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.