Some of your colleagues have taken the opportunity to share some "small wonders" that have occurred recently in their schools. This newsletter column spotlights those happenings Click here to pass on the good news!

 

Taking the excitement back….

Springdale coaches recapped with colleagues at the beginning of the school year their experiences in writing at the 2006 Cornerstone Institute, setting the stage for a professional development day focused on memoir writing.  (See the newsletter article entitled “Memoir Writing: PD.”)

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SPRINGDALE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
FAMILY FUN AND LEARNING NIGHT K-2
A plan you can execute with your parents

(If you want to read about how the successful evening went, click here and you can read about it from our last newsletter.)

Teaching Intentions and Student Outcomes:

• Standard 3.1 Students use descriptive, narrative, expository, persuasive and poetic modes. 

  • 3.1b write to delight the imagination
• Standard 3.2 Students prepare publish and/or present work appropriate to audience, purpose and task. 
  

WILF- you are to look at your ordinary object through a poet’s eye and come up with a poem about that object.

Must-come up with 3 poetic ideas, write them on sentence strips and start arranging them to make a poem

Should-come up with 4-5 poetic ideas, write them on sentence strips, arrange them and paste them onto chart paper

Could-come up with 5 poetic ideas, write them on sentence strips, arrange them, paste them onto chart paper and then write the poem on the card to keep in your family poem album.  

Essential Questions:
How can I see this like a poet instead of like a scientist?

 

Getting Started: materials should be set up to coincide with your room
Supplies needed: paper, pencils, markers, glue sticks, photo albums, sentence strips, chart paper for poem,  poem on over head, flower parts, rocks, 1st grade property items, clipboards, overhead projector, 3 pine cones or feathers, 3 pencil sharpeners easels, index cards
General information- kindergarten-flowers (gym)-shelly and sue
                                      First grade-property items (media center)-cami and mary
                                    Second grade-rocks (auditorium)- Marci

Crafting:

6:15(SHOW WILF CHART ON OVERHEAD)
Tonight we are going to see the world in different, fresh and unusual ways.  Tonight we will see the world like poets.   Make your anchor chart.  Good poets……….

6:20 Lets’s look at this pencil sharpener.  What I see is a box, a machine that makes my pencil sharp.  But Zoe Ryder White wrote a poem about a pencil sharpener in a new fresh new way.  Put this poem on overhead:

Pencil sharpener
I think there are a hundred bees inside the pencil sharpener
And they buzz
And buzz
And buzz
Until my point
Is sharp!

Explain how Zoe imagines that there are bees inside of the pencil sharpener making the pencil sharp instead of seeing it like a machine.  She is looking at the pencil sharpener in a new way.  That makes me see the sharpener in a new way and that is what poetry can do!

6:25 Look at the ceiling with a poet’s eyes.  Turn and talk to your family and tell them what you see as you look at the ceiling through a poet’s eyes.  (take 2 minutes and then ask 2 or 3 families to share their ideas that you heard while you walked around)  Then read Ceiling by Zoe Ryder White

The Ceiling
Is the sky
For the classroom.
Ask someone to explain how Zoe saw the ceiling.

6:30 Tonight we will look at objects in new ways and then turn those ideas into poems.

Hold up a pinecone, or feather.  With your family discuss what you see through a poet’s eyes when you look at it.

6:32 After 2 minutes.  Take some of the families ideas and write it on sentence strips or pre pick some families with good ideas to write them on sentence strips.  Then play with the strips to make it into a free verse poem. 

Book:  The Ceiling, The Pencil Sharpener by Zoe Ryder White
Vocabulary Introduced: Poet’s eyes, free verse poem
Anchor Charts Created:  Good Poets:   Take ordinary objects and look at them in a different way.

Composing Meaning: 

Before sending everyone off, reiterate WILF and the anchor chart
6:40 Depending on grade level, each family will be given an object, paper and pencil.  They are to brainstorm their ideas of looking at their object through a poet’s eyes.  Once they get a few ideas, they can get sentence strips.  They are to write the ideas on sentence strips, play with the order and make a poem.  When they have a poem they can get glue sticks and chart paper to glue it on.  Then write the poem on a index card to keep in their family poetry album.

Reflection:

7:15 We will restate that tonight we were looking at ordinary objects through poet’s eyes.  Poets don’t just look at special things, they look at ordinary things and tonight everyone was a poet.  A few families can share their poems or they can partner share with another family.  Mention that as a family they can redo this activity with any object and write their family poem on an index card and place it in their family poem album. 

Upon exiting, each family gets ONE poetry book!!!!!!!

   

   

 

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CORNERSTONE IS…..