We're Back

It was great to get back to work today. We picked up right where we left off with Absolutely Almost.

I am enjoying how this books hops around. You hear about Albie at school. Then you are on to hear about Albie at home. Then a quick check in with Albie and his babysitter. You never know exactly what is going to happen next. Even with all this hopping around I think we are starting to see the big picture. As you read, Lisa Graff makes it hard not to root for Albie.

In writing we introduced one of our last books by Cynthia Rylant. 

Let's Go Home is one of my favorite Rylant books. It is a bit longer than the other titles that we have read but the extra text gives you a chance to really enjoy the beauty of Rylant's words. In this book Rylant walks you through a house. From the porch to the kitchen to the family room and even to the bathroom, Rylant describes the house. 

It was great to see the students figure out how they could use this technique. Some students described their house the way that Rylant describes the house in this book. Other students took the idea of going from space to space but moved the setting away from a house. A few of my favorites were a student describing a grocery store going from aisle to aisle the same way Rylant went room to room. Another student described football going position to position. We are getting close to giving the students the chance to decide what idea they will turn into their Rylant-ish project. I cannot wait to see what they pick.

In Social Studies we looked at some of the mounds of Ohio.

We asked the students to infer why/how the early Ohio tribes built these mounds. After the groups had made some inferences we had them read an article about the Mound Builders. Students highlighted some of the theories that archaeologists have about these mounds.

In reading we started to look at nonfiction text structures. 

As we look at these text structures we are going to read articles, look at maps, watch videos, and look at anything else we can find about the drought in California. As we research the drought, we will find articles that have these text structures that we are exploring. When we feel the class has a good grasp of the text structures and they have become experts about the drought, we will ask them to write an article using one of the structures. 

It was a great first day on a Wednesday.

Naming

I am sorry about last night but I could not find time to post about our day.

Today we worked on naming things. Giving something a name is important. Once it is named you can recognize it. Naming the device also allows you and others to know what you are talking about when you use the name. You also feel like you have some ownership over what you have named. Today I wanted to take some time to name some of the things we have been noticing in Cynthia Rylant's writing.

One of my favorite things that we have noticed is that Cynthia Rylant loves to use "ands." In many of her sentences she will have a list of three or more items. We know that usually a sentence like this would have commas and end with one and before the last item. Rylant does not always follow this rule. She loves to create lists of colors or descriptive details that go on and on and on without a comma.

Today we looked at a few of these "and" sentences from Rylant. I asked the class what she was doing. They were able to tell me she was using lots of ands instead of using commas in a list. Then I asked why she might be using this technique. The class told me they thought she was doing it to exaggerate. By using all the ands the list seems longer. It just keeps going and going and going and going. You start to realize this is a long list. Finally I asked the class what they might name this strategy.

Both classes came up with some great names. We had The Andanator 3000, 5 Miles of Ands, On and On and On, and so many other names. My homeroom finally settled on the name 5 Miles of Ands and Mrs. Sanford's homeroom settled on The Andanator 3000. Now in class we have a name for this technique. Students can run up to me and say Mr. Tarr I found The Andanator 3000 in the book I am reading or even better Mr. Tarr I just used a 5 Miles of Ands in my writing.

You can find the sheet we used to name this technique in our writing folder. We also named another Rylant technique that we have been noticing in her writing. You might want to know these names so when you are asked if you have ever written or found The Andanator 3000, you will know exactly what is going on.

Hope you are all having a great week.

Blank

I have been trying to figure out what to write about for the last few hours. It is not like we did nothing today. A lot happened. We started to talk about genres (our focus for the week). In our read aloud Albie was a hero. He stood up for a girl who was being picked on. He was rewarded with a little red gummy bear and a new friend. I really fell in love with the book today.

In writing we read the book Tulip Sees America by Cynthia Rylant. It was an amazing read. The class noticed the way that Rylant organized the text. A simple sentence at the beginning of a section that she was about to describe. Then of course her amazing writing. Then the section would end with a new version of that simple sentence that started the section. The class went out and wrote. The writing was so Rylant-ish. Students were trying this new trick we learned today or the "and" sentences we have noticed or the close echo. All these things that we have been noticing in Rylant's writing are starting to add up. I cannot wait to see the finished project that comes out of all this work.

In Social Studies we moved from talking about the Paleo tribe to the Archaic tribe. We are going to compare and contrast the two groups. Today the students worked on reading an article about the Archaic. They used two highlighters to code the text. One color was for all the things that were the same about the tribes and the other was for all things that were different.

I guess that is pretty good for a day and a blog post. I hope you are all having a great start to your week.

Synthesizing

This week we have continued to work on synthesizing. Synthesizing is the idea that our thinking needs to change based on what we see around us. In a book the text makes our thinking change. This week Ms. Cavallaro has taught some great lessons to help the students understand and practice synthesizing.

Today was my favorite lesson. Ms. Cavallaro showed the class a painting by Alexandre Hogue from his Erosion Series.

When we looked at the painting, we looked at four different quadrants before we looked at the picture as a whole. The first quadrant we saw was the top left. Most of the class including myself saw an ocean scene. Then we looked at the second quadrant and the third quadrant and then the fourth quadrant. The students wrote down how their thinking changed each time that we looked at a different part of the painting. Finally we showed the class the whole picture and they wrote again about how their thinking changed now that they could see the big picture.

I loved the lesson especially the connection that Ms. Cavallaro made at the end. She talked about a character from Half a Chance. In the beginning of the book this character did not seem like a good character. As we kept reading the book our thinking about this character changed as we noticed different ways the character interacted with the characters. Finally at the end of the book we were able to look back and look at this character's whole picture. We realized she was not a bad person she just had made some mistakes. The way we thought about this character was just like the way we looked at the painting today. 

If you are reading at home you can practice synthesizing using some of these thinking stems:

• Now I understand...
• I'm changing my mind about...
• I used to think ________, but now I think...
• My new thinking is...
• I'm beginning to think...

Hope you are all having a great week.

The Rocking Chair

The rocking chair is my favorite part of my room. The rocking chair I have is older than everyone in the room. It has seen better days. An arm is falling off. We try to fix it but it pops out every single time. The rocking chair was handed down to me from the teacher who retired before I took this job 14 years ago. Looking back it was the perfect gift.

The rocking chair is where I read aloud each day. The class sits down in front and writes down their thinking about the book we are sharing. I love the conversations that go on during read aloud. We give the students time to turn and talk with each other. They share their thinking and bounce ideas of each other. Then they share their ideas with me. I am always amazed at the thinking that students have during read aloud.

The rocking chair is also where we come to share our writing. Nothing is better than listening to the writing that the authors in our room create. Today was one of those days where the writing blows you away. We had looked at the book Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant.

This is one of my favorite books from Cynthia Rylant. It contains such amazing little bits of writing. One of my favorite little tricks that she uses in the texts is something the class called echo sentences. Here is an example of an echo sentence. It is not the best example from the book but it was all I could find tonight:

The wind is brushing his borrowed head and the sun is warming his borrowed hands and clouds are floating across his button-borrowed eyes.

While looking at this sentence plus some others, the class realized that Rylant echoed some words or groups of words on the page. On the example above you can see how she echoed the word borrowed throughout the text.

The class saw enough and new it was time to go out and give it a try. The results were exciting. I got stories about a pumpkin and a turtle and a toad and so many different ideas. Each piece of writing had an echo sentence or maybe two. 

I hope you get a chance to look at some of the writing in these writer's notebooks. It makes your day to see these amazing authors and how they play with words.

Hope you are having a great week.

New Writing Teacher

For the last few days and over the next few weeks we will have a new writing teacher. Her name is Cynthia Rylant. She is the amazing author of some fabulous children's books. Here are a few of my favorite:

The class is going to study Mrs. Rylant and notice what she does as an author. They have already noticed that in the book The Relatives Came she used a circular ending (the first page was the same as the last) and she used a lot of ands in sentences like this one: 

They had an old station wagon that smelled like a real car, and in it they put an ice chest full of soda pop and some boxes of crackers and some bologna sandwiches, and up they came from Virginia.

I love this sentence. It breaks the rules but sounds amazing. It has been great to see the class recreate sentences just like this one.

Our students have also noticed that Mrs. Rlyant will thread a line through her story like in the book When I Was Young In The Mountains. When we read the book Long Night Moon, they noticed that she wrote about each month and started each page with In December or In November. 

I love these two books and I have loved seeing the class try out these Rylant-ish moves. We have had stories with the thread When I Was Young In Lebanon or When I Was Young On The Football Field. We have also had stories that mirrored the idea of Long Night Moon. Instead of talking about the moon, though, students are walking me through the holidays of the year or a vacation they took to New York.

The students are getting better and better and better at the idea of taking techniques from an author and making it their own. It is so much fun to watch them stand on the shoulders of other authors (a phrase a colleague once shared with me). I cannot wait to see their next writing project where they get to use all of these ideas that they are borrowing from Cynthia Rylant. 

I hope you are having a great week.

A New Book

Today we started our new read aloud book Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff.

I love getting into a new read aloud. We get to meet new characters. We get to meet a new author. We get to get excited about another book. I also love this book because I have only read the first chapter. This book is a new book. It just came out this year and it has a chance to win the Newbery Medal. I love sharing new books with the class. Something they have not seen or heard about from their friends. It allows the students to make up their own mind about the book. Plus it gives us a chance to read aloud the Newbery Medal award winning book before the medal is given. The last two years I have been lucky enough to have read the book aloud before the medal was awarded. 

When these books were announced, my classes felt so cool that they already knew about the book that won this important award. It was like we had found the coolest thing before it became cool. Hopefully this year we will get to experience that feeling once again.

Today we also used a new reading strategy with our article of the week. I think this strategy is called a graffiti wall. The whole idea is that students share their thinking about an article they read with their group. Here are some pictures of the graffiti walls that some of the groups created. It is amazing to see this thinking going on about text. Each student used a different color highlighter to mark section of the articles where they wanted to share their thinking. Then others in the group would add their thinking to that part. I loved all the colors and the discussions that were happening on the paper.

Hope your week is off to a great start!