Blue, Blue, My World is Blue

Here is another sample of my writing from the writing circle groups in our class.

Blue: A Couch Story

Denée Tyler

1981 – Blue Macramé Couch Belonging to David and Sandra D________

A large and roughly handsome football player in the middle of an intense game of “Do You Love Your Neighbor?” slams his full body weight into the couch and breaks the entire macramé frame. The couch is never quite the same, and the boyfriend fades into distant memory.

1986 – Blue Flowered Couch from the Side of the Road in Atlantic Highlands, NJ

A new mother comes home from the hospital to find that her husband has dumpster dived a couch to replace the folding chairs formerly used. Her rear end is eternally grateful even as she soaks the whole thing in Lysol.

1989 – Blue Velveteen Sectional with Double Recliners

Industrious mother dumps entire bottle of rubber cement on a seat cushion while making quiet books to entertain a precocious three year old. After much scraping, soaking, and crying, everything looks almost good as new.

1995 – Blue Velveteen Sectional with Hide-A-Bed

Hyper five and nine year-olds use bed as a makeshift trampoline. All is well until the springs separate from the frame and the entire bed drops abruptly to the floor. No one is hurt, just too scared to tell mom.

1999/2000 – Blue Corner Section of Aforementioned Velvet Sectional

During an epic New Year’s Eve party, the corner section gets one too many fanny-first dives and completely gives way, leading to a chair that now sits approximately ten inches off the ground. Many fingers are pointed, but no one will admit to being the final fanny.

2007 – Blue Velveteen Sectional/Blue Microfiber Theater Group

Family spends all day carting large heavy couches up from the basement. Many walls are dinged, and fingers are smashed. Couch goes to its new home down the street in order to make way for new microfiber theater grouping (all recliners!!).

2009 – Blue Microfiber Theater Group

Family discovers that all recliners can be a bad thing when there is a flaw in the recliner release mechanism. After several of the new chairs break, father gets fed up and replaces the mechanism in every chair.

2011 – Blue Microfiber Theater Group

Family enjoys leisure time together stretched out on their recliners enjoying marathon viewing sessions of The Amazing Race, Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, and Nickelodeon’s Avatar: the Last Airbender (the TV series, NOT the movie). All couches currently in working condition. Life is good.

Introversion--Are We Killing It?

As Gods Go, Money is One of the Worst

Yet another fantastic link that I can use with Swift's "A Modest Proposal" this year. Hopefully it will get my students thinking and writing.

I love the references to Ireland -- that's why I think it will work so well.

Digital Storytelling - Possibilities?

I went to a conference on digital storytelling recently, and this video was suggested as a possible writing prompt for students. I think this would work in well with a narrative unit at the beginning of the year tied in with Sherman Alexie and Tim O'Brien selections.

I am ______________
Don't judge me before you know me.

The Perfect Accompaniment to Zombie Haiku

A great way to get students excited about the undead. I love the animation.

Replying to Poetry

As I was searching through my renaissance files, I rediscovered this little piece of poetry I penned in 2008 in response to The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

(Hey, I'm just trying to keep up with Sir Walter Raleigh!)

Validation for Our Class Time Spent in SSR

It think I'll share this with my students and parents.

Verissimo Toste, an Oxford Teacher Trainer, talks about the best way to build extensive reading into your normal routine for best results:

A New Post at Last!!!

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

It's amazing and kind of sad what a few seizures and a shoulder injury can do to your productivity. I feel like I've been sort of sliding along this year, just doing, and not really reflecting or motivating myself or my students, sadly.

Well, I just watched an hour long webcast about Flipping a Classroom that has made me think and got me excited about teaching again. I think there are a lot of things I can do with this. I think it would really help my students if they were writing in the classroom with me there to help them and doing some of the more mundane things at home. So...I am giving my first flip assignment today.

Flipping a classroom is when you move direct instruction and other things that don't require student interaction into the "homework" time and move the homework into class time, so the teacher can be the expert in the room and interact with the students and see how they are doing. It reminds me of what Penny Kittle talks about in Write Beside Them.

Writing Circles

It's that time of year when my students and I participate in writing circles. I do it along with my students. Here is some of my work from this year:

Back to School Night, Take 2

Here's my new Animoto for back to school night, reflecting my new changed up curriculum for the year.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Documentaries

Frank Baker, who is a regular on the EC Ning, just brought my attention to this wonderful collection of documentaries: http://current.com/shows/fifty-documentaries/.

He also has an amazing website, Using Documentaries in the Classroom, which is a great resource for teachers wanting to use documentaries.

Thank you, Frank!

Kelly Gallagher Workshop

The Kelly Gallagher writing and modeling workshop sponsored by CUWP this Saturday was, literally, amazing. I left feeling so energized!

I took copious notes, but for now I'll just leave you with a favorite story. Kelly sat by the CEO of a "big computer company" on a recent flight. The CEO mentioned that they strive to hire the best and the brightest--graduates of Harvard, MIT, etc., but they have a hard time finding candidates. Kelly asked why, and the CEO said, "Because it's really easy to find really smart people, but it's hard to find smart people who know how to think."

Wow. That kind of sums up my job in a nutshell. I (try my darnedest to) teach kids how to think! That's why I think my job is so rewarding.

Inquiry Based Classroom

Webinar with Jeff Wilhelm:

Holocaust Webinar

This is going on over at the EC Ning. I haven't had time to join in, but I hope to look over the available things later this summer.

Less is More?

Fellow EC Ninger Keith Schoch recently posted an interesting blog about getting students to write more precisely--quality over quantity.

His ideas range from 6 Word Memoirs, to One Word Quickwrites, to Overheard Everywhere, and stories ranging from one to six sentences. It's a great trove of tiny treasures!!

I've tried some of these ideas, and they really do get students thinking and working. Here's his post.

Teaching Nonfiction Writing - A Practical Guide

This was the latest read for the CUWP Book group. It proved to live up to its name--practical! Although it felt like it was geared towards kids from about fourth grade through junior high, I still found a lot of things in it that I put to immediate use in the classroom. I used a genre exploration (bringing in about 40 nonfiction books, biographies, magazines, etc.) before I assigned my students to do their Chaucer presentations. Because the kids had a better idea of what I was looking for (illustrations, things that could go in a sidebar, definitions, quotes, headings, etc.) I had the best Chaucer presentations I've ever had.

This book has a great little section on leads that many of us were talking about at the book group last night. I can't wait to try it out.

I've already noticed that I am more aware of pointing out the various techniques in the nonfiction pieces that we've read recently. For example, I always have the students read "The Man in the Water" in conjunction with Beowulf and our talk about heroes. This time when we read it, I made sure that the students noticed the craft Rosenblatt uses, i.e. when he uses imagery in the first paragraph: The jets from Washington National Airport that normally swoop around the presidential monuments like famished gulls are, for the moment, emblemized by the one that fell.

Speaking of book group, we had an incredible turnout last night. We are going to need a bigger room next time.

New Year Goals

I was going to list my goals here, but then I saw this little gem:

Now I guess I'll just work on them in secret. Of course, they involve writing and reading--because what else is there in life?

Slogans, Logos and Iconic Images

I'm having my students try to sell their version of the American dream as a Gatsby product. This little video is to help them understand what an icon and slogan are.

Six-Word Memoirs

While we were working on memoirs this year, I had the students write six word memoirs.



One of my CUWP colleagues, Andrea R., had previously said something about having her students write something in sidewalk chalk. I decided to try that with the six word memoirs -- I thought they turned out great. Here are some:

(This one above was written down incorrectly - it was supposed to be "Life's illuminated...")

You Are What You Read - My Bookprint

My good friend, Clix, on the EC Ning encouraged me to do this on the Scholastic Site, so I did it. It's pretty hard to narrow a lifetime of reading down to five books, but this is the list I came up with:

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."

We all have a time when we will have the choice to stand up and do the right and the hard thing. Will we do it? Can we do it? And when we do it, can we choose the right people to stand beside us?

Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

"Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

I read this when I want to remember why I am here.

The Hiding Place
Corrie Ten Boom

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself."

I need these words every day of my life.

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why, I'll be there.

Everyone is my brother, and I am my brother's keeper.

The Giver
Lois Lowry

"For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo."

I re-read this book again immediately after I first read it, and then I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and took a two hour walk to think about it. It disturbed me, it shook me, it made me think. Even with all the painful memories I have -- particularly the death of my infant son -- I would never want to give up my memories -- they are just too precious.