OIK Tuesday: hand-ear coordination

This afternoon the Mighty Minnows and I spent a lot of time considering our five senses, and there was a fantastic unexpected development when we closed our eyes and used our noses to smell the aromatic Mr. Sketch marker I grabbed.  It happened to be light green, which smells like mint.  Bertrand thought it was toothpaste, Karina thought it smelled like bubblegum, and Janie surprised me by naming it peppermint right away (or maybe not, since her family is Thai). 

As we discussed minty things, I realized that I could walk them right out into our lovelier-all-the-time school courtyard where parent volunteers have planted a Sensory Garden full of herbs.  We danced to High Five's "Five Senses" song and then we lined up and went--the real deal, only two minutes away! (Go Outdoor Education Committee.)

Cora had suggested basil when I asked if anyone knew what plant those minty smells and flavors came from, so first we all sniffed a leaf of basil.  I was happy to find a great clump of flowering mint, so that everyone (all 16--am I lucky, or what?) could have a sprig to crush and sniff and nibble and take home.  On the way back to the classroom we became the Minty Minnows instead of the Mighty Minnows. : )

Later, after the bus riders departed, the rest of us were singing requests--classics like "Twinkle Twinkle" and of course "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Tonya had already taught us the sign language version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider, so I wasn't too surprised when Suzee made this announcement:

"I can sing the Alphabet Song in silent language."

*******************

Listen with Your Eyes

Secret clutched in a closed fist:
If you wait one pinky moment
Letting sounds slide towards your thumb,
Eventually they perch like birds on a fence,
Nesting two together on a quiet egg
Till the egg cracks and a beak of song breaks through

teach like Ernest Hemingway

You bet I'm a charter member of Students First.  I agree generally with its whole platform and I admire the straight-talking leadership of Michelle Rhee (on this project at least), but the name of the organization does just say it all:  the needs of students--that's children and young people we're talking about--should come before the convenience of adults or the demands of a bureaucratic system.

I got an email from Students First yesterday with an intriguing subject line:  "Do you write like Hemingway?"  It read:

"It's said Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story using just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' He reportedly declared it his greatest work. Words are powerful tools — for learning, for inspiration, for transformation. When we choose our words with precision, we can say so much. It is with Hemingway as our inspiration that I write to you with a fun challenge: Describe what it means to be a great teacher in just six words."

Well, that's a straight-up poetry challenge, and my mind started percolating--but just like I spike my basic drip coffee with a layer of cinnamon, my current reading seeped in and flavored my six-word essay.  I'm reading Drive by Daniel H. Pink, which is all about what motivates humans of all ages, extrinsically and intrinsically.  He comes at the question of motivation mainly from a business/work perspective, but of course the research he cites and the new "operating system" he proposes--dubbed Motivation 3.0--are entirely applicable to education settings.  Here's the conclusion Pink reaches by the end of his exploration of the three elements of Motivation 3.0, which are autonomy, mastery and purpose.

"A CENTRAL IDEA of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.

The scientists who study human motivation, several of whom we’ve encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account of both human performance and the human condition. The truths they’ve revealed are simple, yet powerful. The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—which we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

Bringing our businesses in sync with these truths won’t be easy. Unlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder. And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the motivation gap anytime soon, if it weren’t for this: The science confirms what we already know in our hearts.

We know that human beings are not merely smaller, slower, bettersmelling donkeys trudging after that day’s carrot. We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It’s an affirmation of our humanity."

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Chapter 6. 

That's certainly how things look to me.  So I submitted my six-word essay on what it means to be a great teacher, and I submitted it although I know it's probably a bit too "spiritual" to win the iPad prize, even for Students First. 

Love says, "Welcome."  Faith says, "Grow."


I wonder if I successfully captured what I mean.  If you're a teacher or a librarian, I invite you to respond with your own six-word essay.  The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

OIK Tuesday: guts

Back before Thanksgiving, when I asked the children to list what they were thankful for, I went for variety by specifying some categories:  a person, a food, something in nature, something at school, something you like to play, a part of your body.   Talia suprised me by writing "my intinestinse" (which, unlike the average 5-year-old, she felt confident to spell independently).

Clearly intestines remain of great interest to her.  Having read Frederick all last week, we are looking forward to a visit from real pet mice and listing what we know and what we wonder about mice.  On our KNOW chart, Talia's statement reads, "Mice have intestines."  On our WONDER chart, her question reads, "Do mice have intestines?" She has a sense, very vague, of what intestines are for.  But I think she could use some further information.

I'm working on a mouse intestines poem for Talia--do you have one too?

twenty-four doors

Maybe it's a teacher thing, or maybe it's just me:  I am inordinately excited by the arrival of a new rug for my classroom.  (We've made do with unsatisfactory ruglike arrangements for two months.)  Our meeting area--where so much talking and listening, teaching and learning go on--is defined by The Carpet, so how the carpet looks and feels is important.

Isn't my new rug beautiful?  It's so beautiful I had to write a poem about it.

Twenty-Four Doors

The new rug in my room

is one inch deep,

a layer of soil

made of snowflake and moon.

I lie down by a river
of lightning and leaves.
My arms span a sky
like a mine full of gold;
turtles in treetops nibble my toes.
A cloudburst of apples

showers my head.

I tickle sharks

at the rainbow’s end,

feed the bluebird of gravity

acorns and sun.

They can keep me inside,

but the rug on my floor has

twenty-four doors that lead

into the wild.

Heidi Mordhorst 2011

all rights reserved


Head to Jama's Alphabet Soup for the usual smorgasbord of poetry dishes, autumn edition, and don't forget to stop by again on Tuesday evening if you'd like a poetry challenge!

picking the apple of analysis

It's all about apples in Room 144 right now, with a little leaf work on the side and pumpkins on their way.  This is despite the fact that our new Curriculum 2.0 (which fancies itself rotten, as they say in England) is integrated not around something concrete and interesting for young children such as apples, but around "Thinking and Academic Success Skills." 

There is certainly no doubt that kindergarteners can begin to understand Big Ideas such as analysis and collaboration, but I'm not sure it's very productive, in the third week of school, to ask 5-year-olds a Unifying Question such as "How do identifying and describing attributes help you understand your world and organize your ideas?"  More mystifying to me is that we the teachers seem to be DIScouraged from developing these eleven Thinking and Academic Skills through projects or topics that are thematically integrated and relevant to children's experience of what's happening outside school--you know, such as apples.  Why not do both?

But it's Poetry Friday and I must step down off my apple crate to allow Robert Frost to speak, literally.  The poem below (which is nearly suitable for kindergarten, but not quite) can be heard in Frost's own growly tones at The Poetry Foundation website.  Robert Frost knew how to keep it concrete for sure.

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

~ Robert Frost

More "keeping it real through poetry" at Great Kid Books with Mary Ann today, where she highlights April's Poetry Tag collection and sets the stage for the new and thrilling p*tag collection for teen readers, now available here!  Download the divine!

we're so brave, we're so smart

The Mighty Minnows of Room 144 are almost literally splishing and splashing down the hall this week due to the many inches of rain that have fallen here, and in two weeks of school they have not been out to recess ONCE.  (Long story; must get to writing that grant to fund 20 pairs of galoshes and 20 ponchos so we can go out in all weathers).

The "big song" we're learning is one both my own children sang in Kindergarten with the wonderful Miss Cook, The Sun Inside Us. (Scroll down to play a sample.)  It's by Sarah Pirtle, from an album called The Wind Is Telling Secrets, and we hope Sarah doesn't mind that we've changed an important word in the chorus from "strong"--which for little children implies muscle power only--to "brave," which is a fine character trait that even the most physically challenged can develop. 

It's just a song, and it's not like they made it up themselves, but I can hardly express how it feels to hear 5-year-olds assert, in sincere and joyful voice (and of course, with motions) that they were born brave and smart, with loving hearts.  I know that singing those words rubs off on them.  The poetry's darn good too.

The Sun Inside Us
Sarah Pirtle

Chorus:
Derry-down a-diddle-um-day!
So we are and so we’ll stay.
We're so brave; we're so smart;
We were born with a loving heart.

We were born with the sun inside us,
We were born with the mystery moon.
We were born with the stars to guide us,
We were born with the blackbird's tune.

We were born with the river's turning.
We were born with the river's run.
We were born with the wild bird's yearning.
We were born with the blue jay's fun!

We were born with the strength of hickory,
We were born with the seagull’s sight.
We were born with cells of crystal,
We were born with the rainbow light.

You're so brave; you're so smart;
You were born with a loving heart.


Katie's hosting Poetry Friday at Secrets and Sharing Soda today.  Bubble on over and fizz!

"I am ewnec"

The poetry version of last week's first-grade effort to grasp character traits...

On the outside, you can see my physical traits:
"I have tanish-pinkish sgin."
"I have krly eyelashs."
"my body is tall"
"my hair is shtrayt"
My words and actions show my character traits on the inside:
"I am a little shiy."
"I am prsistent."
"I take care of my frands"
"I have lost of ideas"
"I am ewnec. there is only one me in the wrld."

And an open letter to colleagues:

As we survey our reading asessment results and think about how best to meet the needs of children in our classes, I want to raise a few points that I think sometimes get insufficient attention in our “data-driven instructional model."

The students we work with are 5, 6 and 7 years old. They are all, to a greater or lesser degree, egocentric, and they live in the here and now of their daily experience. They come to us as children first, and no matter what their academic ability they share the fundamental needs we all have: the need for security and comfort, the need to be known (and yes, loved). That’s partly why we have chosen this job, because we’re good at making little children feel at home in our classrooms--their home away from home.

Our students come to us second as individual learners. Each one has his or her strengths and weaknesses, and part of being a good learner is growing into a sense of where you have the power to help others along and where you might need to ask for help. We create heterogeneous classes because that’s what the world is like, and part of a good education is learning to be an effective participant in a diverse community. (In fact, I believe that’s the whole point of public education in a democracy, which is why, even as a reading teacher, I tend to start my planning with the social studies curriculum in mind).

Third on the list, our students come to us as readers--and now they all have a nice fresh label attached. In my first grade class, for example, I have two boys who are alike in many ways—mischievous, not as intrinsically motivated to “do school” as we might wish, and within 6 months of each other in age (which is quite a lot, really, when you’re only 72 months old). They have both moved from Level 5 to Level 8 since the beginning of the year, but I will not be putting them in the same guided reading group, because they are very different learners.

One is wired to decode pretty well, but he has a hard time focusing on the ideas behind the words, and in general his problem-solving skills are not strong. He needs a lot of support in reading for meaning, and a slower pace will also be a benefit as he struggles with some unfortunate family circumstances. I’ll put him with the Level 5/6/7’s because there he can have a chance to shine a little and the comprehension demands will be manageable.

The other boy is much more attentive to life generally, more observant, has shown himself ready and willing to rise to a challenge as long as it wasn’t actual reading. However, he’s been very conscious of his struggles in comparison with classmates, and now that he’s making some noticeable progress, this is the moment to put him with a snappier group of thinkers, to capitalize on his competitive tendency and to maximize his growing investment in becoming a reader. I’ll be putting him with the 10/11/12’s--for now.

And then there are the books. We know that all Level 8 books are not equal, and just because both boys read the Level 8 fiction selection successfully doesn’t mean they’ll do as well with every other book labeled 8. So it’s part of my job to choose books that will be “just right” for each of these boys labeled Level 8, and those “just right” books may be Level 6’s or Level 10’s or not leveled at all. They may be books that speak to each boy where he is right now, like Goggles! by Ezra Jack Keats, which they both love because of the way Peter and Archie put one over on the big boys. This book is challenging for each boy in different ways, but they are both persevering in reading it because it’s meaningful and because it has become part of our classroom culture.

By now you may have guessed what point I'm getting at. Because our students are children first, who need to feel at home in the culture of a classroom (a culture that we work hard to build), individual learners second, and labeled, leveled readers last, I want to advocate against moving Kindergarten and 1st grade children around at this point in the year.

I feel strongly that any instructional gains we may earn by moving a child into a group with other Level X’s are likely to be cancelled out by the emotional upheaval of moving that child out of one classroom culture (that culture that we so carefully build in community with our students) and into another.

Of course, there are always reasons to make considered exceptions, but I think we mistakenly give up some of our professional power if we allow the handheld assessment device to determine a child’s daily experience of school. I believe in the usefulness of data, and I believe that teachers and children are more than interchangeable pegs in a big pegboard. Grouping by reading level tends to turn us all into pegs.

With respect for all you do in the classroom,
Heidi

a certain kind of poetry

"CONCLUSION [OF THE MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION]:

...because we find that the local board has failed to provide any rationale for its decision, we reverse and remand [the appeal case of Global Garden Public Charter School ] so that the local board may reconsider its decision in light of the rulings we have made in this case. We expect that such reconsideration shall occur within 90 days of the date of this decision."

another way to pose the question

Who Am I?

The trees ask me,
And the sky,
And the sea asks me
Who am I?

The grass asks me,
And the sand,
And the rocks ask me
Who I am.

The wind tells me
At nightfall,
And the rain tells me
Someone small.

Someone small
Someone small
But a piece
of
it
all.

~ Felice Holman

question for the first day of school

"Who are you?"

I've spent time sitting through the "Students at a Glance" meeting and talking with other teachers about the children who are coming my way this year, but the fact that there are brand-new ones coming in always reminds me that even those we think we know are brand-new to each new year, new teacher, new class.

And yes, I want to know when their birthdays are, and their favorite colors and their pets' names, but even more I want to listen to who they tell me they are OFF the "All About Me" sheet.

Here's a poem to remind all of us teachers that part of the essential beauty of our students is in what they
don't say.


The Hand
by Mary Ruefle


The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.


I would have liked that to say "fall is in the air," but it is as it is and it's a perfect way to wish all you teachers a Happy First Day of School!

Poetry Friday is at Book Aunt today with Kate Coombs and a marvelous selection of poetry for and by teens.

can't help myself

Those of us who thrive in the classroom environment have now been out of school long enough to be thinking of "next year." (Actually we were probably scheming about how do everything Better, Stronger, Slower before school was over, or that might just be me.)

So I woke up this morning (too early; bad cat!) thinking about the sense (or not) in a class mission statement, which led to a picture of me and my new reading class of 2nd graders making our silent and stealthy way ("Your mission, should you choose to accept it...") through the halls of our new school building, occupying and exploring our new room, and in the background was playing the theme from Mission Impossible (click to get the effect), which vision only works if you participated in Pallotta TeamWorks AIDS rides of the 90's, the motto for which was (and here finally is today's poem, a brilliant one-word piece of punctuation genius)--


I'mpossible.


I think my second-graders just became the I-Team. Poetry Friday is at Irene's Live. Love. Explore! blog today.

penultimate episode

We have arrived at the last poem in the charter school application. I post it from a position of even greater optimism than usual, after a brief period of frustration and even--yes, even a little despair.

However, last week the Global Garden Founding Group got tremendous news: our separate application for $550,000 in federal charter school start-up funds was approved by the Maryland State Department of Education! The money only comes to us if the local school district approves our actual charter school application, but it's a good feeling to know that the experienced charter school reviewers at the state level have found us worthy of that kind of financial commitment. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Now, back to the poem, which does a heart-spinningly, toe-tinglingly good job of voicing the universal even as it addresses one sole reader. Its mix of earth and sky and escalators and airplanes and night and light and reading and writing is just like--well, life. It closes the Academic Design section, as a wish for all the children who might attend Global Garden PCS.

Okay, Brown Girl, Okay
~James Berry

Josie, Josie, I am okay
being brown. I remember,
every day dusk and dawn get born
from the loving of night and light
who work together, like married.
And they would like to say to you:
Be at school on and on, brown Josie
like thousands and thousands and thousands
of children, who are brown and white
and black and pale-lemon color.
All the time, brown girl Josie is okay.

Josie, Josie, I am okay
being brown. I remember,
every minute sun in the sky
and ground of the earth work together
like married.
And they would like to say to you:
Ride on up a going escalator
like thousands and thousands and thousands
of people, who are brown and white
and black and pale-lemon color.
All the time, brown girl Josie is okay.

Josie, Josie, I am okay
being brown. I remember,
all the time bright-sky and brown-earth
work together, like married
making forests and food and flowers and rain.
And they would like to say to you:
Grow and grow brightly, brown girl.
Write and read and play and work.
Ride bus or train or boat or airplane
like thousands and thousands and thousands
of people, who are brown and white
and black and pale-lemon color.
All the time, brown girl Josie is okay.

Everybody should be this kind of okay, don't you think?