been. For most of the classes, we will be focussing on poetry for the next several weeks, resulting again in a reading party like we did last year. But for most of the groups, we will be doing a Poetry Slam instead of a regular reading. I want them to perform their work, and to feel their work and make an audience feel it. They have such great things to say, and I am hoping that taking care with the delivery will allow them to slow down and really understand the value of their thoughts to others and the power of language and communication. So, the next several weeks, we will be discussing poetry as social commentary, reading a selection of poems I have been reasearching and pulled together, and writing. I also found out that Ms. Warren has a DVD player in her room, so hopefully I will be able to bring in some clips of Slams for the kids to get the idea. I am really excited.

On my way to get my first group, I ran into Ms. Warren who said they had been writing poems in her class to celebrate National Poetry Month, and she had written as well, which I loved. I only had a chance to read a couple (they’re posted in the hallway), but they were fantastic free verse, very personal, and pretty honest. I was pleased to see that.

2nd Grade and Ms. V’s students

Before the break, we had been working on parts of speech and then on poetry with this group. I was very pleased with how far they came, the second graders especially doing very well. I had created fill-in-the-blank poetry with parts of speech. So the poems worked to reinforce what we were learning, as well as allow them a lot ofcreative freedom, and a safe and more approachable way to experiment with poetry. It went very well. Because I knew the kids would be trickling in yesterday, those from Ms. V’s room always late, and because some were in resource and other locales, I quickly decided that we would finish our writing next week, but get back into the swing of things yesterday. So, we worked on covering synonyms and antonyms. I had a new student who guested in the R4W with us from Ms. G’s class, name. Temea, who was a pleasure. All four second graders knew the terms synonym and antonym, but when I asked for a synonym for “nice”, they all said “mean”. So we went back over the definitions and then through examples of same/opposites for “nice”, “pretty”, “good”, “Big”, etc.

When they got it, we moved on to playing Apples to Apples, though I changed the rules a bit. I was playing too, and I would call out, “Synonym”, so then everyone had to find one the same. The next time might be “Antonym”. With the structure of that game, sometimes you can only do so much, but it practiced out terms and the kids did a great job. They read the words well and knew most of the vocabulary on the cards already, which was quite impressive.

Our flow was a bit disrupted as one by one the four kids from Ms. V’s class came in, and all very late. Each time, I had to stop, explain the concepts and the directions. It would have been better to have two activities going, but all the kids in this group need a lot of supervision– the second graders because they are young, and the older ones because of their learning disabilities. Ms. V’s kids were getting frustrated because they didn’t understand the terms and couldn’t play very well; they stopped listening and T. began whining. Finally, I told them all I would not read them their cards, but would help them sound out the words, but only so many times, so they shouldn’t ask for help unless they really needed it. T. has a tendency to ask the same questions over and over as a way of getting attention. If I know she knows something and tell her no, she will do just fine on her own, but sometimes it takes a while for me to guage what she does and doesn’t know. I also told both her and TR that if they whined again, they would not be allowed to play, and behavior grew much better.

Overall, it was a great activity, just more difficult because of the interruption of students not coming in at the same time– which I will address with Ms. V. Not just the interruption, but then some students were only with me for 10 minutes. I can’t do anything in ten minutes, and I feel it just muddles many concepts and frustrates the students because they can’t participate fully, and many of them are frustrated enough.

6th Grade from Ms. W- Tuesday group
I brought in two social commentary poems from the packet I had put together and introduced the concept of Poetry Slams, which they liked. The poems were very mature– one about race by Langston Hughes, and the other about inner-city violence. We read them silently, then together each reading a line. Then we discussed the tone of each poem; we did this by me asking them what emotion they would use to label each poem. For the inner-city violence one, some missed it and just saw the kids playing, not the other things going on, but many noticed it was sad. I then read it for them and we discussed possible interpretations. We also did this with the Langston Hughes and then each student had to say whether they liked or disliked each and a reason why. It was a very mature conversation and they were very engaged.

I had meant to use the poems as prompts, but they asked if they could not write, saying they had been writing for two days in their class. I offered other thinking alternatives and they selected one. As a writer, some days you need to just think and not get anything on paper. I decided to allow this because their discussion was very good and heavy. and I wanted them to have time to let it all sink in.

We ended up switching gears a bit and did a group rhyming story. Each person had to say a line and rhyme it with what came previously. I particpated also. the first few times were harder and some were better than the others (I am terrible at rhyme). It was fun though and great to see how they played off each other, what words were used repeatedly, and what themese kept coming up. At first I tried to write everything down to keep track of it, but it was moving too fast, which was really cool. We did probably about five separate stories, most of which involved at some place or another, a trip to the hospital, a trip to the mall, the things they do at home, and the sounds and sights of their neighborhoods. It was very interesting to see the locations and things that populate their world when they are less conscious.

It was a fun day. Tomorrow, with my Thursday groups, we will work through the social commentary poems and work on writing our own.

March 15…Schaenen

Fourth grade, first hour

We tried to repeat the activity formt he week before with a student playing teacher, but it didn’t work. The “teacher” upset one of the students very badly, in part because the student had wanted another boy to be teacher, but also because of their past relations, and I called it off. She ended up writing about how much he drove her crazy. Others wrote poems and raps. Once I was teacher again I had them put their heads down and close their eyes and I talked them into a safe, quiet place where they were totally happy and relaxed and safe and at peace. I asked them to picture this place and then get up and describe it in writing. Some places:

Six Flags, City Hall, a “camping tent” on the grass in Hawaii where “everything is free,” the art museum, a a hotel with mom and sister, at home “cooking in the kitchen for me and my family (“I be cooken chicken macironi and we drink sugar-free kool-aid and then I wash the dishes”), my room, my cousin’s house, the mall, Some people added on a little extra expression on a separate page:

PJ: “Sometime I want to scream and holler at people for no reason. But when I’m fin to I take a deep breath and count to ten for ten minutes. But what makes me mad is the hollering that people do by my ear so I got hot and start hollering and punching walls and other things. The things I hit gets dents in it.”

Second hour, fourth grade

We did the same “place” activity. Some places included: church, hotel, backyard club house, Anarctica (fanstasy), my bed, the massage room every Sunday with my grandma, Hawaii (fantasy).

Second grade

This is a very able group of writers. We did the same “place” activity and the results were amazing. Here’s one by DF. Notice how he addresses the experiences of all five senses (which I had written on the board as prompts):

“I will like to be in a swimming pool in the summer because it is very hot in the summer. The people who be there with me is my grandmother my sister my brother and my momma. I hear splashing in the water and I just like to lie in the water. I dive for some bricks, rocks, quarters, pennys. I touch the water and it is very, very, very warm in there. I look at my sister my brother and they all are having fun. My mom attached a rope on me so I will not drown in the water. Then when it is time for me to get out of the wter they always says I win because I am the fastest in the water. I went high in the air to see if I can survive the splashes of water. Then it is time to go.”

Other places: Hawaii, a jacuzzi, bed, candy world, spending time with my greatgrandma, Texas in order to be with a particular relative “ti-ti.”

Third grade

We had a visitor, an energetic, kind, interested senior from John Burroughs School whose parents are from south India. Mary Jo came with pictures and loads to share. She talked and took questions while I did management backup and discusssion facilitation. I passed out paper and invited the kids to “take notes” about what they werer hearing and remembering about the conversation. Some people also jotted down the questions they wanted to ask MJ. “When are you born? What is your hair style? Why is it so warm in Asia? What are the schools like?”
Some vocab:
Malayalam (the language spoken in Kerala) – a palindrome!
sari
rupees

I think the kids were a little confused about exactly what MJ represented – was SHE from India? Was she American, a regular kid from St. Louis? Exactly how exotic could she be when she spoke, dressed, looked exactly like an American kid. Also, there was the usual “at-a-loss” about the geography about where India was, its relation to where we are, distances, and the way the countries are laid out on the globe in general. I note all this simply to register how much seems to be needed by way of orientation and preparation when people with interesting things to share enter an urban classroom. I mean, one boy wrote as a question: “Do you have a friend in Indianna?” Then he crossed out the Indianna and wrote India. Obviously, this self-correction is important and good, but I do think there is all kinds of work to be done in terms of geographical concept building. All through the hour, MJ was kind and patient!