Part of the work of a Faculty Inquiry Group is to talk about what we do, the challenges and successes that we encounter when we adopt and adapt new teaching practices. Last spring, we "talked" through posters at the annual research symposium and we will do that again this spring, too. This past fall, though, without the symposium as our creative outlet, we had to come up with other ways of talking . The really terrific writing group, a collaboration between elementary and college faculty, chose...writing (!) and I am so delighted by the outcomes. Here is the first piece, by Dani Bozzuto. Enjoy!
Best,
Rachel
Flap Management
All of my teaching is planned for me--derived
directly from the Common Core, of course. I am allowed to teach what I am
handed because it is right and it is Common Core. This year my brain started to
wander. . . I started thinking. Thinking usually lands me in trouble. But my
thinking was that my students get to focus on one genre of writing at a time
(three a year). This means that all of the other amazing kinds of writing go
out the window: lists, poetry, songs, letters and some I can't even think about
right now. Free exploring writing across disciplines is non-existent. This year I decided to incorporate a
writer’s notebook into my first grade classroom so that my students are able to
freely explore other genres and disciplines of writing.
I introduced the notebook by having the students decorate
their own notebooks using magazines, pictures,
and fancy scrapbook paper. How fun, right?! We made our notebooks our own. Even
me. I went on afterwards to tell the kids that we get to choose what we write
about in these notebook. Science, social studies, poetry, songs, stories,
thoughts, etc. Basically, the options are
limitless, and I wanted them to get creative.
The first day I led with a poetry example of mine and then
released them to work on their own. I saw some very creative ideas. One student
wrote about how he and his father once saw an alien in a space ship. In the
space ship there was a flap covering the alien’s
face because he was wearing a helmet with an opening. I let this student share
this example with the class because of the creative flap idea. The kids went
crazy! They were so excited to see this kind of creativity. If you know first
graders, you know that things get big. Fast. Pretty soon everyone in the class
wanted to make a flap. . .two weeks of constant flap making. Constant scraps
all over the floor and tape strung around the room and craziness, and soon I started to see less writing and more flap
making, which is the opposite of what I wanted.
I panicked. Ahhh! I wanted my students to write more and write with more
creativity. I was so frustrated with this mess of paper and mess of what
appeared to be off-task students. What am I going to do? Abandon ship? Lecture?
Call the custodian?
Luckily, our faculty inquiry
meeting came just in time. After brainstorming and brainstorming with some very
brilliant colleagues, a suggestion was made to reconsider my angle. Instead of
criticizing the flaps, embrace them. I got back on my horse and made a plan.
These kids will learn that real authors use flaps and have a purpose for them.
The multiple flap books we checked out and devoured taught us how to
appropriately use a flap in a productive way--the way authors do. We discovered
this purpose together. After this lesson I went to a students and asked, “Tell
me why you are a using a flap here. What's
the purpose?” She replied with, “Because I want
to be an author.” Problem solved. Flaps are
managed.
Over the course of this year we have had several mini-lessons on other genres of writing. One of the
biggest hits was list writing. We explored a couple of different kinds:
shopping lists, things I love, and what I
will be buying my family for Christmas. After this lesson,
I noticed a table of students taking this and running with it by creating “A
Love List” which consisted of almost all of our classroom family (names copied
from the word wall, boom!) and their families. Impressive that they are using
their resources and everyone is involved and writing.
We also discussed writing music. One of my students had
fallen in love with several different jams this year. Here
are a few examples of music he copied down from memory: Bon Jovi, Away In a Manger and The Little Drummer Boy. He has taken it
upon himself to share this with several adults in our building at recess and
feels very proud of these songs he has written.
Writing notebooks based on the book by Ralph Fletcher has
been a phenomenal way of integrating different genres of writing into my
classroom. This is something I will continue to do every year with my students
and hopefully something they can carry with them throughout their whole lives.
