June 4

DAILY BLOG
A review of June 3, 2009.

Breakfast
•Miranda is our official overachiever for providing us with a detailed Daily Log and a scrumptious breakfast. The cereal and muffins started our day off right and you brought the best ice ever! (oops- no exclamation marks)
•Thank you Eston for initiating getting pizza for lunch and thanks again to our overachiever for organizing the delivery.
•We Signed Up for TDs.
•Brooke, you’re signed up for the morning of June 17.
•Specific times and dates are posted on the “Questions” board.
–Week 2
•Julie, Brandi, Sheila, Eston, and Miranda
–Week 3
•Dan, Ian, Cathy, Brooke, Charlene, Geary
–Week 4
•Debra, Sheri, Carol, Rachelle, Nena

Read Around
•Miranda- once again proving she is the official overachiever- leads the Read Around like a pro. Great idea about us giving a synopsis (it was not only helpful but also good practice for workshopping).
•Dan started the conversation off with suggesting we all read Graves, D. – Discover Your Own Literacy because it is very relevant to what we’re doing in this writing project. The article shares the epiphany that teachers can enjoy reading and writing along with their students.
•Cathy shared her experience with free writing in her Kindergarten class. She got the idea from Orientation and said that her students loved it when she shared her own free-writing.
•Carol and Cathy read Learning How to Teach Writing by Atwell, N. and shared how it talked about teachers moving away from their comfort zone of same old teaching and saw improvements.
•Carol discussed how teachers can get stuck in a style and may need to change it sometimes to be an effective teacher.
•“You need to know when to throw it away.”- Carol
•Rachelle was reminded of herself while reading, Listen to Teach by Graves, D..
•She gets to know her students very well because of her open ears.
•Recommends all of us to reread the bullet points on p. 85.
•Shares her technique of listening in the classroom- The Speaking Stone
•Brandi wondered if that would work with her future 3rd graders. Sheri explains how the technique could work with even 4th graders if you set the expectations high at the beginning of the year.
•Cathy uses the Learning Focus Strategy called Think-Pair-Share and has her Kindergartners share what their partner talked about instead of their own opinions to practice their listening skills.
•Brandi and Charlene read Delpit L.- Language, Diversity, and Learning to learn more about how to approach codeswitching in our classrooms.
•A lot of us seem to have diversity concerns in our classrooms.
•We all agreed that English is very complex.
•Ian mentioned how texting has become a popular writing language.
•Cathleen reminds us that for a lot of students, Standard English is only addressed at school and that Standard English gets the job- “culture with the capital.”
•We discussed technology with children. Food for Thought- Children are proficient with texting but never taught it. Why?
•The purpose of this Read Around was to get us in the Flash Drive to get an idea of what was there- it was successful.
•A recommended book to read about setting up writing- Breakthroughs by Amy Bauman and Art Peterson.

“We all have bunnies in our life.”
•Gary is our Time Keeper while Julie helped hold his thought.
•We learned that Penny has 8 children! (again with the exclamation mark)
Technology Tools
•Penny gave an excellent presentation of the New Literacys and shared her dinosaur phone experience. She’s a digital immigrant. Doheney feels more like a digital alien but claims she is digitally hopeful. What are you?
•Penny recommends the authors Wilhelm, Luke, and James Paul G.
•After a quote by Elliot Eisner, Tammy brags about having her picture taken with him. She also throws in that he remembers her well. She then questioned if that is a good thing.

•We learned that the NAEP reports national assessments on writing, reading, and math every four years. However, the pattern of results hasn’t really changed. These assessments help set the standards.
•Eston shared that the majority of incarcerated people read on a 4th grade level.
•Cathleen made a great point, “It costs more to incarcerate than to educate.”
•Eston also shared the literacy program she is forced to use at her school called the Dr. Sarah approach. The idea is to stretch children’s knowledge rather than build it up. Eston is not a fan.
•Carol mentions that teachers are often working so hard with the lower-end achievers that they don’t always challenge their higher kids enough.

•Penny shares a video on the Doll Experiment. We discovered that the majority of Black children chose the White dolls as the “good” ones and the “prettiest.” They chose the Black dolls as the “bad” ones. It was heartbreaking to see the little girl recognize herself in the Black doll after just labeling it as the “bad” one.
•On a more positive note, Good Morning America redid the experiment after Obama was elected and the results changed.

Technology
•Penny introduced many of us to
–Twitter- a way to stalk people
–Flixr- an online photo album
–Google Docs- ability to collaboratively work on documents without the annoyance of email attachments
–voicethread.com- a way to comment in different ways to a picture
–youthradio.com- public broadcasts created by kids
–trailfire.com- a way to make a collection of web pages and share collections
–visuwords.com- the coolest dictionary, thesaurus, etc. ever! (I can’t help it. I like exclamation marks.)
•Then we got to explore the different sites ourselves to help get over our tech fears.
•We passed around a hardcover book and a calendar filled with photos of Tami and Cathleen.

Schedule Changes
•Geary handled the changes very well.
•Cathleen mentioned pacing our writing pieces so we don’t get overwhelmed.
•We learn more about the Kudzu Writing Camp next Friday. Got a sneak peek at the flip cameras we’ll use.
•Talked more about the 3 published pieces. Reminder, they’ll be placed in an anthology for public viewing so be wary of personal pieces.
•Given freedom to work for 2 hours.

•We regrouped and talked about how we spent our time. Most of us are still improving our TDs.
•We were told that you can’t get out of Workshop- if you miss it, you need to participate through email.
•Cathleen shared her Tattle Bunny idea and her love for Middle Schoolers. Her words- “If it was up to me I would send them off to a colony like Lord of the Flies.” Followed by her “Duh, duh, duh” and “Robble, Robble, Robble” experiences.

•Tami shared a fabulous Haiku.
–“Ode to the yellow dog. He runs very (pause) fast…” Then a bunny came along so we didn’t get to hear the end.
•Cathleen also makes stuff up on the spot.
-Synopsis
-Strengths
-Suggestios
-The 3 “S” for Workshop
•Then we were off to work again.

Workshopping
•We regrouped to discuss feelings from the Writers and Responders.
•Overall, we seemed to agree that it was an uncomfortable but positive experience on both sides.
•Congratulations to Sheila for taking a risk and finding the poet in herself.
•Cathleen is proud of all of us for breaking out of our comfort zones.
•FYI, if you’re workshopping Miranda’s piece you may say “This line looks like crap.” but for the rest of us please phrase your negatives in the form of questions to spare hurt feelings.
•Carol wondered if Nena was just a good pretender behind her smile. Did we ever find out?
Discoveries
•Ian doesn’t think he’s had anyone explain his writing to him in person. It’s always just been written down on his papers.
•Tami snorts
•When you get married life ends and you stop traveling.
•What the heck is an “epigrammatic?”
•Tami chants a haiku about Chad Davidson, our visitor today.
•Things started getting too silly so we took a break.
Writing Marathon
•Mary and Shoney share their experience and prepare us for Friday’s trip to Bowton (Sorry, no idea how to spell that).
•Reminders:
–Go as a writer. Take the teacher out.
–Relax and have fun.
–The map is not the determiner.
–Need to Carpool (leaves UWG @ 9:00)
–Meet at Bowton Coffee Shop @ 9:30.
–Breakfast will be served there.
–Wear comfortable shoes.
–Bring water if needed.
–Bring a journal and a pen.
–No big bags.
–Return back to Coffee Shop between 12:00 and 12:30
•Shoney suggests taking ten minutes to stop and write or longer “If it blows your skirt up.”
National Writing Project website
•Cathleen shared some articles from the nwp site that made her think of some of us. Tons of great resources! You can even read about dead canoes.
The End
•We shared leftover pizza, packed up, and went home.

•Did you remember to bring your significant item today?

•Welcome Chad Davidson!