We started with some housekeeping items:
Temperature Check
Here’s the accompanying Kingpin video clip:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUSLiR0ZmbQ[/youtube]
Writing Assessment Task Q & A
This task is due on Thursday, 3 February 2011. Please submit it in one electronic package via email or as a complete paper copy.
Authorfest Info
Class is cancelled on Tuesday, 1 February to encourage you to attend Authorfest from 4:00 – 5:30 in Wood 2. I handed out a bibliography of the attending authors. It’s also available here:
Integrated Unit Planning Task
I handed out the task sheet for the LLED 320 Unit Plan task due on Tuesday, 8 March 2011. You can find the handout here:
Also, here’s the resource evaluation sheet you’ll need:
To get a visual sense of what’s expected, here’s a sample from a few years ago:
Writing in the Elementary / Middle Classroom
I had some guiding principles for the teaching of writing to share but, before then, I wanted to play with a pre-writing / warm up strategy. Here’s the info
Brainwarming
Just as athletes get warm up their bodies before game play or practice, writers need to warm up their brains. To this end, we worked through a Brainwarming activity designed by Julie Ferguson of Beacon Literary Services. As a part of the Hillcrest Middle School staff, I took a workshop with her last year, enjoyed it, and I thought I’d pass along what I’d learned about improving the quality and quantity of the writing students do.
Here’s are some of the key pieces in Brainwarming:
- Your favourite word
- Power Words
- Power Triplets
- A 5-Winute Write
- Writing quickly
- Harnessing the power of the creative right brain
- Supporting the diversity of learners – from Gifted to LD – in your classroom
The PowerPoint below is the one I used in class to guide you through the exercise. You can find more info at Julie’s website, if you are interested:
12 Guiding Principles For An Effective Writing Program
We used the Ranking Ladder strategy followed up with Inside / Outside Circles to process 12 guiding principles related to writing instruction. The conversation was vigourous. Here’s the handout:
Engaging in The Writing Process
I struggled with the idea of how to present an interactive lesson on entire writing process in just over an hour. In the end, I settled on a lesson that involved the writing of haiku poetry, a form often used in elementary & middle school poetry classes. We started to follow the Writing Process (as envisioned by writing teacher Diana Cruchley. I took a workshop from her 2 years ago) –
and, to that end, engaged in a variety of pre-writing activities. The activities were:
Modeling
We looked over a dozen haiku, determined our favourite, and developed a list of key features for haiku poetry. Here’s the list of poems we looked at:
I also shared a few of my favourite Redneck Haiku. They can be found here. If you’re yearning for more, check out these Zombie Haiku:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1Ws9QnmZY&feature=PlayList&p=332A297059FDF20E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=9[/youtube]
or Biff from the Back to the Future Trilogy with some funny haiku songs:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]
Criteria Development
The haiku criteria we developed were almost bang on with the criteria outlined in the text I took this lesson from, Wordplaygrounds by John S. O’Connor. His criteria are as follows:
Haiku poems…
- Are short
Typically 3 short lines with a maximum of 17 syllables. They may follow a 5-7-5 pattern but need not. Here’s a one line haiku by Lee Gurga:
trying the old pump a mouse pours out
- Have a Twist (Internal Comparison / Juxtaposition)
Most haiku have two images, one on either side of a break in the poem.
- Have a “Haiku” moment in time
They capture moments of epiphany or discoveries about the world and our place in it. To best capture the immediacy of the moment, haikus are generally written in the present tense and benefit from an economy of language.
- Focus on nature, including human nature, shown concretely
Haiku avoid figurative language (similes, metaphors, personfication and the like) in favour of direct and specific descriptions of the world around us.
- Are 5 senses specific
Powerful haikus are based on vivid imagery based on the five senses.
Pre-Writing
In an effort to make those criteria as clear as possible, we engaged in a variety of short writing tasks:
Word Seasons (handout: Word Seasons Word List)
I showed a list of words and asked you to associate each one with a season.
Sandwich Poems (handout: Sandwich Poems Examples)
These are three-line poems in which the first two lines and the second two lines form a different compound word. Here’s an example:
fire
alarm
clock
Drafting Based on an Image Pool
I gave out the first line of a haiku:
Halloween night —
then asked you to visualize your most memorable Halloween night and share a few images to create a class image pool. After that, you generated a haiku of your own and many examples were shared with the class. Unfortunately, I neglected to collect any of the Halloween haiku for publication on the blog. If you have yours handy, please feel free to write a comment containing your three lines.
We ran out of time for the scheduled nature walk aimed at gathering information for a haiku. So, your homework for next class is as follows:
- Go on a nature walk
- Gather 5 sense information on the back of your Sample Haiku handout
- Write 3 haikus that fit with the key features of haiku that we explored in class
- Bring your 3 haikus to class on Thursday, 3 February 2011.
See you on Tuesday at Authorfest. Please remenber that our regularly scheduled class is cancelled so you can attend this event.
– Lawrence
