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My 104-year-old grandmother died on Valentine’s Day. That’s why this post is a few days late. This month’s 20 in 2020 is dedicated to you. As my friend said, you’ll always be my forever Valentine. 20. Smile-People talk about smiles lighting up the room. My grandmother’s smile lit up the universe. My mother and aunt chose a sparkly dress for her burial gown, and they couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate final outfit for her. My aunt’s husband said, “It reminds me of starlight.” On my pre-dawn hikes and runs when shooting stars streak across the sky, I’ll think of her.
19. Loyalty- Many people give lip service to loyalty, but few people embody loyalty. My grandmother did. Her husband died forty-three years ago this April. She never went on a single date. My cousin’s husband said she waited till Valentine’s Day to die so that she could kiss her husband on Valentine’s day almost forty-three years later. But in order to represent a trait, it can’t just be in one area of life. She was fiercely loyal to her town Hazel Crest, Illinois. Countless people tried to get her to leave her neighborhood and the house that she moved into February of 1957 and stayed in till December 2019. People wanted her to move because her neighbors no longer shared the same skin color as her. She didn’t budge. It was her neighborhood. She was staying thank you very much. Lastly, she attended church at St. Anne’s Parish for sixty-two years. My grandmother was as much a fixture of that church as the cross on the wall and the lectern on the altar. Her church along with four other churches in the south suburbs of Chicago have to combine themselves into one parish due to low attendance. I think my grandma had to leave this world before that happened. 18. Six-Pack Cereal-When my brother and I were young and stayed overnight at my grandma’s house, she bought us six-packs of cereal. Not a box of Cheerios among them. Nope. Each one of these boxes brimmed with sugar. My brother and I alternated who picked first. Then one-by-one we divvied up the boxes so that we could eat them as fast as we could, slurping up the colored milk in the bowl between servings.  I guess they come in eight packs these days... 17. Playing Cards-It was hard to know where to put this one. Playing cards with grandma was as much a part of spending the night at her house as that sugary cereal and just as sweet. She was fiercely competitive. With us as kids, war was her game of choice. The amazing thing is she didn’t just play war with my brother and I, she played cards with both my sons. The picture below is from three years ago. She’s playing war with my youngest son, Corbin. What you can’t hear, is the laughter. She was saying comments like, “I got you now,” and the two of them giggled away.  In this unforgettable game of war, Grandma started off with the cards, but by the end she lost every single one to Corbin. Priceless laughter and banter filled the room, The next year, I visited her with my older son. By this time, her cognitive abilities had begun to fail. She wanted to teach us a card game neither of us had played before, but she couldn’t really remember the rules. So, she decided the rule was everything I did was wrong, and everything my older son did was correct. My older son would play a certain card or a certain suit, and I tried to do the exact same thing. “No, Katie,” she said. “You can’t do that.” It turns out I couldn’t play any of my cards, but Anders could play any card he wanted. This happened every round. Anders and I locked eyes and burst into uncontrollable laughter. She started to laugh, too, even though she didn’t understand why we were laughing. It was the most fun I’ve ever had playing cards, yet it was the worst card game in my life. 16. Prayer-My grandmother prayed every night, and she often prayed for other people. This practice is an important reminder that we are not running the show, and that our prayers should be directed toward helping others. I'm so grateful that all the roses people sent to the funeral home will be turned into rosaries her daughters can keep.
15. Service-But we need to focus on helping others in our every day lives, too, not just in our prayer lives. At 100, my grandmother sang in “The Three Marys Choir” and ministered the Eucharist at her church. 14. Independence-My grandmother was fiercely independent. If something could be done herself, she did it. She took out the garbage and shoveled the snow, thank you very much. She didn’t need help. The world would be a different place if everyone did everything they could by themselves. 13. Driving-It’s never too late to learn something new. When my grandmother moved out of Chicago to a southern suburb in 1955, at the age of forty, there were no suburban buses. So, she had to learn how to drive. She did, she drove till she was ninety-five and she was proud of it. Celebrate your successes.  My grandmother's license plate featuring her initials and her address celebrated her success of learning to drive at forty and then driving for fifty-five years. If you zoom in, you can see the car was last registered in April of 2014. 12. Exercise-You can’t live to be more than 100 without it. She attended exercise class three times a week and walked the neighborhood a couple of times a week well into her nineties. 11. Bowling-In her eighties, she bowled a 199. I’ve never bowled anywhere close to a 199. It goes to show that if you persevere and practice something your whole life, you will refine your craft. 10. Toffee Squares-By now, you know I’m in love with the number ten and the base-ten number system. So, something special had to go in the number ten slot. No one would say my grandma was a cook, including my grandma. But, her toffee square recipe is unforgettable. One of my running partners calls my grandma’s toffee squares liquid crack. When I place forty-eight squares in the teacher’s lounge, there are hardly any left by the third lunch period.  Here's my grandmother's handwritten recipe for toffee squares. If you want to try the recipe yourself, open the pdf file at the end of the post for a typed recipe and a picture of my grandmother and me. 9. Flexibility-Many people wouldn’t use this word to describe my grandma, but the truth was she became more and more flexible as her life progressed. Not only did she accept the changes in her neighborhood, she made an effort to know her new neighbors. She attended exercise class with her new neighbors, played Texas Hold ‘Em with her new neighbors and welcomed them into her house. Her neighbor, Sharon Robinson, watched over my grandma with a love as fierce as any family member. Who can you talk to today who you view as somehow different from you in some way? What newcomers can you welcome into your community, into your home? 8. Cards in the Mail-My grandma always sent cards in the mail for people’s birthdays. When the youngest, as of now, great grandchild was born in late September of 2019, she sent my cousin a card. But she didn’t send it until she had practiced writing the baby’s name, Finnegan, and her name several times and was convinced they were legible. 7. Stamps-The first night I fell asleep knowing my grandmother had moved on, I told my husband I wondered what small, unexpected things would make me think of my grandmother. I received one of my answers the next morning when I retrieved my mail from my mailbox. Stamps! My grandmother loved decorative stamps. She always bought her stamps at the grocery store, and they only had American flag Forever stamps. So, when she received mail from me with multicolored hearts or nature scenes, she delighted in their artistry. For years, I sent her decorative stamps on Valentine’s Day. 6. Perseverance-When you look up perseverance in the dictionary, it should say Mary Elizabeth Rogers Annweiler. She persevered in every way. As my aunt said in her remembrance speech, my grandmother lived through the Great Depression and turned her paycheck over to her father to help pay the bills. But, I remember how she persevered later in life. She lived through the death of her husband, all of her siblings, many nieces and nephews, and countless friends. I’m not saying she handled each of these situations with grace and compassion that the people around her needed, but in the end, she used each of these losses to strengthen her gratitude for life. Each day that each one of us gets to spend on Earth is a gift, yet it is a gift that most of us often take for granted. 5. Dancing-My grandmother danced. She danced with family and friends. In her eighties, she and her dancing partner hosted local sock hops to teach others how to dance. Dancing was my grandma’s heaven on earth. But don’t take my word for it. At my wedding, she tore up the dance floor. Check it out! 4. Self-care-I already talked about exercise and prayer, but my grandmother knew that diet was important, too. So, she ate only what she needed to eat. She knew over indulgence would not enrich her life in any way. In addition to eating well, she knew she had to take care of her dry skin. She had eczema, and as she aged her skin cracked a lot. I have my grandma’ skin. So, I started sending her Windrift Hill’s body butter. It’s the only cream I’ve found that keeps my skin from cracking. The cream worked for her, too. Every morning when I put their product on my skin, I will think of her. 3. Family-Family was my grandmother’s life. She wasn’t in any way warm, fuzzy or cozy. But, family was what she lived for. Be it visits, phone calls, cards or gatherings, we brought her joy and she brought us joy and hope by being a fixture at family gatherings for as long as anyone can remember.  She was really tired here because it was after her 100th birthday party in November of 2015. But I love how the progression in these pictures tells the story of how she was an important part of my sons' preteen and teenage years.  Fast forward to July of 2018. We had come to Chicago to launch my book and for my sons to volunteer at Camp Hope. But what I love besides the absolute joy in these photos, is that my grandma is wearing her dragonfly broche in both shots. As you may know, I am crazy about dragonflies and write about them often. So, I love seeing one alight on her.  One of my homes. 2. 2801-Throughout life we call many places home. My grandmother lived at 2801 for my whole life, and I called her house home. When we drove cross country to see her every summer, we stayed at her house. I made her photo memory boards for her wake in her house. My mother warned me that it would feel different because everything was packed up. But, when I was on my knees surrounded by pictures of here, I felt a tremendous peace. I felt like I was home.
1. Wave-This one is the hardest for me to write. Perhaps because it came as a surprise. Whenever I left my grandmother, she stood outside or in the front window and waved till we had pulled out of the driveway. But I had forgotten this ritual until I left my grandmother’s house for the last time this past weekend. My aunt came outside to hug us goodbye before she headed back into the house. Then, my mother came and she stood outside and waved goodbye. My heart broke, and I wanted to scream. I’ll never see my grandmother wave goodbye again. Her final wave to me was this past August. She knew it, and I knew it, too. This is my final wave to you, Grandma. As my cousin said, Godspeed! Love, Kate  My final wave to my forever Valentine.
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Reading and writing reflect one another. So, after seeing how successful our book walks have been this year, I wondered what would happen if we had a writing walk. Half of the class sat with their writer’s workshop notebooks, while the other class rotated around the room. Each student spent five minutes reading a certain peer’s writing. At three minutes, I told the rotating students they had two minutes left to finish reading and leave feedback. For feedback, the critiquers wrote one I like sticky and one I wonder sticky. The I like sticky was an aspect that the critiquer felt the writer had done well. The I wonder sticky was an aspect that the critiquer felt the writer could do better. When the five-minute timer sounded, the critiquers handed their sticky notes to the writers. The writers placed the sticky notes into a T-chart in their writer’s workshop notebooks to be able to refer to later.  It's interesting to see which feedback the author chose to respond to and which feedback he didn't respond to. While the students rotated, I also rotated around the room with a specific student and gave each writer two sticky notes. When we were done with the activity, I realized that I should have also been keeping a messy sheet to note my observations. Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan taught me about messy sheets. Here’s one I wish I would have had as I rotated around to each student’s writing:  I could have written each student's number in two boxes as I rotated through as a critiquer. If I had the messy sheet with me while I rotated through, I could have marked each person down in one area after I wrote my sticky note. As I type this, I’m realizing that I can look in each writer’s notebook and add students to each area based on the sticky notes I wrote. Still, it would have been much more efficient to have the messy sheet with me as I rotated through each station.  My sticky notes are the yellow-lined stickies. I'm hoping the checkmark means he edited his story accordingly! This week students are typing their drafts and one dashed over to me to show me how he had used the feedback to revise his writing. Here’s how the conversation went down: “Look what I did! One of my critiquers wanted to know who Brandon was. So, I added all this information to my sticky note, and now I’m typing it in.” At the time, I couldn’t delve into what he was saying because I was in between conferences.  This is his first draft. The highlighted portion of the typed sample further below is what he added in after our writing walk. But today, I had some time to look at his before and after. When I talked about his revision today he told me that he’d also received feedback that he needed more action. A part of his writing excerpt is below. It’s unedited. So, there are lots of errors. The underlined portion is the information he added as a result of his feedback.
Derek was 10 years old and was no ordinary fourth grader. It was five minutes before the school bell rang derek was already halfway out the door. He was excited for his big soccer game.“ring.” in the blink of an eye derek dashed down the hall before he knew it he was already at the stairs then at the bottom of the stairs. The doors outside were visible to him. But it quickly changed. A small recognizable figure standing in front of the door it's Brandon. He slowed down and tried to hide but Brandon saw him clearly and started towards Derek then closer but brandon stopped and slowly backed up mr. A was walking by and saw the whole thing from the beginning. Brandon saw Mr. A, too, which explains why Brandon backed off derek thought. It was not like mr. A to not know what was going on, he knew and was writing it down on a sticky note. After Mr. A handed Brandon the note and told him to give it to his mom. “Ugh’’Brandon sighed but on his way out Brandon whispered “you got lucky but tomorrow you won't be so lucky. Soon the stampede of kids to get on the bus. Considering often times students think revising consists of adding punctuation and capitalization, I'm pretty pleased to see how much work this student did. There’s definitely more action, and now we know Brandon is the antagonist. More importantly, the student was excited to revise and could see the difference between his writing before the writing walk and after the writing walk. Of course, there’s definitely plenty more to critique. Maybe it’s time to take another walk! Funny how the mind works. I sat down to write today’s post about writing walks and thought, I better reread my post on book walks before I start to write my post on writing walks. Then I scrolled through all of my fall and winter posts and realized I never wrote a post about book walks. So, today’s post will be about book walks, and I’ll save the writing walks post for next time. First off, I learned about book walks from the amazing Karina Hirschhorn on Twitter. She’s an elementary school librarian in Maryland. Since I love reading and writing books and I love to walk, I had to find out more information. I reached out to her directly and asked how she used book walks in her library. Then, I thought about how I could modify her process to incorporate book walks into my classroom. Now, on the last Friday of each month, we have a book walk. During my prep, I put aside twelve piles of five books. If we’re in a realistic fiction unit, the books are realistic fiction. If we’re in a nonfiction unit, the books are nonfiction. The books are a mix of books from my classroom and books from our bookroom. If you're looking for a great resource to help you organize your classroom library or your school's bookroom, be sure to check out It's All About the Books by Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan.  I include a variety of reading levels and book lengths in each stack. In addition, if I have multiple books by one author, I make sure each pile only has one book by that author. Finally, some books look more appealing than others because they’re either newer or they haven’t been read as much. Too bad I don’t have unlimited funds to constantly restock my classroom library with new books! Anyway, each stack has a mixture of new, slightly used and heavily used books.  Before I go any further, I should tell you each child in my class has a number. This tip comes from The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher and it is the glue that holds my classroom together.  So, depending on whose turn it is all the even numbers or all the odd numbered students get to pick a stack of books. I decide who picks their stack first by birthday order. So, this month the February even birthdays will pick first. The even numbers take their stack of books to their reading spots. Then, I assign each odd-numbered student to sit with an even-numbered student. The students get five minutes to look through that stack of books before they rotate to the next student. The students who picked the stack of books, let the visiting student choose which of the five books they want to read together. This is where the magic starts to happen.  Two students peruse MOTH AND WASP, SOIL AND OCEAN written by Ingrid Schmalzer and illustrated by Melanie Linden Chan. After a few rounds, the student who picked the original stack of five books begins to hand sell one particular book to each student who rotates through. The sitting student gets more and more excited about a book and tells the visiting student that the book is funny or that it’s about basketball or that it’s written by one of their favorite authors.  Two students peruse FEATHERS: NOT JUST FOR FLYING written by Melissa Stewart and illustrated by Sarah Brannen. Meanwhile, the students who are rotating through read ten different books by the end of the walk. They’ve heard why their classmates are excited about certain books, and they’ve had the opportunity to form opinions of their own.  This student who has become excited about reading and writing this year exclaimed, "I learned something from this book!" while reading PINK IS FOR BLOBFISH by Jess Keating. When the fifty minutes are up, I take the one or two stacks of books that wasn’t chosen and make one or two rows of five books on our meeting rug. Each of the students who chose a stack of books, makes a row with their books, too. By the time all the books are on the rug, we have a five-by-twelve array of books. Then, I pull sticks to decide who will get to choose a new book for their book bag first.  Students bounce up and down hoping that their stick will be pulled. They call out in agony as their peers choose the book they wanted. This means they’ll have to go for their second or third or fourth choice. But in the end, twenty-one books are chosen and thirty-nine books remain on the rug. This means that everyone has plenty of options to choose from.  Over the years, I’ve tried various ways to get students interested in books such as a recommendation wall where students display their book of choice in a basket and recommendation binders where students write book recommendations after finishing a book.  Book walks beat these other methods hands-down. There’s no work on the teacher’s side (like proofreading and printing writing) other than creating the book stacks, which for me is tons of fun. More importantly, the students’ excitement is palpable.
If you’ve never tried a book walk, try it. Leave a comment and let me know how it goes. On the last post of each month I’ll be featuring lists of twenty items. This post is middle grade novels I plan on reading in 2020. Not all of them are 2020 releases. Some of them are 2019 releases. For every pick, I share why I want to read it. Leave a comment and let me know more titles I should add to my list. It would be great if we could get twenty new titles in the comments. 1. The Battle by Karuna Riazi
2. Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
3. The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman
4. Chirp by Kate Messner
5. The Dark Lord Clementine by Sarah Jean Horwitz
6. Disaster Days by Rebecca Behrens
7. Explorer by Katherine Rundell
8. Fly on the Wall by Remy Lai
9. From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
10. Gegeer the Robot Goes to School by Jarrett Lerner
11. Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee
12. Leaving Lymon by Lesa-Cline Ransome
13. The Line Tender by Kate Allen
14. The List of Things that Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead
15. The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert
16. Parked by Danielle Svetcov
17. A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
18. Shouting at the Rain by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
19. Strange Birds: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers by Celia Perez
20. Worse than Weird by Jody Little
Before I move full speed ahead into the new year, I want to look back on the blog in 2019 and figure out what interested you and what did not. Many thanks to Andy J. Pizza for urging his Creative Pep Talk listeners to take this step in episode 258-Exploit This Natural Law That Will Make 2020 Your Year. If you’re a creator and you don’t listen to Creative Pep Talk, I highly recommend it.
Interestingly, readers are still viewing the book trailers I posted two years ago. So, this summer in July and August I’ll post book trailers from 2019 and 2020 releases along with some ideas of how to use the book in the elementary classroom. Authors contact me and let me know if you have a book trailer for your new release. If I can envision using your book in an elementary classroom, I’ll feature it. Please take a moment to fill out this survey. It will take less than a minute, and it will help me better meet your needs in 2020. Also, Jason from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, please fill out the contact form on my website so you can receive the awesome books authors are sending me to send to you! Thanks so much for helping me out! First of all, Happy New Year, everyone! Congrats to Jason, who is a fifth-grade teacher in Tyngsboro, MA, for winning the writer's workshop book basket! Jason, please fill out the contact form on my website and be sure to include your school address so we can send the books. There is no gift like time. December break provides time to sleep, time to be with loved ones, and for teachers who write, time to create.
This vacation was unexpectedly productive for me. I’m putting that in print because I spend way too much time thinking about goals I didn’t accomplish instead of celebrating goals I do accomplish. More on corraling negative thoughts another time! Anyway, I finished a draft of a nonfiction manuscript I’ve been working on since early fall. I talked about the seed idea for this manuscript in my October 23rd post Get Angry. In order to be able to write the manuscript, I did a ton of research. Check out the photos below to see some of the sources I read.
Sometimes though, the information one is looking for, is hard to find. In National Geographic’s "Why Carrying Your Own Fork and Spoon Helps Solve the Plastic Crisis," they state the sobering fact that in the U.S. we throw away one million plastic utensils every day. But I’m not only focusing on the problem in my manuscript, I’m focusing on solutions. One can research solutions forever because humans are constantly coming up with creative ways to solve problems. While researching creative solutions people have devised to cut down on consuming plastic utensils, I came across this article on two middle schools in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Since I’m a teacher and I’m from the blustery Midwest, my interest meter shot sky high.  The two schools wrote a grant to replace plastic cutlery and bowls with stainless steel utensils and reusable bowls. They saved their district $23,000 over a three-year period, prevented 6,712 pounds of trash, reduced greenhouse gases by 77% and decreased water consumption by tens of thousands of gallons. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency awarded the grant.
Wheels whirring, I typed in Massachusetts Pollution Control Agency. That agency doesn’t exist but the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) does exist and guess what? They provide grants to schools that want to replace, “reusable dish-ware… to reduce single use service ware.” The grant is called the Reduce, Reuse, Repair Micro-Grant, and it awards up to $5,000 a year to non-profit organizations looking to make changes that benefit the environment. I plan to apply for a 2020 micro-grant to replace our school’s plastic cutlery with reusable stainless steel flatware. In 2019, the DEP posted their grant guidelines in March. Hopefully, the DEP will post the 2020 guidelines in March as well which will give my class and me plenty of time to write the grant before the school year ends. One day at the end of writer’s workshop, of my students who struggles with reading and writing stated, “I never liked writing before, but now I understand it has a purpose.” Show your students writing has a purpose. Apply for a grant from your state’s department of environmental protection to replace your school’s plastic cutlery. If your state doesn’t have similar grants to those available in Minnesota and Massachusetts, write to your legislators asking them to make micro-grants available for your state. Write on! On December 13th, I published the first five revision tips to try with your students. This week we'll focus on the last five revision tips. Since many people are celebrating holidays right now, many generous authors and illustrators have donated copies of books for you to start your own classroom's writer's workshop basket. Leave a comment before 2019 ends on this post, including the school you work at, to be entered to win these awesome books! Winner will be announced in the January third blogpost. Many thanks to Melissa Stewart, Sarah Brannen, April Jones Prince, Jamilah-Thompkins Bigelow, Kim Norman, Avi, Jessie Oliveros and Jeannine Atkins for their generosity! Revision Tip Number Six:Once students know about the magic rule of three, they'll start to notice it in most of the books they read. ReadWriteThink has a lesson plan about the magic rule of three here. My favorite rule of three happens in Elana K. Arnold's Far From Fair. The main character, Odette, can't believe they're selling their house for a brown rv motorhome which she describes as, "Obnoxiously ugly, emabarassingly ugly, epically ugly." Pairing a different adjective with the word ugly three times makes readers feel Odette's despair. Many eleven-year-olds can relate to being embarassed by their family's home. Even some almost seventeen-year-olds, like mine, are too mortified to bring their friends home because they fear their abodes are too different from everyone elses. I digress. This first page is a powerful way to introduce students to the magic rule of three, and they will clamor for a chance to add this book to their book bag. Fox by Margaret Wild is one of the Lucy Calkins' mentor texts. It has several magic rules of three, and it's also great for sensory details. Plus, if you use Calkins, hopefully it's a book you already have in hand! I also already mentioned Avi's Poppy and Ereth. In addition to speaking in alliterative phrases, most of Ereth's phrases are also magic rules of three. Plus, they're hilarious. Reading a dialogue exchange between Poppy and Ereth is a great way to elevate the mood in the classroom.
Revision Tip Number Seven: Start in the Middle of the ActionOkay, I guess Fox is a great book, because you can use it for three of these revision tips. No wonder why Lucy Calkins picked it as a mentor text! If you're like me, you're read student narratives that spend five pages describing the character waking up, and one page of the rest of the action in list format. Fox is a great book to use as a model with students to show them that the action arc needs to start right away. Dog rescues Magpie, who has a charred wing, from a forest fire. But, she doesn't want his help because she'll never be able to fly again. Over time, Magpie and Dog develop a tender friendship that Fox later attempts to destroy. Another book most upper elementary rooms probably have in hand is A Bridge to Terabithia. I know this is an old book(almost as old as me), but sometimes it's nice to use a book you already have so you can avoid a trip to the library or emptying one's purse for yet another book. It's also a great story. Plus, Katherine Paterson is my childhood hero. One day she was at An Unlikely Story, Jeff Kinney's bookstore, and I froze. One of my writer friends had to take me by the arm to meet her. I finally did, but I couldn't find my voice. I did shake her hand though. Anyway, I love the fact that it starts with a sound that leads to action. You can point the sound out as a way to start with a sound as well as an action hook.
Revision Tip Number Eight: Meaningful DialogueToo often student work lacks dialogue, or if it has dialogue, it's not meaningful. The dialogue reads something like this: "How are you?" "Good. How are you?" "I'm good." You get the picture. Hopefully, any published novel has meaningful dialogue, but here are three of my favorites. Richard Peck is one of my favorite novelists. The last book he wrote before he died is The Best Man. He once said, "Nothing important was ever said sitting down," which is why he always wrote his dialogue standing up. Kids love to hear this because it reminds them that writing doesn't have to be done at a desk. It should be done wherever you can most connect to your emotions. You can watch the YouTube video below to hear him read a humorous dialogue exchange between Grandma Dowdel and housebound Aunt Madge, which is from his A Long Way from Chicago series. Unlike the A Long Way from Chicago series, The Best Man is realistic, not historical, fiction. So, there are more entry points for today's fourth grade readers. The plot also centers around the main character's, Archer, realization that his uncle is gay. Varian Johnson is another master of dialogue. The Parker Inheritance should be in every elementary school alongside Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game, as well as be incorporated into every Civil Rights unit. Although The Parker Inheritance focuses on race relations, one of the main character's is also dealing with her parents' divorce and the knowledge that her father has a boyfriend. Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes takes a hard look at modern day racial injustice and implicit bias as well as race relations during the Civil Rights. This book has the most powerful last page I've ever read in my life. It's message is quite clear, it's up to each one of us, everyone who is living, to make the world a better place. Listen to Jewell Parker Rhodes talk about Ghost Boys below.
Revision Tip NumberNine: Vary Sentence BeginingsChallenge students to begin each sentence in a paragraph with a different word. Not only will it keep them busy, it nudges them to make some changes they might not otherwise make. In order to start each sentence with a different word, they may have to flip the sentence's subject and predicate. So, "I ran the brush through my hair," can become "The brush snagged each gnarled-up knot of hair on my head." Or they may have to take a complex sentence and split it into two separate sentences which could help them vary their sentence lengths.  Revision Tip Number Ten: Use Setting to Show Emotion
Remember to leave a comment below before 2019 ends to be entered into a drawing to win your own writer's workshop book basket. Happy Holidays everyone.
Writer's Workshop Book Basket-Every teacher hears the dreaded, "I'm done. What do I do now?" Keeping a writer's workshop book basket full of books that students can peruse to get ideas for how to make their writing stronger, will help keep you sane, improve your student's writing and just might help your students find more books to add to their book bags for reader's workshop. Of course it helps to introduce each one of these tips in a mini lesson, before adding the books to your basket. So what should you put in the book basket? Revision Tip Number One: AlliterationAlliteration is one form of figurative language that's relatively easy for students to grasp because they can hear and see the alliteration. So, this technique applies to your visual and your auditory learners. It may not be snowy where you live, but last week twenty-five inches of snow fell here over a forty-eight hour period. Then, this week we were supposed to get a dusting and woke up to half a foot more of the white stuff. So, Ten on the Sled by Kim Norman and illustrated by Liza Woodruff is a fun book to pull out this time of year. Ten different animals fall off the sled. Instead of using the word "fall" different times, Norman picks a vivid verb that starts with the same name as the animal falling off the sled using phrases like, "Walrus whirled off," and "Seal slipped off." It's easy to make a quick chart using alliterative phrases from this book. If you're looking for a Friday Fun read, pull out Chicken Cheeks by Michael Ian Black. Similar to Norman's Ten on the Sled, Chicken Cheeks has several different animal characters as well. But instead of highlighting how they fall off a sled, Black highlights their derrieres. Sometimes he uses alliterative phrases to highlight their rear ends such as the title, Chicken Cheeks, "penguin patootie," and "turkey tushie." Read this one right before the bell rings, because you won't be able to rein your students in afterwards. Finally, don't forget to throw one of Avi's Poppy Books into the basket. Ereth is one of my all-time favorite children's literature characters and he speaks in alliterative phrases that will have kids laughing out loud.
Revision Tip Number Two: SimilesSimiles are also a relatively easy figurative language concept to introduce to your students because they compare two unlike objects using the word "like" or "as." Of course some eager students will have to learn that the words "like" or "as" do not always denote similes. But still, it's a concept that students can grasp which helps them become more confident writers and readers. You'll definitely want to have copies of Melissa Stewart and Sarah Brannen's Feathers: Not Just for Flying and Seashells: More Than a Home in your basket. Melissa Stewart uses similes to compare feathers to every day objects. She writes, "Feathers can shade out sun like an umbrella... or protect sun like sunscreen." In Seashells: More Than a Home, Stewart writes, "Seashells can rise and sink like a submarine." Both of these books can do double duty in your animal science book basket as well because they both explain adaptations that animals have that help them survive in their environments. I also have a copy of Quick as a Cricket by Audrey and Don Wood. In this book, the narrator compares herself to various animals. It's fun to have students write poems comparing themselves to ten different animals, and then have readers guess who wrote that poem.
Revision Tip Number Three: MetaphorsMetaphors are harder for students to grasp than alliteration and similes. But if you start with a simple, concrete metaphor, the idea that a kitten thinks the moon is a bowl of milk, students will warm up to the concept. So, pull out your copy of Kevin Henkes' Kitten's First Full Moon. Besides, the art is so yummy. It's guaranteed to make your class content. Then, pull out your copy of Jessie Oliveros' The Remember Balloons and keep your box of tissues nearby. In this exquisite book, colored ballons are memories that the protagonist has to hold for his grandfather who is no longer able to hold onto his own memories. Finally, head to your Civil Rights basket and grab Lillian's Right to Vote by Jonah Winter. Although this metaphor is hard to grasp because it's more complex than a bowl of milk or memories, Winter does an incredible job of comparing African Americans fight to vote to an uphill climb.
Revision Tip Number Four: Vivid VerbsI touched on vivid verbs a bit back in the alliteration section when I talked about Ten on the Sled. That's because Kim Norman uses ten different synonyms for fall instead of using the verb fall ten times. Challenge your students not to use the same verb twice and see what happens. April Jones Prince uses a multitude of verbs instead of using the words "roll" or "turn" over and over again in her book, What Do Wheels Do All Day? This book is less than one hundred words. If you find yourself with five extra minutes, this is a great way to make the best of the time. Speaking of one hundred, my book 100 Bugs! A Counting Book doesn't use the word "fly" on each spread. Like Ten on the Sled, 100 Bugs! uses a different verb for fly on each page. Check it out!
Revision Tip Number Five: Sensory DetailsAny good book worth its salt (I couldn't help myself!) is going to have sensory details, but here are three of my favorites. Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto and Ed Martinez is chock full of sensory details and is perfect for this time of year. Mommy's Khimar by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow is a kaleidoscope of colors and a joyous celebration of dressing up. Finally, Jeannine Atkins' Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science is full of sensory details. Atkins uses poems to introduce scientists Maria Merian, Mary Anning and Maria Mitchell to readers. Since each poem is about a page, this is another book you can use during one of those quick five-minute chunks of time.
That's it for this week. Come on back on December twenty-third, or right before you go back to school, for more tips on how your students can revise their writing and books you can point to so you don't have to answer the question, "What do I do now?"
Happy Creating, Happy Teaching and Happy Holidays!  Concord Writing Group Some of you will recognize this post. I originally wrote it in May of 2018 for the Epic Eighteen blog. Since then, I've presented this topic at MRA and nErDcampNNE and nErDcampLI. Authors and teachers find it helpful, so I want to share it here. On December 13th and 23rd, I'll post the second half of the presentation which I've never blogged about before. It's geared toward educators. So looking forward to sharing it here with you! 10 drafts ago 100 Bugs! featured five damselfly species and five dragonfly species. I’ve always loved dragonflies, and I was fascinated when I discovered damselflies were a different species than dragonflies. Why weren’t there any children’s books about the differences between the species? I thought I’d write one. My writing group convinced me more insect variety would make the story pop. 9 drafts ago 100 Bugs! featured cosmos instead of yarrow. But farrow and yarrow sounds so much better than cosmos and yarrow! My writing group also pointed out that all the other rhymes really worked, but cosmos and farrow just didn’t, even if I really wanted it to. After all, I love fuschia and pale pink cosmos. There had to be a way to work them into this book. But since there aren’t any insects called gizmos, at least not that I know of, I had to weed out the cosmos and plant yarrow. Then, Suzanne Kaufman worked her magic!  Suzanne's gorgeous yarrow. 8 drafts ago 100 Bugs! featured two dragonfly species, two damselfly species, two butterfly species, two bumblebee species, ladybugs and lightning bugs. Walkingsticks, leafhoppers, spittlebugs and katydids weren’t in the picture. When Susan Dobinick, the original FSG editor who eventually acquired 100 Bugs!, first contacted me, she told me she wanted me to revise and include ten different insects. She also stipulated that I definitely had to include the bug all the kids liked, then she blanked on the name. Thank goodness “walkingstick” came to her before the end of the conversation because I had no idea what bug she was talking about. All of my favorite bugs were already in the book! She also said she wanted scientific back matter for the ten different plants and the ten different insects. Finally, she acknowledged that I had a full-time teaching job and a family, but told me she needed the revision within a month’s time. Did I panic? Maybe a tiny bit, but becoming a published writer was a goal I’d been working toward for twelve years. I was willing to go to any length to do what needed to be done. So, I researched a couple of hours before work and a couple of hours after work each day. A month later there were ten different bugs, and back matter for all the insects and flowers. 7 drafts ago 100 Bugs! only featured a boy, not a girl. But that changed when editor Janine O’Malley brought Suzanne Kaufman on board to illustrate the book. Not only did the boy gain the cutest little sister ever, he also scored a dog all in the same draft! Happy boy!   A New Beginning 6 drafts ago 100 Bugs! started with the walkingstick spread. It’s true. I swear it. I know it’s hard to believe that the super cute opening spread with the brother and sister in bed didn’t exist, but that’s the truth. Originally, the title page had the brother and sister leaving the house. The old title page resembled the current walkingstick spread. But Suzanne had already come up with the gorgeous sunrise and sunset end papers. So, Janine wanted the story to start with the kids waking up. I reached out to Melissa Stewart, April Prince and Joannie Duris to help me brainstorm the verse. We sent emails back and forth, but nothing seemed quite right. So, I went to bed. When I rose with the sun the next morning, the phrase, “Explorers, explorers rising with the sun,” streamed into my head and a new beginning dawned. 5 drafts ago 100 Bugs! A Counting book ended with the lightning bug spread.   But that was before we started with the explorers in bed. The beginning has to hold the end of the book. So, I wrote the “Hip! Hip! Hooray!” spread so that Suzanne could showcase the explorers back in bed at the end of their day. 4 drafts ago 100 Bugs! didn’t include the brother and sister holding the book 100 Bugs! in their hands. That was all Suzanne and Janine’s idea. That’s the best part about collaborating on a book with other people. Their ideas and modifications create a much better product than it would have been had they not been involved in the book. 3 drafts ago 100 Bugs! A Counting Book was titled 100 Bugs Out and About. Yeah, my original title was playful, but it didn’t emphasize the mathematical concepts in the book enough. So, we tried some other titles that were way too mathematical: 100 Bugs! 10 Ways to Count to 10 or 100 Bugs! Counting by tens to 100 or 100 Bugs! 10 groups of 10. Finally, Janine and the marketing department suggested 100 Bugs! A Counting Book—an inviting, but not confusing name. 2 drafts ago 100 Bugs! counted by tens on each spread. But that didn’t work because there was no way to illustrate all those bugs on each spread. So, I came up with the idea to create a single spread near the end of the book that would feature all 100 bugs! Janine liked the idea and passed it onto Suzanne. The first draft of that spread didn’t work because it alternated between a line of illustrated bugs and a line of text counting by tens. It was hard to see the number of bugs growing. So, I put the spread up on a SMARTboard at school to see my teaching colleagues’, Kristin Milton, Pam Trefry and Teresa Zuckerman reactions. They looked as confused as I felt.  But, as always, they had a solution—move all the text to the left-hand side, the verso, and move all the insects to the right-hand side, the recto. It was a great solution but how could I explain it to Janine and Suzanne? I decided to draw up a mock spread. I copied and pasted the counting by tens lines into one document, printed them and glued them down onto the left-hand side of a piece of graph paper. Then, to save time and because I’m not the world’s best artist to say the least, I used exes to represent the bugs in the array on the right-hand side of the book.  Then, I emailed it to Janine who emailed it to Suzanne. Somehow I hadn’t communicated clearly to Janine that the exes were supposed to represent fully drawn bugs. So, when I saw the new spread, it had all the text on the left-hand side and 100 exes on the right… oops!  I laughed out loud and explained what I had meant. The third time worked, and Suzanne created a gorgeous spread.  1 draft ago 100 Bugs! didn’t feature any perched damselflies. What’s the big deal? Who cares, right? Well remember back in the beginning I told you that I wanted to write a book that distinguished between damselflies and dragonflies? Well, one of the easiest ways to tell them apart is to look at the wings of a perched dragonfly or damselfly. If they’re straight and open, you’re looking at a dragonfly. However, if they’re partially or completely closed, you’re looking at a damselfly. That’s the story of how one damselfly came to perch on the edge of the wishing well. It’s also the story of how 100 Bugs! A Counting Book transformed from a manuscript in my computer to a book one can hold in her hands.  In my last post, Brutally Honest: Opening Up in the Classroom and on the Page, I talked about tips authors gave for creating characters readers can root for at nErDcampLI. While I thoroughly enjoyed that session, it wasn’t my favorite session of the day. The organizers of nErDcampLI had the fantastic idea to start the day with four nErDtalks. JoEllen McCarthy and Kristen Picone explained that they decided to begin with these inspirational speeches after attending a different nErDcamp. By now you probably have guessed that the nErDtalks were my favorite part of the day.  JoEllen McCarthy gets nErDcampLI attendees ramped up for the day. Author and middle school educator Karuna Riazi started us off with her talk, “Who Do We Welcome Home?” She talked about how she is probably the only person in her generation who has never read Harry Potter even though she knows she’s a Hufflepuff. Even though Harry Potter is a fantastic series, she discussed the fact that many people from diverse backgrounds had to make their own home in Harry Potter because they couldn’t find themselves depicted on J.K. Rowling’s pages.  Karuna Riazi author of THE GAUNTLET and THE BATTLE. Ms. Riazi asked the room full of educators and authors who we are making a home for in our books and in our classrooms. As authors, who are we including in our pages? As educators, do we have literature that represents students from various racial, religious, socioeconomic, gender diverse and neurodiverse backgrounds? Are we taking the time to make sure we know how to pronounce students names? Then, she showed a photo of the students she welcomes home every day.  Karuna Riazi and her students. After Ms. Riazi, author and illustrator Lita Judge took the stage. She challenged the educators in the room to provide all sorts of windows for students to enter the world of writing. Ms. Judge shared that she entered the world of writing through her artwork. Are we welcoming all learners in our classroom, or are we only creating homes for students who have strong verbal/linguistic skills?
Next up was the unforgettable, inimitable Charles Smith Jr. I am embarrassed to say I had no idea who he was before last Saturday, but I’ll always remember him now. His performance of his biographical poem filled the room with electric energy. He pointed out that when he was a child it was hard for him to find people who looked like him in books. Mr. Smith has spent his life creating books that feature African American people so that other African Americans will be able to see themselves portrayed in picture books. Today in my class, we used Brick by Brick to talk about again-and-again moments. Throughout the book, Smith focuses on the hands of the various people who built the original White House.
Emma Otheguy closed the session. She focused on what we are welcoming home instead of who we are welcoming home. Ms. Otheguy pointed out that when we fund one-on-one technology for each student, but we don’t have money for books or to staff libraries that we are sending a strong message that technology counts and books and librarians don’t matter. By the way, I blogged about Ms. Otheguy's novel, Silver Meadows Summer, on August 1st, 2019.  Emma Otheguy asks the audience to consider what materials we are making homes for in our classrooms and in our schools. I find myself thinking about these questions throughout the school day. What could I be doing to make all the various types of learners in my classroom feel more at home? How can I make more space for empathy, compassion and inclusion so that there’s less space for distance, judgement and exclusion?
The answers aren’t being delivered overnight in tidy packages. No, the answers come at various times throughout the day. Sometimes they come at inconvenient times. Change is rarely convenient, but it’s usually necessary. |
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